FREE online courses on Building a Winning Team - Encouragement and Feedback
- Encouragement and
Feedback
“Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote”
-----Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
“Sighted sub, sank same”
---radio dispatch: Donald F. Mason; Jan, 1942.
In a battle zone, it can be hazardous to get communications mixed up, to hear “ Attack!”
instead of “ Turn back !”. The tragic ‘Charge of the Light Brigade'
during the Crimean War, was on account of wrong communication…someone had
blundered…and so, “Theirs' not to question why, theirs' but to do and die”..
There are obvious barriers to good communication: pronunciation or
technical hitches leading to garbled messages, mental barriers that have the
same effect.
It is always better, and more economical, to use simple language. Convoluted language confuses while diverting attention from the
main issue. Poor responses, if any, to such letters is hardly surprising. With
the shift to consumer-friendly language, comes effectiveness.
The Bengali officer asked his peon “ Ghori hai?” The mystified peon
replied that he had neither ghora (horse) nor ghori (mare). How would a peon in
Amritsar have any experience of Bengali pronunciation, disconcertingly applied
to Hindi … ‘ghori' was
his officer's version of ‘ghari', i.e. ‘watch'. He just wanted to know the time. Apocryphal though the story may
be, some
tips can be considered:
- Improve your ability to
express yourself
- Improve your ability to
both hear and listen
- Can others understand
the words and phrases you use?
- Their feelings/
attitudes towards you; (yes, these DO color comprehension).
-
Good management, however, is all about good communication, especially if we are into the
parent-adult-child situation, which we encountered, in the previous module. As
mentioned earlier, successful communication is when complementary
ego-states are engaged. But if child replies to child, or if adult gets
wheedling child-state reply,
there's a block. Inappropriate ego-states can lead to confrontation. It is always better to strive for the adult state, by:
- Avoiding expressions of
anger, sorrow, anxiety
- Using questioning
techniques to invoke analysis
- Encouraging pride in
learning
- Sticking to facts,
realistic assessments
- Working out acceptable
level of risk and delegate
- Discussing problems on
equal footing with subordinates
- Using calm tone, eye
contact
- Making constructive
responses
- Refusing to be drawn
into ‘games'; stick to adult state
- Using adult state to
re-establish shared goals
- Demolishing tension and
false-ego states by humor.
QUESTIONS:
- What is good
communication, and what are the barriers to it?
- What role does
subjectivity play in communication?
