3 Keys to Navigate Meetings and Work Place Misunderstandings to a Solution
Finding Common Ground in the Gray Area
Audio for mirroring:
From my experience in the work place, the biggest breakdowns in communication happen between engineering and business teams. Everyone speaks English, but seemingly two different forms. Engineering generally tends to think that the marketing campaigns make no sense, and marketing can never understand the issues engineering has with their requests.
Finding Common Ground - An Empathetic Approach
As my first boss Jeff always said, “there’s only grief when there’s gray, and we’re gonna make this black and white.” Truer words may never have been spoken, but unfortunately there’s lots of gray area that we deal with in the workplace as the majority of people are pretty poor communicators.
Let’s take a look at 3 things that you can do to remove gray from your work place communication and that will make your communication crystal clear.
These can be used in any situation with anyone, but they are especially effective while communicating in situations at work where you are hashing out responsibilities for cross-functional teams, clarifying requests from colleagues, or negotiating terms.
1. Open Ended Questions Lead to Pictures Being Painted
I encourage you to leverage the power of asking open ended questions by using ‘what’ and ‘how.’ When you use ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions it forces your colleague to respond with detail. Do your best to avoid asking ‘why’ questions as they often lead to closed-ended responses such as ‘I’m not sure’ or "‘I don’t know,’ which effectively get us nowhere.
Here are a couple of examples:
“What can we do that will help us avoid this same issue moving forward?”
“How can we provide more clarity for engineering so that this doesn’t happen again in the future?”
These questions provoke thought and should force your colleague to open up their mind to you. This allows you to begin approaching the conversation more empathetically, which will allow for you to ultimately take control of the situation.
Before moving forward, let’s look at it from the other end of the spectrum where we ask a ‘why’ question that has the same intent.
“Why would that prevent this from happening in the future?”
Why is much more challenging, and will more often than not cause your colleague to deflect. It is not inviting and should not be used by leaders. It is a great way to stir up the pot and prevent others from opening up to you about solutions they have in the future.
2. Use Labels and 4 Key Phrases to Remove Aggression
Keep in mind we are discussing situations where we are aiming to find common ground with someone who we are currently not seeing eye-to-eye with. While reading this advice it’s easy to feel like everything is smooth as molasses, but in the moment when you need to be using this advice, the water is a little choppy. I want you to visualize a heated situation you’ve been in with a colleague at work as we discuss how to remove aggression.
We can remove aggression from our inquiries after listening to our colleagues by beginning our responses with these 4 key phrases:
“it seems like…”
“It sounds like…”
“Perhaps…”
“Maybe…”
The next key is to follow these phrases up with labels. It is important that you put a label on the situation as you see it. This will be your addition to the overall picture that is being painted, and will act as a guide to your colleague on how to clear up anything that is still gray. Allow me to demonstrate:
“it seems like the issue is coming from confusion around who is responsible for…
“It sounds like you’re frustrated because of the lack of clarity coming from…”
“Perhaps if we go this route instead of doing it like we did here it will prevent future headaches for you.”
The labels should be empathetic and relevant to what your colleague has explained to you and should help them feel like you’re understanding where they are coming from.
One last thing here before moving forward - it is about them, not you, so avoid saying “I think.” Saying “I think” has now inadvertently made it about you, and increases the chances that your colleague will make it more difficult to work together with you.
3. Don’t Ask What Size Shoe They Wear. Force Them Into Your Shoes
The last step is to now force them into your shoes by having them explain what they would do if they were you. This should tell you a few things—what they think is possible, what they think could be done better or what went wrong, and what their expectations are. Try using a line like one of these:
“What would you do in this situation if you were me?”
“How would you go about it if you were me?”
Their answer to this question should give you any missing piece of the puzzle as to how they see the situation and their understanding of it all. It’s now up to you to take it from here!
If you found this helpful, please leave a like and comment what was most interesting to you. Also, share this with anyone who you think could benefit from these tips!