Pick your Battles

We’ve all heard that saying about having to pick your battles.  The idea is that if you are always competing with others, you won’t have any friends in the workplace when you need them.  One way to approach this is to think about the issue and decide how important it is that you get your way.  Even if you are right and even if you deserve to “win,” maybe this is one to let slip away.  All Things Workplace had a great point about conflict and the need to be right.

Getting Through the Obstacle Course

The other night, I was watching a television show in which contestants have to pass through an obstacle course while competing for time against other contestants, all of whom are vying for a prize.  Ever feel like your workplace is designed on a similar model, where you have to dodge obstacles thrown at you by bosses, customers, and coworkers while you compete against the people around you for scarce promotions and positions?  When you’re on top, that sense of competition may seem energizing, but no one can be on top forever and many may struggle with this type of climate on a regular basis.

So what to do?  Two things.  First, don’t perpetuate the cycle.  Recognize others’ accomplishments with genuine praise, and encourage people to work together.  Second, build relationships with people.  Not relationship that will advance your career.  Relationships are the most important thing that you can do as they are the most important part of job satisfaction.

What Makes a Good Leader?

I’m teaching a course this Fall on leadership and communication.  I don’t pretend to have the answers, but it’s definitely interesting to think about how do leaders effectively communicate with others.  Or at an even more basic level, what makes a good leader?  I’ll probably be exploring that question periodically, as I work through the material.  Feel free to post any comments on the subject.

Influencing Others–Think about the culture of your organization

When you are trying to influence others in the workplace, there’s not a one-size-fits-all formula for what to say or do.  All Things Workplace had a great post about the role of organizational culture.  That was a buzz word in the 80’s and 90’s, but most of the writing from that time was about how managers could create better organizational cultures.  Since then, researchers have considered that cultures may be more complex that a simple variable in an organization that one person can change.  Cultures tend to be grassroots, which means that a managers cannot necessarily make sweeping changes and expect the culture to change overnight.  What I really appreciate about the All Things Workplace post is that, it doesn’t talk about how to change an organization’s culture.  Instead, the post describes how to understand the culture that you’re in and make it work for you.  Whatever you’re trying to communicate, you have to understand the context in which you are working.

Communication Competence

One of the things that interests me as an organizational communication professor is communication competence.  There are a lot of definitions of what makes a competent communicator, and a lot of research goes into trying to determine what leads to such competence.  I read an article a few weeks ago that really made me think.  One of the things that previous research has considered is that communication competence is made up of being effective and also being appropriate.  Inherent in both of those (especially effectiveness) is accomplishing your goals for a conversation.  However, Lakey and Canary (2002) also found that communicating competently means being sensitive to the other person’s goals.  So if you are trying to get someone to do something, communicating competently means demonstrating that you understand that person’s goals as well as your own.  I think this is a very interesting way of thinking about competence.  It seems many people think communication is important in organizations.  This is one way to be better at it.

Reference:
Lakey, S. G., & Canary, D. J. (2002). Actor goal achievement and sensitivity to partner as critical factors in understanding interpersonal communication competence and conflict strategies.  Communication Monographs, 69, 217-235.

Influencing your Boss

How influential are you in your company?  Do people listen to what you have to say? Perhaps one of the tests of that is how influential you are with people above you in the organization.  All Things Workplace had a great post a few months ago on influencing up.  Not surprisingly, it starts before you want something—build a solid foundation of integrity and respect.  Then, think like your boss thinks.  Consider his or her needs in addition to your own.  What can help him or her say yes to your request?  Kind of sounds a lot like person-centered messages.

Technology in Meetings

Today’s post is more of a question than a comment.  How do you use technology in meetings?  More specifically, how do you use personal devices (Blackberries, I-Phones, laptop computers, etc.) in meetings?  My students tell me they are “taking notes” as they use their laptops to check email and facebook.  A colleague of mine at another university has conducted research and found that people in businesses are similar.  So how do you use personal technology?  Obviously, having a link to the Internet can be a powerful source of information during a meeting.  It can also be a distraction if it keeps you from being mentally present.  How do you (or others in your organization) use technology?

Assumptions

We all make assumptions.  They undergird everything we say and do.  We drive when the light turns green because we assume that everyone at the cross street will stop for a red light.  We get to work on time because we assume that we will be punished for being late.  Or we show up late because we assume that we can get away with it.  Usually, we don’t really think about those assumptions—they are often subconscious.  This post really challenges readers to think about the assumptions that they have.  When you are in a conflict with someone else, be careful about the assumptions that you make about the other person’s motives or goals.  When you feel like the boss is breathing down your neck, be careful about your assumptions.  When you feel like your employees are not trying hard enough or are not performing at their potential, be careful about your own assumptions.  I wonder how much of a workplace would be better if we could reflect on our own assumptions.

Listen to the People around You

I feel like I’ve been gone forever.  Between conferences and vacations, it’s been a while since I was able to blog, but it’s great to be back.

This may not seem relevant at first, but I promise there’s a great connection to how you communicate at work.  One of the conferences that I attended in the last month was on how to be a better teacher, and several of the sessions that I attended had to do with not lecturing.  A consistent theme at a number of sessions was that lecturing is an ineffective way of teaching, that guiding discussions was better in terms of student enjoyment and more importantly, student learning.  One reason for that is that a lecture assumes that the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing.  There are occasions when this is true, but they are in fact rarer than we typically assume.  In fact, as I teach organizational communication, my students have a great deal of knowledge before I walk into the classroom.  They’ve listened to their parents and others who work full-time, many have had part-time jobs, most are part of student organizations, and many have preconceived ideas from television programs.  I am a better teacher if I don’t depend solely on knowing more than my students and instead help them to share their knowledge in such a way that we all learn.

So I promised this is relevant.  In businesses today, there is usually too much to know for any one person to know everything.  We depend on the knowledge, ideas, and expertise of many to be the best, yet sometimes we act as if we don’t need others.  We ignore someone’s input, we dismiss someone’s idea, or we speak in such a way as to dare someone to disagree with us.  When your organization is faced with a problem, don’t hesitate to present solutions to that problem, but also know that you may need information from others to make your solution workable.  If you’re a decision-maker, remember that you have people around you with ideas and expertise.  A good leader, like a good teacher, relies on good people around him or her.

Reactance Theory

A colleague of mine studies a theory called reactance theory.  The idea is that each of us wants to make our own choices, and when something comes up that limits our freedom to make those choices, we react in such a way as to restore our freedom.  For example, if someone reminds us, “be sure to be on time for work,” even if we are typically a punctual person, we may feel that the imperative “be on time” limits our freedom to choose to be on time or to not be on time.  So we feel the need to react.  We could react by intentionally being late.  Not really late, just a few minutes to let them know that we can if we choose to.  We might react by decreasing our effort once we arrive or by delaying (“just let me get a cup of coffee”), which retakes control of our time.  In some cases, we might react by praising those people who take control of how they use their time (a vicarious reaction).  The point—when people limit our choices, we react against that limitation.

By definition, part of being in an organization is agreeing to limit your choices for the sake of the collective, right?  In theory, perhaps, but it often doesn’t work that way in “real life.”  As you are influencing others, you are asking them to limit their choices, to agree to a choice that you are making for them.  How can you limit reactance?  According to my friend, one way is to present possibilities and options, but to emphasize the choice is still theirs to make.  As you are asking to leave early Friday, present your case but acknowledge that your supervisor still has the final call.  As you are campaigning for that great assignment, explain why you are the one for the job, but be sure to underscore that the decision-maker has the ability to choose whoever he/she wants.  The theory is more complicated than this, but even these simple ideas will likely make a difference as you influence those around you.