Communication in the Workplace

I was sitting in a communications class one day and to make a point the professor played an audio tape of a speech that he had given somewhere. Then he asked us to critique it. All of us were a little taken aback because you don’t normally critique a professor. Finally one student stood up and said, “Sir, you were tremendously lacking in eye contact.” That broke the ice and everyone laughed. It was true! There was no eye contact with an audio tape. Thinking about the call this morning, that’s what you are going to say because I am going to talk about communications. You are going to miss eye contact but I hope you are going to listen to my words this morning.

I want to start with a humorous story that I heard some years back, it has to do with an interpreter, but I think it makes a point here. It’s a story of Jorge Rodrigues, an Old West bank robber from Mexico who operated along the Texas border around 1900 or so the story goes. Rodrigues was so successful that the Texas Rangers established a special force to try to stop him. Late one afternoon, one of these rangers saw Rodrigues slipping across the border back into Mexico and trailed him at a discreet distance. He watched as the outlaw returned to his home and mingled with the people in the square. When Rodrigues slipped into his favorite canteena to relax, the ranger slipped in and managed to get the drop on him. And with a pistol to the back of the robber’s head, the lawman said, “Jorge Rodrigues, I know who you are and I’ve come to get back all the money that you have stolen from the banks in Texas. Unless you give it to me, I’m going to blow your brains out.” Now Rodrigues could see the man’s badge and could discern his hostile intent. But there was a major problem. He didn’t speak English. So he began speaking very rapidly in Spanish but the ranger couldn’t understand what he said because the ranger didn’t speak Spanish. Just then, a young boy came up and said in English, “I can help. I speak English and Spanish. Do you want me to be your translator?” The ranger nodded, the boy quickly explained everything the ranger had said to Rodrigues. Nervously Rodrigues answered, “Please, please, tell the ranger that I have not spent a cent of the money. If he will go to the town well, face north and count down 5 stones, he will find a loose one there. Pull it out and all the money is behind there. Please tell him that quickly.” The boy looked at the ranger and said, “Sir, Senor Rodrigues is a very brave man. He says he is ready to die.”

That’s a humorous story but it brings home to us the point that communication and the ability to communicate is so important. In this case, it was a life and death experience for poor Rodrigues. But for us too, it may not be life and death experiences, but they can be the difference between being able to do well in our areas of work or not. Executive and personal coach Dr. Darryl Cross quotes the Stanford Research Institute experiment where they looked at a key ingredient in business success. They asked the question; ‘What contributes to business and career success?’ They came up with 2 factors.

1. Technical knowledge and skills: that’s a given. Without technical knowledge and the skill to do something, you’re going to be left far behind.
2. Interpersonal and Communication skills.

These were the 2 factors they felt were key to be a successful person in your career or business. But the most important thing was how these 2 skills broke up in terms of percentage. Here’s something that will surprise you. They found that technical knowledge skills needed only 12.5% of the time needed for success. The other 87.5% of the time was needed for interpersonal and communication skills. This really brings home the point that however good you may be in the hardware, things that you do technically, if you are unable to communicate well, there are chances that you will find moving up the ladder all that more difficult.

Harvard Business Review has an article that says that the #1 criterion for advancement and promotion for professionals is an ability to communicate effectively.

John Maxwell wrote a wonderful book entitled ‘Everyone Communicates; Few Connect’. How true! We think that we are communicating but the point that we really need to ask ourselves is “Am I connecting with the person? Am I making sure that the message goes out? Am I making sure that he or she understands exactly what it is that I am trying to communicate?

Presidential historian Robert Alec who has looked at successful presidents and tried to understand what has made them successful, says that five qualities are key for these successful men.

1. Vision. You need to have vision, you need to be able to say this is where we are going, and you need to be able to see that.
2. Pragmatism. You need to be pragmatic, be able to think out of the box, to do things, to take hard decisions.
3. Consensus building. You need to be able to build consensus, that’s the only way to take people along.
4. Charisma. You need to have charisma, but it’s pointless if you have charisma if you are unable to communicate.
5. Trustworthiness. You need to be trustworthy but you can’t show trustworthiness if you cannot communicate.

John Baldoni who looked at all of these points says, “4 of these factors depend heavily on the ability to communicate on multiple levels. All leaders need to be able to describe where they are going. You need to be able to communicate that and that is vision. You need to be able to persuade people to come along with them and that is consensus. You need to be able to connect on a personal level and that’s charisma. You need to be able to demonstrate credibility, do what they say they will do, which is trust.

So important for each one of us to be able to communicate effectively! The question for us this morning is “How good are we in communication skills? Do we take it seriously? Are we spending time helping to understand the nuances of being a good communicator?

Communication is more than just being able to speak. Communication is also about listening. I love some of the one-liners that come out of the book of Proverbs in the Bible – they speak directly to the heart. “The right word at the right time is like custom-made jewelry” (Proverbs 25:11). The other is a warning from Proverbs 18:13, “He who answers before listening, that is his folly and his shame.” We have to be able to speak, but we also must be able to listen.

Who makes a good listener? I’m going to throw out 5 profiles of a bad or a poor listener.

1. The Advice giver: somebody who while listening is thinking how to give advice.
2. The Interpreter: not giving you full attention but figuring what he can say next.
3. The Reassurer: somebody who jumps in and says that it probably wasn’t as bad.
4. The Rationaliser: somebody who, while you’re trying to talk, they try to tell you why that happened to you.
5. The Deflector: you start a conversation and then they wait for something you’ve said to move into an area of their own interest.

Good food for thought this morning. Are we good communicators? Do we speak well, do we connect with people, do we speak the right words at the right time? Are we good listeners? Do we give people our full attention or as people talk to us we are thinking what we can say or do next? Communication is so important, my friends. I trust that as the day or week progresses, you would think about this and look at your own lives and ask the question, “When I communicate, as I really connecting with people?”

God Bless Us All