What would improved communication do for you and your organization
? Are your programs and initiatives designed to improve communication paying off? We can help with that.
All corporate success comes from the team’s ability to invent a new future in conversations with each other. The reality is that skillful communication is more art than science, but it can become a “new tradition” in any culture that skyrockets the sense of mutual respect, co-learning, and focus on taking personal responsibility for the team’s results.
This can be subtle. Even when we know our message is conveyed exactly as we mean to, the other person or group cannot help but distort, delete parts of it, generalize and interpret what we are saying. So, what can be done?
Tools, not Rules
At Daniel Robin & Associates we have a proven track-record of success for more than two decades helping our clients greatly improve their communication — interpersonal, interdepartmental, and organization-wide. To date, here are some examples of where our tools have been used to gain mutual understanding, influence outcomes, and achieve desired results:
1. Ended the “blame game” at a manufacturer and distributor in California. Perpetual raw material shortages caused lots of finger-pointing and deflecting of responsibility that suddenly ended when we delivered training in how to deal with negativity, and later provided meeting management training so that cross-functional teams could work together in skillful collaboration rather than defending their turf.
2. A self-assured but narcissistic vice president realized got “woke.” He said (direct quote) “there’s a whole world going on out there!” [that he never knew about previously], referring to other people’s experience, knowledge, perspective…, entirely separate from his own, during a rapport skills training. He suddenly realized that his map was just one of many and that others won’t see his as he does. This almost absurdly simple “Aha!” was like a light going on in his head, and it shifted interpersonal relationships department-wide, starting with the example set by the VP, at this large food manufacturer. Such simple insights cannot be coerced, mandated or otherwise required. But change happens, when participants feel safe enough to explore without feeling required, blamed or pressured to do so. So in some ways our job is making a powerful proposal about the goal of the team’s communication to then get out of the way for everyone to enter that powerful state of courageous self-reflection and excellence.
3. A Fortune 100 company hired Daniel Robin & Associates to help their Board of Directors better cope with pressure and the need to lighten their load during a retreat session on how to use humor appropriately. A good time was also had by all.
4. Hundreds of managers and executive learned effective coaching skills and how to better handle interpersonal differences at a series of modular training sessions. The result made all of them incrementally better managers but also more effective human beings. Rather than giving advise, especially unsolicited advise (the least welcome), they became attentive to other people’s ability to find their own answers when properly heard/guided/allowed to do so. Powerful!
What are some of the keys to building more effective communication at your place of work?
What further investments might be worth considering?
