The survey report was finally completed. Thanks to my team mates, Huiping & Kendra, who had put in much effort and endured a few sleepless nights in order to complete the report. Their dedication to the report made the entire writing progress more enjoyable.Regarding communication within the team, I always try to adhere to the following principle. Whenever, you instruct a person to do a task, you have to tell him why the task is important and how it is going to affect him personally if the task is done badly. I believe this is the most important and basic principle of communication. To further explain my point, do you think a person will work as hard or put in his best if he does not even know the importance and significance of his task? The answer is obvious.
Why it is of paramount importance to tell a person how a badly completed task is going to affect him? Human is governed by incentives. By understanding the consequences of a badly done task and relating the dire consequences to himself personally, a person will foresee a great incentive to perform. Consider a situation where you need to convince your boss the importance of delivering the goods on time to the client.
Which of the following do you think is more effective in conveying the message across to your boss?
1) Our client needs the goods urgently. He has phoned us a couple of times to check on their arrival. I am sure he will never trust us again if we fail to deliver on time again.
2) Your reputation together with the firm’s is going to be damaged if the client does not receive his goods on time. By delaying our clients’ goods, you are doing yourself a great disservice.
Once again, you know the answer. Working with my fellow team mates testified the importance of the above communication principle. It is effective. And, I hope to always apply the above principle of communication to my future team project.
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7 comments:
Hi Victor,
I agree that it is important to explain how doing or not doing something affects a person so as to convince the person to take the matter seriously.
Last semester, I took this course on Human Relations and one of the key concepts that my tutor tried to impress upon us, is the importance of appealing to people's emotions.
John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor had commented that 'behaviour change happens mostly by speaking to people's feelings.'
An example is given by Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at John Hopkins University, who commented that 'If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle... Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can't.'
It was not sufficient to provide health information to cause people to make lifestyle changes but something that is emotional to create that motivation to change. This is because people's minds rely on frames, not facts.
However, as much as we learn to appeal to people's emotions to effect a change, we have to be careful that we do not abuse our skills.
(Example taken from: Alan Deutschman. Change or Die. Fast Company Issue 94, May 2005, Page 53)
Hi Victor,
Actually I do not quite agree with what you said regarding telling a person the importance of the task and how he/she will be affected if the task is done badly.
If it is the first time that you are working with the person, it would be good to give him/her the benefit of the doubt that he/her will do the job well. When you need to instruct him/her to do something, stop at the instruction. When the job is done, you can evaluate the quality of the work and decide if you need to inform the person of the importance of the job next time.
If the job is well done, you can trust the person and save the trouble of telling him the down side of doing things poorly. Also, if he is one who always does his work well, yet you keep reminding him of the down sides, it seems like you are not trusting him. Furthermore, as university students, I think many students are responsible enough to weigh the pros and cons. If you are just a project mate instead of the group leader, he/she may feel that you are bossing around.
Only when the person did not do his job well, then you should give him a gentle reminder to pay more attention to his work the next time you give instruction. I think at this time, it is not good to jump straight into telling him how badly it is going to affect him personally. Afterall, personal remarks should be avoided when doing projects. It would not be good if you tell him, "By doing this, it shows that you are not an organised person." It will just strain the relationship between both of you.
When you need to emphasize the importance of doing the job well, do it in a softer tone and avoid sounding like you are making personal attacks.
And regarding the example you have given, I would choose number 1 to talk to my boss. Here, the target is your superior. It is very rude to talk to him in a manner like number 2.
I think one should be flexible when communicating with others. There is no fixed rule that you must always tell others of the dire consequences before others will do things well. There are responsible people around.
I quite agree with Teresa in the sense that I would have chosen the first choice for that last question that you gave.
I do agree with you that people are more likely to change if they feel they have more at stake and thus, appealing to their feelings might be more effective. However, in the scenario you provided, for the employee, to him, he might not care what happens even if his employer told him what was stated in your second option. To the employee, it might still seem to be the company's problem and not his.
However, by appealing to him in the first option, it is asking him to work as a collective and therefore he might not feel picked-on and might actually do better.
Also, by stressing on the negative (e.g. if you do not do this, you will have a bad image/dire consequences/etc), you might come off as contemptuous or overbearing. And as Teresa stated, it might lead to a strenuous working relationship.
After reading Dominique's oomments, something came to my mind. Maybe there is a difference in the way different genders speaks. Females tend to use softer approach, and we did think of people's feelings before speaking. However, males seem to be more result-oriented, and so, will speak more directly. Is this true?
I agree with Teresa ans Dominique in that we had better avoid mentioning the exact consequences of bad jobs since it can break the trust.Also,even emphasizing positive effects frankly may not be good.
Let me think about the boss who aim to have his subordinate do well on the specific job and is ready to give extra bonus to him depend on his work.
boss 1
"I want make difference in this world! and you are part of my dream.I really appreciate it if you do well."
boss 2
"If you do well I will give you extra bonus!"
boss 3
"If you fail to do well on your job, you can't get extra bonus."
If I were in the position of subordinate,I will do my best for boss 1.
So,I think that making the one feel happier to work with/for the instructor is more important.
As to the different way of speak between gender,in my opinion, male are rather honest and female are two-faced. As a result, male speaks more directly in front of the person but female speaks more softly.However female tend to speak bitterly behind the person.
Dear Sheila, Teresa, Dominque, Kazu,
Thank you for all your honest comments. I really appreciate it. Your comments provide me some thinking opportunities.
I agree with Kazu that men speak and communicate more directly than women.
Thanks for giving your feedback and reflections on the project experience. The discussion is indeed an intriguing analysis of the differences in working styles espcially between genders.
Speaking from a more task- and result-oriented perspective, it is important to deliver the tasks in time no matter which intermediate methods are used! Your suggestion to stress on the significance of each task and to keep track of the progress is highly relevant. I am glad that this useful point has been highlighted. Let's keep this in mind and all work hard together for our oral presentation!
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