Ep. 041 – Josh Hammonds - Decoding communication
When we discuss communication we often end up speaking about strategies for talking to people, how we can convey information and create engagement, but we spend less time understanding how that interaction works and how different people both send and receive messages.
Together with Josh Hammonds we try to decode different styles of communication and what that means both to how we talk and to how we listen. And we explore if there is even a “right” way to communicate or if we are all simply… different?
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About Josh
With 15+ years of experience and a PHD in Interpersonal and Business Communication, Josh conducts research and develops corporate leaders and their teams.
As a Professor, Josh teaches courses such as Leadership, Team Collaboration, and Professional Communication at Rollins College - and in the Crummer Business and Leadership school –, and has presented original research and conducted workshops at various institutions. Josh’s consulting work includes professional development workshops for front-line managers as well as diagnosing and solving issues related to communication, culture, and employee engagement.
He is the founder of The Leader Prompt Newsletter that takes a science-forward approach to actionable leadership practices. Josh believes communication and relationships are crucial to social and professional success.
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EP. 041 Transcription
[00:00:00] Shani: So we're rolling. Welcome, Josh. Yes,
[00:00:03] Josh: thank you.
[00:00:04] Shani: I'm super excited to actually I, I would, in lack of better expression, to get a conversation of ours on tape. Yeah. Like actually recorded
[00:00:13] Josh: tape. Wow. That's showing both of our age. I knew exactly what you meant.
Yeah. Yes.
[00:00:19] Shani: I would guess most of the people who listen to this also would know what that means.
[00:00:22] Josh: I would think so. We're hitting, I'm sure there's that demographic that with not be confused at all by that my students do. I'll slip up in class often and the students will just say, tape what? You mean record, send you a file?
Yes. Send you a file. Yes.
[00:00:37] Shani: Yeah. There are things like that make you feel old, for sure. Oh yeah. I saw a recording the other week of a person who was talking about what if you had a phone in the house for everyone and she thought it was this genius idea and it was like, yes, it's the house phone.
And yes, most of us, they were had them growing
[00:00:57] Josh: up. Yeah. They were mounted to the nightstand in every bedroom. Yes, I remember them.
[00:01:03] Shani: Yeah. So here we are. And we're not gonna talk about house phones or tapes or anything. We're going to talk about communication because that's one of the many things that you know a lot about.
Oh boy. Oh boy. Yes. But before we dive into that, I am really curious because you've spent a lot of time both. You've done a PhD in communication, you've taught it, you've spent a lot of time on that topic from different angles. So I'm always, this is my like always starting point question why this I.
Who are you and what made you choose that? Who are you?
[00:01:39] Josh: Let's start. Yeah. Who are
[00:01:40] Shani: you? Question we tiny
[00:01:42] Josh: question. No I think that's a, it's a great question. It's fascinating. I, I have a storied past. I don't think any anybody decides outta the gate you're gonna study communication.
It's one of the more non-traditional. Disciplines, I think in some ways when I first started college. But yeah, I was into biology. I was pre-med as an undergrad student for a few years. Very fascinated with how the body works and how it responds to stimuli and all of that. But I changed my major several times.
Like anybody, I. With A D H D during college, I think I changed my major about four different times. I was English for a while. I knew I wanted to be in some kind of education, so I was an education major for a semester, but I found communication later in, in my college career. And the thing that I loved about communication is you can define it in several different ways.
I, I think communication as a discipline, it's greatest strength and weakness is its breadth. So when you say, what do you study in communication, are you into marketing? At the time it was like, are you going into TV and radio? We didn't have all the mass communication at the time, but to me, the social psychology of human interaction, right?
The art and the science of how people communicate with each other and how messages. Affect relationships, how they affect motivation. That fascinated me. And so in undergrad I declared communication as a major. My, my theater background helped me with the presentations and the performative aspects of communication.
I remember there was one time in undergrad and we had a presentation that day and I completely spaced on it. And I remember walking to class and I grabbed a scrap piece of paper, put something together, three points, found some illustrations that could tease out those three points, deliver that in class day of.
And I still remember the professor stopping and saying, now, that was a good presentation. You can tell that Joshua. Practiced that before, and it was just so funny. So it was one of those things where it's okay, so this thing I'm decent at, what does that look like? And then I just went down the rabbit hole and I got my master's in interpersonal and organizational communication, and then my PhD a as well.
Cause I knew that this was something that I couldn't get enough of. I needed to know more about how messages influence people. So again, very much within that psychology, sub-discipline, that social psychology of human interaction. So again, the PhD's in interpersonal communication. That's what I've been doing for quite a while.
I think I've been now teaching college classes for almost 20 years. I taught in upstate New York for several years and I received tenure up there and then moved down here. I'm in Orlando, Florida. I teach at a liberal arts college as well in the undergrad, but then also in the graduate school as well.
I'm in the MBA program and I teach a lot of courses on professional communication and leadership and small group dynamics and negotiation and persuasion and listening. So all of those human elements of communication I have been fascinated by geeked out about and probably have spoken to groups of people about it for quite some time.
So that's my academic background and where I started there. And then about five years ago, I really started getting deeper into the consulting. I took my classroom outside. And there were several students in the MBA program who said, I loved the courses and the workshops that you taught when I was getting my education.
Any way you can teach us that here and what does that look like? And so began to develop different kinds of workshops on collaboration and employee engagement. How do leaders motivate and inspire and inform teams, right? Through communication and the science and the art of communication. And so to me, I can't separate.
Leadership from communication. I think the best leaders in the world are also some of the best communicators and some of the best communicators have that potential to become some of the best leaders. So that to me has been, what's happened over the last couple of years is just developing different kinds of programs for organizations, for companies that say, what are some of your values?
What are some of the missions? What are some of the skills that exist in your organization that could be tightened up or refined? How can we come in there and put a communication lens on that and see about inspiring and educating and developing your leaders.
[00:05:57] Shani: So that's a lot of things and really moving like from academia into more application. I'm curious like. Have you found, cuz you've spent a lot of time in this and of course starting out in academia and moving into more of the corporate space, but have you found that people are approaching it differently, any differently now from, as opposed to the beginning of your trajectory with this?
[00:06:23] Josh: Yeah. So yeah. Phrase that again. What do you mean by, are they, are, is the people or is the discipline changing? Are the people approaching you differently? Maybe I just wanna understand exactly what you're asking and then I can
[00:06:37] Shani: Yes. Okay. I love that you are asking me to clarify. Thank you for that.
What, I think let me think about how I'm phrasing this. I think that what I'm looking for, what I'm curious about is maybe more in, in that space of application. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I. So just on a personal note, I feel like there were a lot of things in regards to collaboration, in regards to culture, in regards to just how we relate to each other and build relationships.
The dialogue over the course of even the last 10 years has changed in my world quite radically. And yeah, I think I was just curious what has been your experience with regards to communication in particular? No,
[00:07:22] Josh: that's good. That's great clarification. Yeah, I think, cause I've grown in the discipline as the discipline has grown as well.
What is communication? What. What I have seen is that for a long time, leadership studies and business studies have tapped into communication to an extent, right? We need to be a good listener and we need to be a good communicator. But it was always very vague about what that looked like. I if I had a nickel for how many posts or articles I've seen about people saying, here's the problem I.
The answer is to be a better listener. And then they give no tips on what that looks like. Just squint really hard and then you'll be a better listener. And so I think what we're starting to see, and I think the pandemic really did this and hybrid work really shine a light on this, but this idea that how you communicate.
And the degree in which your message needs to be received to different types of people is paramount to now professional development. And so whereas before we said, to be a good leader, we need to be clear and we need to communicate well. We're now, we're starting to see that there's actually different styles of communication.
That there's actually different styles of listening that individuals who are working remotely might respond better to asynchronous emails that are written. Other people need video and face-to-face interaction, and that's what motivates them. That's what inspires them. And so now this leader is saying, okay what used to work?
Which was, I'll hold a meeting and send out an email that's no longer motivating people in the way that it was. That's not really getting that message across in the way that I thought. And so how do I need to change this? And so I think we're seeing more channels being used. If anything, I think that we're maybe using too many channels and sometimes it's I sent you a Slack, or I, let's get on the Zoom, or I think I sent you a video message, or I thought that was a text, but maybe it was an email.
And so we have so many channels now to juggle and manage. And so part of that communication leadership training is saying let's all get on the same page. But then the other part is how does my team respond to different kinds of messages? And so what's fascinating is, there's different ways in which.
There's different goals in communication. One, one goal is clarity but another goal is in influencing and inspiring. Another goal is to connect with your team. And so when the pandemic hit, you had lots of people that were very happy about not doing face-to-face meetings. And they said, great, just give me my direct orders.
I want bullet points and let me do my job really well. And then you had another group of people that felt lonely and isolated, and they were like I miss people. I'm not feeling very lonely. That, world Health Organization just said loneliness is now reaching global epidemic levels, that people are lonely.
They don't have that connection. And so during that pandemic, some of the communication training I would do was, I would say, maybe your team needs to see a three minute video. From you on Monday morning to say, here's what I'm inspired by. Here's what I wanna work on. Here's some challenges we can foresee.
And then, we'll see you on the zoom a little bit later, but at least you get that message out. And a lot of people respond to that because some people are high relators and they crave that non-verbal communication and that inspires them. That motivates them. Other people that, that's maybe not a priority.
They've got other relationships, they've got other social networks. I just need that email from my manager and I can go. Forth with that, but I think you're starting to see just the complexity of communication and how people really respond to it in different ways. And so that was never really spoken about in, 10, 15 years ago.
It was just here's how you deliver a presentation, or here's how you might articulate a memo. And that was about it. That's and now we're really starting to open up all the nuances of how people respond to certain messages.
[00:11:16] Shani: I love that. And also just reflecting on while you're sharing, this is just the sheer complexity of the world that we live in today, which as you're saying, has so many different channels to choose from.
So not only are we different people with different preferences, we also have this added choice of a lot of different settings. A lot of different channels, yes. Added onto that complexity, whereas before it maybe was. We're in the office and we're, we have these differences, but now we also have another few layers to add on top of that.
I would love to dig into something that's come up when we've spoken before as well, is you talk about listening and communicating. So maybe we like go down each lane Yeah. A little bit more and just dig into what does a good experience look like of communication?
Let's start with communication.
[00:12:07] Josh: Yeah. One, one of the things I was lead with, as I say, we oftentimes see communication as this finite skill that, that we're bad at it, and then we can get good at it. And I'm a teacher. I do believe that there is a, there's a growth mindset that needs to happen with communication that we all should get better at our communication.
However, and what I'm about to say is slightly controversial here. Oftentimes it's not so much that people communicate incorrectly or poorly, it's that they communicate differently. And I can't stress that enough. We have different personality types, different kinds of intellect different strengths that exist on a team.
Why in the world would we not apply that to communication? And we have different styles of communication. So a lot of my research over the past couple of years really teases out what are these distinct styles? And so far I've come to terms that those are about four macro communication styles that exist, both in how you speak or encode your words, but then also how you listen as well, and the ways in which you prioritize the things that you hear.
And so it's always fascinating to me when. You can get done with a meeting, you can have four different people who all listen to the exact same presentation or the same, information being shared. And you'll get four different interpretations about what happens, right? And so they'll be like, oh I didn't get that at all actually, what I was listening to or what I heard was this, huh?
I heard this. And so perhaps people listen differently or they prioritize different parts of a message in a different way. And so my research has found that, again, there's about four different styles. One of the styles is I refer to as the relator. And this is the communicator that is really good with picking up nonverbal nuances in the room.
And so this is the really good, probably high eq, which is another kind of overlap there. They're good at understanding tone and emotion. This person is upset as they're talking about this, I can tell that they're upset. And so they're really listening to the tone and the pauses and the rate, the inflection of the voice.
And because their brain is focused on that, guess what, they might miss some of the details. And so they'll come away and they'll miss some things, as they're listening, but they definitely got the tone and the intention behind it. And they even might, in a contagious way, catch on the passion and they might be inspired by it right then.
So that's that person's the relator and everybody has a score somewhere. They're either a high relator, moderate or a low relator. And they're ways that you can teach people how to pick up on those sorts of nuances. If you are a high relator during the pandemic, you were very sad when you couldn't see people.
You're, you get upset or frustrated if there's a zoom meeting and all of the video is off. Because why? Because a lot of the data that you pick up on is people's faces. I get validated or confirmed that what I'm saying is ringing true to people by looking at the feedback. And so if I don't get any feedback as a relator, I'm not really sure what's sticking and what's landing.
Because I'm so focused on that connection and that message being received and received well. So that's the relator the second one I call the Explorer. And I am also high-ish on the explorer side, but the explorer, when they listen to people speak, they make associations to prior things that they've heard that are similar to what.
Is being said or what's being spoken about. So an explorer will connect all of the dots. And so I think of them as somebody that sits on the fire tower above the forest, and as people are speaking, they're putting all the pieces together. I call this the 30,000 foot listener. This is usually the strategist or the visionary.
They're great in a collaboration meeting because as people are talking, they are thinking about what happened a month ago. They're thinking about a book that they read last summer. They're thinking about a TED talk that reminds them of this thing, and they're putting those pieces together, right? And so they're making these associations and they're connecting all of the dots.
Again, because you're at a 30,000 foot, you might miss some of the finer details, some of the finer points. And so really what an explorer does is they listen to understand and comprehend. They're also the person that's probably asking follow-up questions. They might take a lot longer time than people want during meetings.
Because why? Because I'm here to understand the whole picture and I don't want to do anything until I completely understand that whole picture. And so you might have people that who are not explorers, are frustrated by explorers because they're saying, analysis paralysis, we're talking this to death.
Why? Why are we still going about this? We have what we need in front of us. Let's just move. And so that brings me to our third listener or third style of communicator, and I call this person the achiever. An achiever does not live at 30,000 foot. The achiever has boots on the ground. They are at the level of the forest floor.
And so if the explorer is up in the fire tower looking at the whole big picture, the big roadmap, the achiever is down on the ground looking at which path to go to next. When they listen, they don't necessarily listen to fully understand the picture. They listen for action. So I heard this, now what are we supposed to do about it?
What are we supposed to do now that you've told me this? And so this person really mu very much favors bullet points. Send me the direct orders that need to happen this week or this month. And then I'll do them. And I see the path right in front of us. Let's go. Let's move. And so immediately you can start to see how the explorer and the achiever, when they're collaborating can butt heads, but they're so necessary together because the explorer might go, hold on, I've thought about this.
I lost sleep over this. I've been thinking about this for months. I'm telling you, if we go that way, there's a fire, several kilometers down the way that we need to reroute and we can't go this way. Trust me. And the achiever's going which way are we going? Come on, we gotta go. We gotta go.
And the explorer's up there going, I don't know, let me think about this a little bit longer. And the achieves like, stop thinking and let's just move. And so you've got the strategist and the execution. And that's also how their brain communicates. And and that's how they listen.
Those are the things they pick up when they listen. The last style and the fourth style I call the fixer. And if the explorer is 30,000 foot and the achiever is boots on the ground, the fixer is in the weeds. I say that la I say that lovingly. But they are, they have a very close view of what's happening.
And so this person will be able to pick up inconsistencies in communication. They'll be able to pick up on logical errors that are happening. They're great at proofreading, excellent editors, excellent proofreaders. But they're listening to the finer details. They might say something like, five minutes ago you said this word and now you're saying this word that doesn't line up and the explorers over here going, you're missing the big picture here.
And they're like, big picture. Nothing. You just did, you just made a big error and you said this, and now we're doing this. And so it's fun when you understand the strengths of a collaboration because the conflict is inevitable, but it's necessary and it's good. And so the fixer is there, with the achiever saying, we're moving close, but at the same time there's a couple trees in the way.
There's a couple branches in the way that we need to trim these before we can move forward. And so in some ways, the achiever is always the one that's trying to drive the bus. And you have the explorer who is slowing things down a little bit because they need to think about and strategize before they wanna move.
And then the fixer doesn't wanna move until the thing that's in the way or wrecking things needs to be cleared. And the achiever's going. Let's just move around it. We don't need to cut the tree down. Let's just move around it. And so you do see how these individuals live in tension with each other, but they're absolutely necessary.
And once you understand and know that strength that you bring as a communicator, you can flex that muscle a little bit when you're collaborating. And at the same time, recognize, am I being too much of a fixer here? Maybe we should move on. Am I being too much of an explorer? Maybe we should land the plane and move forward.
We've been talking about this for 20 minutes. Let's, you're right let's move forward. And so recognizing your strengths, but then also the challenges that you have. And so those are your four styles. And I've been teaching this and doing workshops on this quite some time.
And I just think it's, I think it's missing oftentimes in some of the business and the professional development literature and there's lots of overlap with different kinds of assessments. But really one of the things I love about taking a communication approach is because it's not only psychological, but then it's also action too about how we encode and use our words and use our messages.
And we really get to look at that. It's not just psychology, but it's how it's enacted as well.
[00:21:06] Shani: Yeah. I love that point cuz that was what one of the things that stuck with me as I was listening to you, it's very actionable and it's very relatable. And sometimes we. Throw around all these buzz words and we don't really know what they mean, and we don't really know how we actually translate them into doing anything differently because we don't really understand how they apply to us.
[00:21:28] Josh: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:21:30] Shani: Okay. So these are really interesting. How do you I'm also curious do you also see that, talk about strength, but do you usually find that people combine some of these Yeah. In themselves? Or how, yeah. How does that work? So
[00:21:46] Josh: usually when I do the assessment will find that there's more times than not, there's one of these styles that is higher than the others, and I do wanna stress that these are. This assessment and each of these styles are orthogonal, which basically means that it's not either or that you really could be high in all four. That's rarely the case. Every now and then I'll get somebody who's I got high scores on all four, and I'm like, you're a phenomenal communicator, st.
Stop what you're doing for form a company and just lead people to success in all that you do. But most people are really high in one. And then you'll have some people that are tied into, and if you're high relator and high explorer, that means that you're really good with listening to people and understanding people, but then also exploring ideas.
And so you'll see these combos or these hybrid styles that really work every now and then you'll see one with three. You'll be high in three of them. But one of the things that I remind people is I very much believe in a strengths-based approach to professional development. I do. And I think that I love what Clifton does as far as, let's focus on the five strengths and see how we can maximize those.
Let's not get caught up so much in the deficit mindset of oh, I'm terrible at these. How do I get better at these? However, I think it is good to look at that one that you are maybe the lowest in and recognize that is something that you need on your team and you need in your life. And for instance, I am, I'm the lowest on the fixer.
I live in the clouds. I am high relator. I live in strategy and vision and understanding and comprehending. That's part of probably why I couldn't stop going to school and ended up getting a terminal degree in this. But I've married somebody who was a fixer. And my wife is very much into the finer details and is that, Tension sometimes.
Absolutely. But I also recognize that it's something that I need. And so whether it be a manuscript that I need edited, right? And I feel like I've proofread everything and then send it right over to her. And sure enough, there's 18 more errors. And I'm like, how did you find these? But because her brain is wired in such a way that she can pick out those very close details.
And so as somebody, if I'm on a team or if I'm leading a team, I will say, who are my fixers? I need you right here next to me before anything goes out, before anything gets shipped. I need that. Cause I know that I'm not gonna be able to see that. So I think understanding your weaknesses not so much necessarily, so that you can beat yourself up over them and get better at them and get stronger at them.
Although I do believe in growth. I think recognizing that is saying, aha, but I can bring someone on my team and appreciate that. And so that, I think has prevented so much conflict. Whereas years ago, I might have butted heads with the fixer, right? You're losing the big picture. You're getting caught in the pedantic weeds.
What are you doing? Whereas now I see it as absolutely something that I need anytime I'm collaborating. Cause I know that's a blind spot of
[00:24:43] Shani: mine. I love that. And I love two things that you're saying. One is the strength based approach is we're also, I feel like sometimes when we talk about learning and growth we really fall really deep into these holes of self criticism and just beating ourselves up over, I'm not good enough at this.
But also what you're saying that allows us to play with a collective balance of things. And not always make it all about us, but how we can fit together. And I know I'm definitely on, on your end of the scale and absolutely not a fixer. But, and let's see for the rest.
But I know I was leading a team a couple of years back and We were talking about how we set our goals and how we plan our work. And we did a lot of work to land in a format. And as I'm not a fixer, maintaining those formats is hell to me. It is just too monotonous, too boring.
And I understand that people care about it. And I remember I had a conversation with a person from the team and I said, yeah I realize I'm not very good at it. And she said, but you know what? You don't need to be, you can just ask somebody else. If they wanna do it. And it was so strange cuz I didn't even, I hadn't even asked myself the question like, could maybe somebody else do it?
And it's such an important part of functioning together as a team is not about every single person doing every single thing is about that. Leveraging everyone's strength to a greater extent. And using that awareness of, oh, I'm actually, this isn't something I'm very good
[00:26:21] Josh: at. And it goes, I think it goes against a lot of our sort of structured education from primary school to all the way out through college is you're, you might do group work, but you're being assessed on y all of these competencies, all of these skills, these got red marks. You mi you know, minus 10 points here.
And so we live in this place of okay, this is what I'm good at, this is what I'm bad at, and I have to bring the bad up. And again, don't mishear me. I'm not saying we shouldn't work on those areas. But at the same time, I believe the future of work, and it has been for a while, is collaboration is teams.
And to the sooner you can recognize what you are strong at what other people are strong at, and then also see how those fit together. That they are not a force of tension, but they're one of collaboration that, of complimentary angles sooner. We can wrap our heads around that. I think the better the culture of our teams are gonna be.
[00:27:17] Shani: Yeah. I love that. I'm really curious also to dive in with you a little bit more on listening. Yeah. Yeah. This is a very hot topic when as I, do you work with design? Listening is always the first step. Yes. And also has been my experience over the past, at least seven years of working with design-driven methods that it's one of the hardest.
Pieces to motivate people to do Absolutely. In a way that is actually empathetic and compassionate. So yeah, I'm just, yeah. I'm really curious what nuggets of gold we can grasp from your understanding around this. Yeah. What makes a good listening experience,
[00:28:02] Josh: I think, yeah.
Oh, wow. It's just to unpack that. I think, and this is why it's so important for me, I think, to have that discovery assessment to start and go, okay, what are you good at? And what is your priorities when you communicate? And so real quick, when we communicate, we are encoding and we are decoding. And so encoding is the process where I have an idea in my head that I want to communicate and I've got to search for and find different symbols.
Words, descriptions, emojis, gifts, and then send them through a channel to you. You take that symbol, whether that be a long email, whether that be a podcast, whether that be a a picture, a gif, whatever it is, and then you decode that. By listening, an auditory listening and some people would argue that there's visual listening as well, and we can get into the nuances of that.
But I would call listening this act of decoding, right? Where I'm taking your symbol and then I am translating that to the idea that lives in my head. And perfect communication occurs when the idea of the sender is the exact same as the idea of the receiver. And so you have this aha moment where it's aha, I see exactly what you're saying.
I get it right. And so when I am listening and to get better at listening, I have to say, okay, here's what I'm good at as a communicator, maybe you're really high at relating. And so I don't need to. I don't need to squint and flex to think about, okay, their tone changed. What emotion might they be experiencing?
Because that comes so natural to me. Whether that's hardwired or whether I learned it, that comes so natural to me. So I don't really need to work on hearing people's tone and nonverbals other people who might score low on the relator. That might be the thing that they need to focus on. That recognize that maybe the emotion and the sentiment behind what's being said is what you need to listen to that, that you're over here and you're great with details, but you are missing the fact that everybody is burnt out.
There's a toxic wor work culture. But you're right, you are clearly sending three bullet points every Monday morning and all that sort of stuff. You're good at that, but you're not so good at understanding when people are at that point. Point of burnout. And so you're not picking up on tone, you're not picking up on those sorts of things.
And so for the person who's a low relator, your listening probably needs to be focused on those non-verbal elements. And so that's what I would tell that person. But I wouldn't tell a high relator, you need to be more empathic and listen more to the voice. For them, I might say, you're losing the big picture here.
You're getting caught in the weeds because you're really high on a fixer, but you're really low on the Explorer. And so when you're listening to things, you're getting caught up on the exact phrasing of the email and the exact phrases of the words. And that is side sidetracking you into this place where you're losing the overall thesis statement of what's happening because you're so frustrated by the grammar of your team or whatever it is.
And so for that person, I would say, try to step back for just a second. Read through the grammar. The Gen Z slang that you can't get past maybe, right? And really look at what's overall trying to be said here. What's the sentiment here? So try to connect those dots and explore those. And then for me, I would say look into the details more.
As you're listening, you're getting you're such a good explorer, maybe because you're connecting all the pieces that's now going into the land of A D H D, and now you're connecting too many things. Focus, and listen to the details of what's being said. Write these down. Reinforce what that person is being said by writing down these specific details so that you will recall them and you'll be able to do this job in the procedural order that it needs to be.
And yeah whether it's a colleague who is a, who's a really high achiever or high fixer who hears all the details that misses the big picture, or me over here who, I got the big picture, but you're right. What was the first step? I missed the first step and I also probably missed the second step, but I am, I very much understand the sentiment and the philosophy for why we're doing this.
And I'm clear on the vision, right? So it's fascinating. There was a study last year in the journal academy of Management that looked at several hundreds of individuals who were talking about their manager, and they asked them to rate on how well they either communicate or under communicate.
To their teams and there's a nine times higher ratio, nine times more likely that your team is going to say that manager under communicates as opposed to over communicates. Now, if I were to pull aside each of those managers and be like, is that true? Do you really think that's true? They would all probably get very defensive and go, are you serious?
I sent them 16 emails about this. I sent them this, I sent them that. There's no way I under communicate. And I would, give them the benefit of the doubt and say, I bet you are communicating, but is it in the way that your team receives? Giving details, but not giving them the vision or the purpose or the mission behind it.
They might count that as under communicate. I don't know why we're doing this. I don't know the purpose, but you're right. You did send me three bullet points yesterday. We're, and other people are saying, I feel like I'm left in the dark because I haven't seen them because we're in a hybrid team and I haven't seen their face, I haven't seen their emotion, and so I'm mo I'm losing out on all that data that I crave as a relator.
But you're right, they did send an email, but that to me is under communicating. And so finding out how your team listens, I think is where it hits that sweet spot where they say, okay, you've communicated appropriately because you communicated in the way that, that I receive that information.
[00:33:43] Shani: I find that really interesting because now we spend a lot of time talking about receiving, actually both being mindful how we receive information and where we then might be lacking, right in our you in that. But also being mindful when we are sending something out, what is needed on the other receiving end.
I, for a long time I worked in internal communication and I would, my conclusion was usually with communication, it was usually too little and too late. And no matter when you asked any, anybody, and any point and however much you had communicated, it was always too little and too
[00:34:21] Josh: late. Yep. Yep. And would you, let me ask you a question.
Would you say that was true of you or do you think that you communicated it was just probably a different medium or a different channel than your team wanted?
[00:34:34] Shani: I think, this was a point when I was doing internal comms within a company, so you're always constrained to whatever medium that is.
If it's an intranet or emails right. I would say it was true probably a lot of the time to that extent. So I think there's also a difference between kind of wider communication and more personal and team communication. For sure. But yeah, I think it's an easy sentiment in any communication in particular in a work setting where.
There is so much information moving around. And you it's not the same as having a one, one-to-one. And there's all there. It's with greater ease. We have the sentiment of we're missing out or we're getting things after somebody else. So there's some kind of lack of transparency or something.
There's a lot of things that are at play in that sentiment when you're receiving in a work setting, I think that, might not be as, as dominant in in other settings.
[00:35:31] Josh: No, I think that's good. I have to remind it gets so complex, but I have to remind leaders. You have three goals when you communicate and one communication act can satisfy all three goals.
But you're either informing, which is this idea of clarity. Let me just give you the information, let me get, let me get you to understand this. You have informing, but then you also have influencing, and I think we forget about that, but Aristotle called this the pathos. The emotional motivation behind doing something.
Kim Cameron's, a management professor at, in, in Michigan, and talked a lot about the different attributes of a leader and identified five different characteristics of a leader that would lead to the most performance of a team. Looked at, IQ, looked at charisma, all these sorts of things but relational energy was the highest and the most the biggest driver of team performance, which is this idea that leaders that inspire oftentimes are more effective even than ones that are super duper clear.
And so I think that's fascinating too, but it's this idea of motivation. So number two is influence. Are you communicating in a way that's influential? Am I inspired to come to work? Am I inspired to do this? And some leaders go, Hey, it's not my job to inspire you. You either want to be an accountant or not.
You either want to be this or that. Sure, there's some truth behind that. But you have the opportunity as a leader to tap into that inspiration from a communication lens. And I think we, we miss on those opportunities. And then the third one is to connect. So inform, influence and connect.
And I think connect is what you were talking about before, that, if I've got some team members that are high relators and all I've sent is a couple of emails or a couple of memos people wanna feel connected to their teams. They wanna feel connected to their leader. And so if you're not doing consistent one-on-ones, at least every other week for 35 minutes or so, and you're not spending at least five minutes within that one-on-one, just going, Hey, how was the week?
It was fine. No, I'm gonna go beyond fine. How was it really? And so I want to connect. I really want to hear I want to give you this posture because I desire it. And I wanted to hear from you. And so that, that's the third goal. And again, each employee has different Desires for how much they want of each of those.
Some people say, Hey, I, I don't need to connect a whole bunch other people. They might really want that. Research is showing that a lot of the Gen Z and some of the more entry level employees and things like this do desire that connection and some of that age and stage of just coming out of college or high school or whatever that is, they still desire that community.
They've not yet built their own social network and work can be satisfy some of that and fulfill some of that, right? And so recognizing that as a leader that, oh, these people might want a little bit more connection and some of the people that have been here for 30 years et cetera. And yeah, so when you talk about too little too late, it's of what?
Of too little of informing us too little of influencing us or too little of connecting with us. And you can get different answers.
[00:38:28] Shani: Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. When you were talking one. And I'm not sure I'm quoting this right, but I'll try, I read this quote last week that was something along the lines of talent doesn't make the team makes the talent Oh.
And I would love to be able to say who it was from. Yeah. And I might write it somewhere in the show notes for anyone who wants to know. I'm not taking credit for it. But the thing, it's just interesting in terms of what you were saying here, that, it's about creating that context, right?
For people to feel seen and heard and to be able to use their talent and potential. And for each to be able to show up in theirs and everyone has to adapt a little bit. But then this also leads me to another question because of course there's a team setting and these are I don't wanna say static cuz they're very dynamic settings, but there are also moments when we go into a space of listening and we don't really know who the other person is.
We might not even have anything beyond that conversation or What, where do we put our focus then? You think?
[00:39:35] Josh: So you're walk, you're talking to a team member, you're not sure what their communication style is
[00:39:39] Shani: and or I'm interviewing somebody, I'm only doing it as a one off. I don't know.
They're not gonna be in my team. It's just some, a person and I'm meeting on my path of doing something. Yeah. Like you, when you're doing your research,
[00:39:49] Josh: for example. Sure. Absolutely. I think just being aware of those distinct categories that as I'm listening to them, there is a human element, a non-verbal element that I need to pick up on.
And so that's the first question I would ask myself is I would create a guideline and say, okay, is there anything about their tone? Or their rate of speech or their inflection that would, that is additional data for me to know, right? And again, some people are strong at this already outta the gate and other people need to work on this, but it's this idea that, do their non-verbals coincide with their verbal messages or do they clash?
And if they clash, that might need follow up questions, right? So how was your day fine? That, that non-verbally didn't sound like fine. So I have further follow up questions, right? So it's that idea. So being aware and cognizant of the relator aspect and then covering both ends of the spectrum when I think about both the explorer and then also the fixer as well.
So it's this idea that as I'm listening, am I putting together. The big picture here, am I listening to fully comprehend and understand what they're saying? And again, that should lead me into asking more questions. And so listening there's three aspects of listening. One of them is with your eyes.
We don't think about that all oftentimes but we're listening with our eyes, hopefully, if we can see their face and see their expressions, that's part of that human element. We're obviously listening with our brain as well as we're categorizing what we, synthesizing what they're saying. We're categorizing what they're saying.
We're trying to put all the pieces together. But then one of the aspects is we listen with our voice. And let me clarify just for a second. But it's this idea that as somebody is talking, what you're doing as well, we call this back channeling where we go Uhhuh. Oh, and it forces your body and your mind and your eyes to be engaged with the communicator and it keeps you from wandering but to stay focused and it's this.
So that's the one way, but then the other two ways are asking questions and paraphrasing. And so if I'm not fully aware of what they just said, or I need them to say it again, I might ask follow-up questions. Because I'm trying to, listening to put the big picture together. So you said this and you said this didn't make sense to me.
So let me ask you, say that again in a different way, or can you clarify that a little bit more? Or is this what you're trying to say? And so those are asking questions. And then I think the best way as I'm listening to people is I try to paraphrase what they just said in my own words to let them see, here's the idea that I've decoded in my brain.
This is what it looks like. Is that the same? Can we rectify these and figure out what this is? And so I might say, what I heard you say was this, now respond. And you'll get people say, yeah, that was exactly it. You said it in your own words, but that's exactly it. Or we get that follow up that, that maybe I said that incorrectly.
Let me rephrase myself. And yeah, so listening to that, that human element, listening to the tone, listening to the big picture by asking those sorts of questions, and then also paraphrasing as well, so that I can. Synthesize what they're saying and put it together in a way that's clear to my brain.
[00:43:01] Shani: I love that. I have to say I think you embody so much of this cuz we've spoken a few times and I can tell like there's some things you picked up on. Even in our very first conversation he was like, oh you do this or you have that. And now I understand.
[00:43:16] Josh: It's the communication Jedi tricks after so many years.
Yeah. It just seeps in I think. I don't know. That's great though.
[00:43:22] Shani: No, but, and it's also right you've learned to decode through this categorization. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And make sense. And it does make sense also listening to it. So it's I think that's pretty awesome. Yeah. Really interesting. And especially, for me, I'm a total communication enthusiast.
I never did any PhD, but I love languages. Yes, you do. I love communication overall and I think it's fascinating. So just to learn another lens to this is super. Interesting. Both in terms of figuring out yourself, but also in terms of understanding the world in new ways. It's very cool.
I'm, so the way I usually wrap these episodes up is also, you've been very concrete, but I'm thinking, you have, I think this, okay, good. Sometimes these conversations go very philosophical. It depends. Okay. So it's but what I'm wondering is, Here's a person listening to this who wants to go and find ways of taking more action to improve their own communication or improve communication in their team.
Yeah. What are, a few simple hacks or actions that they could take
[00:44:37] Josh: tomorrow? Simple life hacks. I, the first one I'm very biased, but I have a communication assessment that I think everybody needs to, let's do it. Yes. Yeah. And so we can include that on link or whatever, like that needs to happen.
So that, that's the first thing. If you don't take mine, that's fine. There are several others, but I think that discovery is the first. Step. And I very much believe in sliding scales and categories with boxes that have the top open so that we can grow. So I'm not trying to box everybody in, part of, when the Myers Briggs came out, it's like you're one of 16 and that's all you could beat.
No. There's, I very much believe in gradients and sliding scales and different kinds of scores, and I also think that in 18 months you could take it again and it would change. But there is something to say about whether I am hardwired like this from birth or whether I have learned this over the years in specific cultures.
This tends to be how I respond, or this tends to be how I pick apart a message. And so doing some kind of discovery so that you can recognize. How that team is strong. One of, one of the greatest questions I ask team members is how do you respond to stress? And how does your the way that you communicate change when you are in a stressful state?
That helps give me insight. Does that box them in? No, but it helps me go, okay, you got very quiet, you got very standoffish to you. That means you're stressed to someone else that it just means you're listening or something like this. So understanding each other has to be built into your teams. If you haven't spent extensive time in the formation and the onboarding of a team, whether that be a new project you're working on with new team members, whether you're hiring new people, if you're not spending extended amounts of time in discovery and talking about these things, you're gonna be in the dark when you don't get a response that you expect when you don't hear The things that you would normally hear from another team or something like this.
So discovery is a big part of that. So that's the big part. I think the second part is communicating more. If nine if your team is saying that you communicate, nine times higher chance that you under communicate versus over communicate you probably need to sound a little bit like a broken record for a while.
And again, there's lots of research that shows that overcommunication happens at the early stage of a relationship, and as that sta as that relationship matures and trust is established, the communication does not need to be as intense or hands-on. I remember working for a company, we would do weekly one-on-ones, and then after a couple of months it's like, how about once every other week or maybe even sometimes once a month?
I, I feel like I get how you work and how you collaborate. And so setting time to overly communicate early in the relationship I think is a big takeaway that you could do for your teams, but then also consistently and frequently creating those one-on-one touch moments where you say, how have things been going?
So I, I do a workshop on navigating one-on-ones, and first five minutes is always relating. Always to get to know the human, to get to know the person, to establish that trust. And so if you, or if you're doing those every other week, great, then it's five minutes. If you're doing them once a month, maybe you need 10 minutes to really catch up and really understand how that person's doing to allow them to alleviate stress, to talk about whatever they need to talk about.
So that's probably the second thing that I would do is yeah, communicate more. Communicate. Yeah. And then I think the third thing is commu, try communicating in different ways. And I'll stop and talk to the hybrid teams for just a second, that you don't realize how motivational, influential your team, hearing your voice and seeing your face can be I think we underplay it now.
You might have a lot of people on your team that are low on relators and they may be okay without hearing your inflection and seeing your face, but more times than not, lots of people out there are moderate to high scores on a relator as far as a communicator. And they really do appreciate, again, a two to three minute Monday morning all hand video that goes out and says here's what my hope is for the week.
Here's what my goals are for the week. Here's what inspires me this week. Here are maybe some challenges I that I'm thinking about and wanna wish you all a great week. And yes, we'll see each other on Zoom, you'll hear from me on emails. But just having something consistent on Monday morning that they get to see you communicate with your face, hear your voice, and receive that message in its entirety.
So I think that's a big one is using those different kinds of channels. O other ways that I've given feedback to on teams is, clarity is always one of the number one attributes that I hear people say when I ask What makes a good communicator? Almost everybody says, clear that's what a good communicator is.
And what I find fascinating is about the word clarity is if you think about this, an achiever, the word clarity means I want you to whittle this down to three bullet points that would make it very clear for me, right? Same, probably same with a fixer, an explorer. If I were to say, what would be clear to me, you would say, tell me a story and weave in different aspects of it, right?
Gimme a non-linear plot that weaves in. This is what I mean. This is an explanation. Here's an example, here's a story. I now have clarity because I see the whole picture. And then for relator, what's clarity mean is I wanna know the why. Why are we doing this? And that's great that you told me to do this, but are we merging?
Are we buying somebody or are we being acquired? Are you downsizing? Like I need clarity here. Like why are we doing this? The relator really wants to hear that why behind the story. And so here we have everybody wanting clarity and everybody wants in different ways. So what does that mean for your next email?
Leader. And so I, I say sometimes you have to give th to them in different ways. And so one of the things I do is I say, for all the achievers and the fixers, put on the top of your email the three bullet points of what that email involves. Here are the three things that I'm discussing here.
Here's what needs to happen, these three things. And then below that, you might have a few paragraphs of the why or this story behind it, or the example. Or even for the relators, you might do a two minute video and attach that email as well. And so I, I'll have leaders oftentimes say, hold on. So I have to write three different emails to people.
How much of a good communicator do you wanna be? How devoted are you to this discipline? And it'll get easier over time, but I think weaving that into your practice of saying three bullet points. Here's the, here's more information if you need it. And then maybe I'll attach a video or maybe not on, on some of the bigger, more important things.
And then I guarantee you, you're not gonna have a team that says that they under communicate. Because you've satisfied everybody on your team with the style in which they want.
[00:51:45] Shani: It sounds a lot like when you're, when you design for things and events, you always have to think about the balance of kind of interaction, application connection and engaging and getting information, and it's really.
Communication. You're just creating space to, for people to interact with each other with information, with material, to do these three things that you're, that you are talking about to get clarity, to be influenced or gain motivation and to relate. And usually we have to do all of them.
And I can definitely recognize this email sending, I used to be a, I used to be a CEO assistant early in my career and I learned very early. I had to write in the first line, what's the purpose of the email? Yes. And then you can get some background and then you can put some bullet points. Cuz otherwise they would never read.
So here's this, if it's urgent that's going in the first line, you should be reading it. There's this deadline, or there's that deadline. Yes. And then there's more information. So yeah, there are loads of tricks, but I love these. And maybe also Reflection from my end and also having done a lot of these different conversations about different things is as much as we, learn about how to be with others, if want to be better at it, what I'm hearing from you and please, bounce back if I'm not hearing this correctly.
I
[00:53:06] Josh: like the paraphrasing that you're doing, so I can Yeah.
[00:53:08] Shani: Look at that. It's also that we need to be aware of ourselves. Self-awareness has really been a theme throughout, I think almost every episode I've recorded and every topic is the prerequisite for succeeding in any of it. It
[00:53:25] Josh: is, it is.
And. Yeah. Can you teach self-awareness? You're either aware or you're not. I think you can. And I think that for those who might struggle with strong self-awareness, right? That's what some of this discovery is all about, these assessments. Oh, you're right. I didn't realize that there were three other styles.
I just assumed mine was the correct one and everybody needed to get on board, right? And so doing assessments and things like this, it's oh, there's others. There's others and I fit right here. And I'm part of that. But I think that both self-awareness, other awareness they go hand in hand with that.
Once, once you see the other awareness, then you begin to go, then what about me? What does that look like for me? And how do I get better at that?
[00:54:07] Shani: That's great. I love that. And also just to, to very last loop back to what you were saying, strength-based. Also, I think self-awareness doesn't have to mean we're self-critical, right?
Yes. Because those are two different things. You can be self curious. Self cured and and self explorative. Yes. And be, okay, this is how I work, is just even listening to you talking about this. I'm like, I'm definitely not the fixer. I got very clear image of myself with my younger sister at some point we were small and we were listening to the same thing and I came out of it going, oh, so it's about this at large.
And she came out of it quoting year years when things had happened, and I had absolutely no memory of those things.
[00:54:50] Josh: Yes. Yeah. You weren't listening. It's I was focused on other things. I was listening to other things. They were occupied by other s UI in that message. Yes, exactly.
Exactly. There's
[00:55:01] Shani: a lot, there's a lot to explore here, and I'm certainly super, super grateful that you've come on and shared all of this knowledge. This is great, and it was a lot of fun. So yeah, just huge.
[00:55:13] Josh: Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. I enjoy talking about talking, as you can tell.
And so do I. Yes. We'll have to do another then. That sounds great. Let's do it again.
[00:55:26] Shani: Yeah, that's great. Thank you for listening to the Experienced Designers. I hope this episode brought you some new insight and some new topics to stop and wonder about. A special thanks to Josh for bringing his knowledge, energy, and relatable scenarios.
And don't forget to click subscribe, and as always, get in touch with any questions or
suggestions. That's how better experiences are built.
