“Tommy, get me that report by tomorrow.”

Tommy responds, “Sure thing!”

He could have said okay, but in today’s world I often hear sure thing.  Now what does hearing sure thing tell you?  It tells you nothing!  It doesn’t tell you any more than the word okay does.

Do you know if Tommy is going to get you the report?  No!  Do you know if Tommy knows exactly what report you need, what tomorrow means? No!  Frankly, all you know is that Tommy heard some words that he responded to with sure thing.  Yet we assume that sure thing means they heard us, know exactly what we asked for and will provide it to us, that they are committed and thus accountable.

It is, of course, why it’s a sure thing we are so often disappointed when we don’t get what we requested.  When you hear sure thing, don’t assume anything other than it’s a sure thing they heard some words spoken.

Want to improve the business communications in your office?  One sure thing to eliminate is sure thing and okay from your communication skill set.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

While I don’t consider myself Pollyanna-ish in my thinking, I do think of myself as the eternal optimist. I don’t believe you can take someone who simply doesn’t care at all and motivate them, but I do believe that passion provokes action and that passion is essential to motivating employee performance.

Perhaps you’re thinking, Yes, great, Linda, but how do you get employees passionate? This, of course, is the question employers have been asking forever. I’d like you to consider that it isn’t so much about getting employees passionate as about removing the obstacles and barriers that interfere with their being passionate. Yes, it’s our responsibility as leaders to run interference, remove the roadblocks, and even to eliminate the things that give our employees excuses for poor performance.

Early in my career I worked for a recruiting firm that had a bunch of (in my opinion) whiners. They had every reason in the book for why they couldn’t perform well. One day I went to the president and said, “Let’s remove these obstacles, all those things they complain about, so then they just gotta go to work.” We did, and guess what happened? Some of them resigned because they had no more excuses. Others stepped up and got passionate, and that provoked action and sales. Both outcomes were ideal.

The point is that employees often find things to fuss about…the uncomfortable chair, the colleague who eats lunch at their desk and it smells awful, too much work to do, poorly defined expectations…you name it. It’s hard to be motivated when you have things to complain about, especially when you have colleagues who agree with your complaints.

Remove the obstacles, improve the communication, eliminate the issues or barriers, and now the excuses are gone. And you have demonstrated that you heard, listened and cared enough to do something about it. Now you can ask for more, incite passion, and that passion will provoke action.

Motivating employee performance is the goal of every leader and company. But you can’t get them motivated without their being passionate. And they can’t be passionate when there are irritants around. Once those are addressed, instead of focusing on what’s wrong, lacking or irritating, they can focus on what’s good, working and successful. Happy employees are motivated employees.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

One can be honest, as in ethical, without being a straight shooter in relation to sharing information. As a leader you may hold yourself to a high standard of integrity and have impeccable ethics. You wouldn’t think of doing anything that smells, let alone smacks of impropriety or questionable behavior. I get that, and I’m sure those who work with you and around you know that.

However, being willing to share information, especially when it’s unpleasant, requires a different skill set. I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to know or should know everything that goes on behind closed doors. Obviously, there are situations that demand secrecy. Those aren’t what I’m referring to. I’m talking about “polishing the apple” for others, telling them some piece of the truth but not the whole truth because the whole truth isn’t pretty. I’m referring to telling a white lie that isn’t necessary, or maybe not sharing information at all that likely should be shared.

Can you be a successful leader without being a straight shooter? That depends on your definition of success, I think. One thing I do believe, though, is a good leadership skill to develop is being a straight shooter. People learn to trust you, know they can count on you to share the good, bad and the ugly, and that builds loyalty from customers, vendors and employees. Loyalty carries you through a lot of challenging times.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, but given the choice of being honest and forthright or telling part of the story, I opt for honesty. While honesty may not always help me, I have learned that not being a straight shooter inevitably comes back to bite me. What do you think?

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

•You have people or teams who need to interface with one another routinely to complete projects. Emails fly back and forth because limited information is provided, and every email generates another question or comment. Before you know it, 10-15 emails have been generated. How much time was wasted during this process?

•You have a sales team that doesn’t know your products inside and out. When a potential customer asks a question, they not only don’t know the answer, they don’t handle not knowing very well. The customer gets frustrated, and you lose the sale to your competitor.

•Projects are delayed or the end result is not what you expected. Somewhere along the line the communication went awry. Now you are faced with a do-over or settling for a result that is less than ideal. Good communication skills in the workplace would have prevented this.

•Your turnover is high. Could be a result of poor hiring, training, leadership, company culture, or all of the above. Statistics show that the cost to replace an employee who leaves is about 1½ times their salary. Pretty steep price for having poor business communication skills in your company.

•Teams or individuals within your company are bickering constantly. You’re in a constant he said/she said battle. Management time is spent handling these issues, most of which can be attributed to poor workplace communication.

In the above examples, it’s easy to see how poor workplace communication can hurt your business. It costs you time, resources, maybe employees and even customers. There are many other less obvious places where poor business communication skills can hurt your company, but I’ll save that for another post.

Look around this week and identify where communication in your organization could be improved. Then put a dollar figure to how it’s hurting your company. I bet you will find the number staggering.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

Assuming I am correct, how did we ever get the idea that when we speak words we are communicating? I looked up the definition of communication and what I found was interesting. Wikipedia defines communication as the activity of conveying meaningful information. The thesaurus provided synonyms such as to stay in touch, exchange a few words, speak, talk…no wonder we believe that speaking is communicating.

We don’t teach children to communicate; we teach them to speak a language. They learn to communicate their displeasure by throwing tantrums, and how do we respond? We ignore them, scold them, or give in to them. What did they learn? They learned that without speaking a word they got us to take an action.

How does this translate to the business world? Perhaps you have an employee who is habitually late. Sometimes we don’t confront them yet hope their behavior changes. Other times we may share our displeasure with them and give them the ‘shape up or ship out’ talk. And if they provide excuses and/or their behavior doesn’t change, we give in and let them come in late. What did they learn? We used words but often our actions speak louder than our words. We communicated through our actions, not our words.

Let’s take another example. You have a demanding, difficult customer. The decision is made to talk to the customer and tell them their demands are unreasonable. The conversation goes something like, “Mr. Customer, we have attempted to satisfy you but regardless of our actions you seem dissatisfied. I’m not sure what else we can do at this point.” Few of us would specifically tell a customer their demands are unreasonable. We’d dance around the topic, speak some words and then wonder why the outcome is not what we want.

Just because we speak does not mean we are communicating. Do your words match your actions? Are you clearly communicating what you want to say, or are you expecting someone to read between the lines? Next time you are dismayed with the outcome of your communication, ask yourself if you spoke words, or if you delivered a message that could be understood. Did you say one thing but mean something else? Were you hoping to not have to be direct but that the other party would still get the message? Confusing the speaking of words with the art of communicating will not get you the results you want.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

Applying the same principle to communication, what if we took one aspect of our communication and practiced till it was perfect? I suspect that we would see a huge improvement in our business communication. What do you think?

Secondly, when a composer creates music they focus on how each note relates to the next note so that the end result is beautiful. Because they focus on making the music meaningful, each note becomes important to the outcome. As business communicators, if we paid attention to each word we used and how it connected to the next word, the message would likely be heard in a much different way than if we simple focused on speaking, with no regard for the words or how they related.

With music, not everyone likes the same types. You may enjoy jazz and new age but not opera or classical. And while you may not enjoy certain types of music, you can appreciate that others might, and you can respect the composers and musicians who create it. In business communication you may not always agree with the message, but you can still respect the person delivering it and perhaps, at times, even appreciate their point of view.

Music is meant to be heard and enjoyed. Whether you are a composer, musician or singer, you pour your heart and soul into making something beautiful that others will benefit from hearing. It helps soothe crying children and angry beasts, and often takes us to a place of peace and calm. Now, all communication cannot take us to a place of peacefulness, but if conversations are handled properly they can smooth over problems, remove frustration and anger, calm one’s emotions, and bring order to chaos.

And finally music considers the many instruments that are part of the composition. Each instrument is chosen for its unique sound and how it interacts with the other instruments. Some instruments are played just one time during a musical piece; others are part of the background all the time. Business communication could learn a lot from this. We have to consider how each word we use or when we use it impacts the message. Do we use the words often, or just occasionally for effect?

©2011 Incedo Group, LLC

What does all this mean? Let’s look at a couple of examples. You might set a boundary for not using foul language at all or, if some are acceptable, which are they? In team meetings you might set guidelines for not interrupting others when they are speaking, attendees get to express themselves (do they need to raise their hand, for instance?) or how disagreements are handled.

Boundaries might include no finger-pointing or throwing accusations around. A couple more examples are from clients I have worked with. One partner used to leave the room in a huff every time he was upset with the conversation. Another partner used to say really hurtful things to her partner. She knew her partner wanted a baby and in one conversation indicated the problem was that the partner was jealous of her because she had children and her partner didn’t. Neither of these behaviors are remotely acceptable, and we spent a lot of time improving their business communication skill of setting boundaries.

Another example is an executive who stood outside the doors of his salespeople and yelled at them about whatever he was unhappy with, and then simply walked away. While some of you reading this may think these situations aren’t real, I promise you they are. I’ve had an executive get so mad he threw a chair out of a window, actually through the window, shattering glass everywhere. Anger management issues, for sure, but again it’s about what we accept from others, or not.

But boundaries aren’t just about obvious bad behavior or the way we speak to another person. Little things such as is it OK for someone to simply walk in your office and interrupt what you are doing, whether the door is closed or not? If you call a customer or vendor, do you assume that just because they answer the phone they have the time to talk? Do you allow your boss to keep piling on more and more work without saying anything? How often have you tolerated someone’s smelly lunch they are eating at their desk without saying anything?

I could name hundreds of examples. The point is that it is appropriate to set boundaries with others and it is a critical business communication skill to learn. As with all communication, is it not what you say but how it is said that affects how it’s received.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

You may remember my recent post on using technology as a tool rather than an avoidance mechanism. Reaching out to these people is a great example of the positive use of technology. But I digress. People who responded that they were interested in learning more, I personally called, instead of sending another email. I was amazed at how often I heard “I really like the personal touch of a phone call,” or “I would never do business with someone I hadn’t talked to,” or something that indicated how important the phone call was to our having a relationship.

Hmm, so what does that say about business communication? It indicates that while email is fast and efficient, many people want to hear someone’s voice and get to know them. If you are in sales, how often do you send an email instead of picking up the phone? When an irate customer sends an email, do you respond by calling or sending a reply to their email? How often have you sent or received an email that wasn’t clear and, instead of calling, a flurry of emails back-and-forth ensued? Have you ever received a request for information from a prospective customer via email that included their phone number but you chose to respond via email instead of calling?

The list of examples goes on and on and I’m sure you get my point. Business communication is about using the telephone, too, not simply email. When there is a problem, instead of email, call them. When it’s apparent that the first email is unclear, instead of sending 3 more, call them. When you are trying to develop relationships with customers, affiliates, vendors, employees or anyone else, take the extra step and call.

Yes, email has become an accepted form of business communication and I’m not suggesting it isn’t useful. I am suggesting that using the telephone is advantageous many times. And it distinguishes you from your competitors, as most will simply email.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

While some people consider using these tools a business communication style, I say hooey. Is it easier to send an email or a text message than talk to someone about a difficult subject? You bet! Can you zip off an IM or email in the middle of the night so you don’t have to think about it anymore? You bet! Do you have any clue how the person receiving the text, IM or email reacted, or even if they understood what you were trying to communicate? No, you have no idea.

By the way, leaving voicemails falls into the same category. I had a client who used to communicate with her husband through emails and text messaging. Is it surprising they had marital problems? I’m sure many of you would answer this question with a resounding No. Yet because they had problems they chose never to communicate face-to-face or even on the telephone. All communication was handled through technology. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Now apply this to business and we often adopt the same method. You may not terminate someone via email, though you can read my post how some companies have. I suspect, though, that most of you reading this have avoided a conversation and sent an email or text message instead. Perhaps you were upset with someone about missing a deadline or how they handled a client situation. Did you call them, or send an email? When a vendor doesn’t deliver as promised, do you pick up the phone, or do you send off a scathing email? Have you ever sent an IM or texted someone to communicate your feelings about their performance?

Is there ever a time that using technology is a business communication style? Yes, when you are using it to communicate more efficiently and aren’t using it to avoid a conversation that should take place in person. Next time, before you hit the Send button, ask yourself if you should be having this communication by phone or face-to-face.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC

One of the biggest challenges in business communication is obtaining agreement. I’m not referring to everyone agreeing to a decision, with marching orders that move them forward. What I’m referring to is agreement on terms, agreement on conditions of satisfaction, and agreement on time frames.

Frankly, it’s not that difficult to obtain agreement; the issue is that very few people take the time to gain agreement. We assume if we say something that the other person understands exactly what we mean. The reality is sometimes very different. The words blue, tomorrow, lunchtime, complete…and many others are totally subjective.

Gaining agreement on terms means specifically defining what you mean. If it’s a certain color you want, find an example. Don’t say contact; say call or email. The same is true for time frames and conditions of satisfaction. Tomorrow is not specific enough. Tomorrow by noon is. By Friday is subjective. Friday at 8 AM is not subjective. Saying “Give me a complete report” is subjective. Asking for a report that includes dates, customer contact information, and products they bought leaves little room for subjectivity.

The point is you have to be specific about what you request. However, even with specificity, if you don’t find out whether the other person understands and agrees to your requests, you will still have difficulties. These two parts of getting agreement – specificity and feedback – are what make business communication challenging, and ultimately, rewarding.

What are the consequences of no agreements? How often have you made a request and what was delivered was far different than what you asked for? You think you gave crystal clear instructions. They thought they understood. What happened? The likely result of having no specificity and/or feedback is a need for a do-over which cost you time, productivity and caused frustration on both sides. You can’t understand why they didn’t ‘get it.’ They think you once again changed your mind and can never be satisfied.

Another consequence of no agreement is morale is negatively affected. When morale is low turnover is high, productivity suffers and management spends an inordinate amount of time handling personnel-related issues. You’ll find people coming in late and taking more sick days, arguments and bickering between employees or teams become commonplace, and a general malaise settles over the office.

No one likes being told they didn’t do something correctly, especially when they thought they delivered exactly what you requested. The same is true with vendors and customers, not just your employees. In business communication no agreement has huge consequences to the business. It negatively impacts relationships, affects productivity, costs time, and causes unnecessary stress and frustration. Take the time to get agreements. You’ll be glad you did.

© 2011 Incedo Group, LLC