CommLog

Positive Conflict

Conflict is a necessary evil. When used correctly and depending on the attitudes and perspectives of those involved, conflict can:

• Diffuse a more serious conflict.
• Spark an urge to search for more facts or solutions.
• Increase group performance and cohesion.
• Find where you stand on a particular topic.

So how do you get to a spot where conflict can influence and help facilitate these positive outcomes?

Does the American Work Ethic Sabotage Communication?

According to Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, a psychologist and business professor at the University of Michigan, there is a widely held American belief that an impersonal work ethic is most appropriate in the workplace and more conducive to productivity. Sanchez-Burks blames our “Protestant relational ideology” —related to our Protestant-rooted work ethic — for discouraging emotional connections at the office. He believes we’ve been acculturated to accept that personal relationships and the display of emotions in the workplace are unprofessional and may interfere with communication and disrupt productivity. Interestingly, in his research on Asian and Latin American groups, Sanchez-Burks found that unlike their American counterparts, these groups place a premium on personal relationships and actually count on workplace socializing to foster productive decision making. Additionally, he discovered that East Asians use less direct (read: more face-saving) communication both at work and in social settings because interpersonal harmony is valued — not just outside of work, but at the workplace as well. Americans, on the other hand, tend to treat work situations differently from social settings. The American norm? More direct (sometimes blunt) communication at work and more indirect communication outside of work. Furthermore, in his research, Sanchez-Burks found that conflicts and misunderstandings were fueled by the different communication styles used across cultures. So…will the American drive to stay on task and impersonal put us at a disadvantage in a global economy and with a diverse workforce? Sanchez-Burks believes it will and suggests that corporate socialization isn’t just “nice to do,” but is a valuable way to increase communication effectiveness, improve teamwork and reduce conflict, particularly in culturally diverse work forces.

Another Case of Chicken or the Egg

I attended a talk last week where the focus was on the importance of good, solid interpersonal relationships to the bottom line. No one in attendance disagreed with this somewhat obvious idea, but one question by a young woman resulted in a lively discussion and debate amongst the group. She asked, “How do you know if it’s great relationships that affect the bottom line or that a great bottom line is the recipe for great interpersonal relationships? In other words, which comes first, the chicken (relationships) or the egg (performance)? In my continual quest to report and link the best academic research with important practical questions, I told this woman about a seminal article written by Dr. Barry Staw, a leading management academic at the University of California, Berkeley. It turns out that the woman’s question has been asked before and the answer was not what the experts giving the talk were promoting. According to Dr. Staw, it’s high performance that leads to strong relationships and not vice versa. In his classic experiment, Staw gave teams false feedback about their performance and then asked members to provide “objective” descriptions of how member had interacted. Teams randomly assigned to the high performance conditions reported more harmonious and better communications than did groups assigned to the low performance condition. Conclusion: If you want your employees and teams to bond, focus on garnering great performance out of them before working on the intricacies of their relationships with one another. Seems like common sense in some ways……well yes, but sometimes we need reminding since as we know common sense doesn’t always lead to common practice.

Positive Deviance: Stop Focusing on Problems and Start Focusing on What's Going Well

In business we’re programmed to identify gaps, shortfalls and problems, and then fix them. If you’ve ever perused survey results, you’ll recognize the tendency to focus on the “misses” and breeze over the “hits.” We see an 85 percent approval rating, and immediately begin unraveling the mystery of the 15% who are dissatisfied to win their approval in the future. While it is valid and valuable to shoot for an approval rating higher than 85%, the positive deviance concept challenges the conventional wisdom about the best way to get there. Positive deviance posits that understanding and reinforcing the hits may be more useful than deconstructing the misses. Can we succeed in fostering change when we focus on what’s gone wrong? Often we’re unable to make change stick. Why? Change initiatives, like transplanted organs, are often rejected by the very body they were designed to save because they are foreign. An alternative: “Amplifying positive deviance,” an approach that may cause you to rethink your focus on the historical misses, gaps and deficiencies in our organizations. “Amplifying positive deviance” means finding small, successful deviant practices that work and then amplifying them for the community. The origins of positive deviance are a fascinating case study (see extended entry), but how can we apply it to organizational problems? Barbara Waugh, Worldwide Personnel Manager at Hewlett-Packard, used the process of “amplifying positive deviants” in an effort to become the best industrial research lab in the world. Waugh conducted a worldwide employee survey and canvassed for answers to basic questions. With “800 pages of frustrations, dreams and insights” in hand she identified three primary HP challenges around programs, people and processes. She communicated the findings to leadership, got buy-in and set off with two guiding principles: get the people of HP to move the organization forward, and create lasting change through incremental progress. Next, she identified positive deviants and cultivated over 100 small and attainable grassroots initiatives to move HP Labs in the right direction. As Waugh stated, her job is to support the positive deviants…to feed them and give them resources and visibility. She sought small wins from within rather than massive transformation and discovered local answers to existing problems. Her efforts have had lasting effects and a tremendously positive impact on HP, including the development of a knowledge-sharing model that has helped thousands of HPers share ideas. For more information about the concept of positive deviance at Hewlett-Packard, check out this link. Where can you find opportunities to “amplify positive deviance?” Consider situations where you’re planning to: * Perform a survey * Undertake a “change” effort * Solve an existing problem * Institute a reward or recognition program All of these situations are alive with opportunities to find what already works in your organization; to learn from the “deviant” successes, magnify them and see that they’re shared with others. Solutions that already work are likely to keep working. You need only to support, sustain, and communicate the untapped resources inherent in your organization.

Feedback Is A Gift

A few years ago, a leader I admire, upon hearing a stinging criticism leveled against him, remarked, “This is one of those situations where I need to remember that ‘feedback is a gift.’” Framing the receipt of negative feedback as an asymmetrically beneficial economic transaction struck me as both counter-intuitive and highly compelling. Since then, I have shared this idea with many of the other leaders with whom I’ve worked. In particular, I’ve suggested that they try a technique that I’ve used with success: When hearing uncomfortable information, remain dispassionate and avoid becoming defensive by repeating silently the mantra “Feedback is a gift…feedback is a gift…feedback is a gift…” As silly as this practice might sound, the emerging field of neuroeconomics lends support to it. According to an article in the current issue of Business Week, people too often act against their own self interests when they process information…

…[n]ot in the prefrontal cortex, where people rationally weigh pros and cons, but deep inside, where powerful emotions arise. Brain scans show that when people feel they're being treated unfairly, a small area called the anterior insula lights up, engendering the same disgust that people get from, say, smelling a skunk. That overwhelms the deliberations of the prefrontal cortex. With primitive brain functions so powerful, it's no wonder that economic transactions often go awry.

The inference? The “feedback is a gift” mantra works by maintaining the synthesis of negative feedback within the prefrontal cortex (where you can act on it rationally), and prevents the anterior insula from taking over (and producing instinctual defensiveness).

A market-based approach to controlling email overload

Over at CommEcon, Kelly Thul and I are bantering about "market-based" approaches to controlling information overload (here and here).

Mind Reading, 101

We've coached a lot of folks in how to communicate credibility through their nonverbal behavior. You can learn to read nonverbals just as well, and when you're really good at it, it helps you become a mind reader of sorts. I recently stumbled on a site that summarizes much of the available data: DataFace: Facial Expressions, Emotion Expressions, Nonverbal Communication. Read it before your next performance review, or, perhaps, your next poker game.

Time And Culture

When advising clients in how to deal with cross-cultural communication issues, one item we consistently return to is the matter of time. Cross-cultural communication research demonstrates that cultures vary in how they interpret and think about time, and that these differences influence message interpretation. Specifically, some cultures are “monochronic” and others are “polychronic.” Monochronic cultures are “one thing at a time” cultures. People in monochronic cultures tend to: * Think of time as something tangible, like a road down which we journey, or something which we “spend” * Segment time * Dislike interruptions * Believe the task—and its completion--comes first * Focus on fewer relationships * Not change set plans—even if it might improve the quality of the process The United States, Northern Europe / Scandinavia, and Germany are examples of monochronic cultures. Polychronic cultures, on the other hand, are “many things at once” cultures. People in polychronic cultures tend to: * Think of time is a single point, and not as something tangible (like a road) or quantifiable (like an asset we can spend) * Involve many people when completing a task * Focus on completing transactions over holding to schedules * Believe relationships come first * Change plans easily—especially if they believe it will improve the quality of the process The Mediterranean nations, Latin America, and parts of Africa are examples of polychronic cultures.

Condi Rice & Confidence Markers

While most of the world was watching the Condoleeza Rice testimony yesterday for the political discourse, folks in our firm were watching the behavioral discourse, and in particular, the extent to which she projected “confidence markers.” Confidence markers are the relatively small set of verbal and nonverbal behaviors that communicate certainty to an audience. They also strongly contribute to persuasiveness, and they’re well documented in the interpersonal communication literature. What’s important is that they’re all behaviors a speaker can focus on and control, which is why we tell clients confidence isn’t something you feel as much as it’s something you project. So what are the confidence markers? We break them into two groups: verbal and nonverbal. Verbal markers include:

The Cognitive Load Of PowerPoint

While I’m on the topic, it was at another PR weblog worth reading, Greg Brooks’ Engage, that I found this Richard Mayer article on the cognitive load of PowerPoint. Reading the full article requires a free registration, but here’s the gist:

(1) PowerPoint presentations should use both visual and verbal forms of presentation; (2) filling the slides with information will easily overload people’s cognitive systems; and (3) the presentations should help learners to select, organize and integrate presented information.

We agree and encourage you to read it all. We’ve posted about PowerPoint quite often: click here for a summary, and click here for our one-page Principles of PowerPoint primer.

When PowerPoint Stops Making Sense

Take note: This is the first time we’ve seen fit to reference the terms “epistemology,” “Talking Heads,” and “surrogate decision-making process” in a single CommLog post...

Communication Monograph

In 2001, with support from the National Science Foundation, a group of communication researchers produced a 40-page monograph detailing emerging issues in communication. Entitled Communication: Ubiquitous, Complex, Consequential, the monograph reviews what is known and emerging about communication in four areas:

Politics and society

Public health and well-being

Organizational communication

Relational development

The monograph is a very clear, accessible summary of a typically academic and technical body of communication theory and research. It's worth reading, and you can see or download the monograph (in PDF / Acrobat format) here. (Selfishly, we're also proud to say that the monograph reflects the work of two friends of CRA: Dr. Marshall Scott Poole and Dr. Noshir Contractor.)

Media Richness

The medium with which you send a message is just as important as message content, and when sending any message, it's critical to thoughtfully choose the most appropriate medium for the message in question. As such, when deciding which medium to use, it's important to first consider its “richness.”

What is media richness? All communication media vary according to the opportunity they afford for feedback and their capacity for conveying meaning. As an example, face-to-face communication affords nearly instant feedback from the receiver, and has multiple "cues" by which the receiver can determine meaning (not only what the speaker is saying, but also the look on their face, their tone of voice, etc.). Written memos, however, have slow or no feedback opportunity, and have very few cues by which the receiver can determine meaning (only the words on the page and their format). The more feedback and cues the more "rich" the media; the less feedback and cues, the more "lean" the media.

Why does it matter? Neither rich nor lean media are “better” than the other … they're better at communicating different types of content. As a general guideline rich media are best suited for communicating information that is strategic, uncertain, or symbolic, while lean media are more effective at communicating information that is tactical, specific, or historical. The key is to appropriately match medium and message. To help clients better understand media richness and its application, we've been sharing a two-page toolkit primer on the topic.

Download the primer here with our compliments ...
(This is a 301 K file, PDF format. Click to download, or right-click over the link and select "save target as" to save to a folder. If you need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the PDF file, click here)

Convincing Decisions

We've all known since we heard it in grade school that "actions speak louder than words." But many leaders fail to fully appreciate how this adage applies to the practice of effective internal communication. The extrapolation is this: Leaders' decisions and behavior, and the way they reward and recognize employees, will always send more powerful messages to the organization than any messages transmitted through formal communications (e.g., speeches, emails, etc.).

Accordingly, after leaders use a formal communication channel or event to share new strategic information (such as a new strategy) with the organization, most employees will assume that "this too shall pass" and withhold acceptance and commitment until they see tangible leadership actions that support the leadership rhetoric. As a result, it's critical to build highly visible "convincing decisions" into any strategic internal communication campaign.

In a Fortune Street Life column last year, Andy Serwer shared a post from a reader that beautifully illustrates how a well-intentioned but ill-conceived formal communication activity--and subsequent leadership decisions--can send competing, inconsistent messages:

"Just a quick note from down in the trenches. I work for an e-consultancy and a while back the Culture Committee came up with a list of the company's core values. To keep them fresh in our mind a hat that exemplified each was purchased and given to a person that had demonstrated that core value and has been passed on to a new recipient at the company's quarterly meeting. Well, things have gotten a little lean on the demand side in the industry and this week right before the quarterly meeting there was a layoff. The bad news: Integrity, Teamwork, Fun and Respect for the Individual will soon be working for someone else. The good news: Growth and Innovation are ready to cut loose in a leaner, meaner, e-business machine."

Communication Networks

The study of communication networks has grown dramatically since Everett Rogers first published his seminal work Diffusion of Innovations in 1962. The theory (very well established by both popular and academic research) posits that in any organization, all individuals are not created equal when it comes to the frequency and breadth of their communication. Indeed, the modern corporation is filled with a variety of communication network "types," including (in our parlance):

- Most of us, who communicate with average frequency to an average number of people

- Isolates, solitary recluses who communicate infrequently if at all

- Bridges, who, although they don't communicate with more frequency than others tend to have key relationships with people from a variety of groups or communities (hence they act as a "bridge" between those groups), and

- Stars, who communicate and maintain relationships with a significantly greater number of people than does the average person.

For practitioners and leaders these differences are important. Try to move your message through isolates, and it goes nowhere. Try to move your message through stars, and it spreads like wildfire. Try to credibly introduce your message to a new group without a bridge, and you'll never get through the door.

The principles of communication networks are the principles upon which all effective grass-roots campaigns (and all effective stakeholder management approaches) rest, and they're wonderfully summarized in a 1999 New Yorker article by Malcom Gladwell, Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg. We recommend the article to any internal communication professional, change management professional, or leader of people.

You can read the article here ...