Curiosity (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series) (for Raymond Rhine) by Harvard Business Review

Author:Harvard Business Review
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

7

How to Avoid Common Miscommunications at Work

By Marsha Acker

Do you ever feel like you’re having the same conversations over and over again at work? Chances are, you’re experiencing a breakdown in communication.

While we all know that clear communication is needed to successfully collaborate with our managers and team members, it’s often one of the most difficult skills to master for someone new to the workforce. Why? Because many of us tend to assume that other people see and experience things the same way we do.1

Researcher and systems psychologist David Kantor offers a key principle that can help us overcome this bias in our thinking.2 He came up with a theory known as structural dynamics, which describes how face-to-face communication works (and doesn’t) and aims to help us see and understand the patterns, behaviors, and dynamics that impact our interpersonal and group conversations. According to Kantor, there’s a visible and an invisible reality present in every interaction we have. To have more effective conversations based on mutual understanding, we need to learn how to navigate both.

The visible reality is the conversation we’re having out loud, or the actual words that are being said. This is what most people think about when they hear the word “conversation.” The invisible reality includes all the internal narratives and preconceived ideas that shape how each participant is processing the meaning and intention behind the words spoken.

The invisible reality is where things tend to go sideways. Because we instinctually assume that others see and experience things the same way we do, we tend to believe our interpretations of the conversations we engage in are correct. The issue occurs when we walk away on a different page from our manager, team, or peer, and end up digressing instead of reaching the outcome we want.

To move beyond our assumptions and get on the same page as our colleagues, we need to develop our ability to make our thinking and assumptions more visible to the person we’re speaking with. We also need to look for opportunities to learn more about their thinking and assumptions. You’ve likely heard of this skill before. It’s called reading the room and it’s a communication superpower.

If you can learn to make the “invisible” more “visible” in your conversations at work, you’ll be able to leapfrog over those annoying surface-level miscommunications and collaborate more productively with everyone. You may even be able to have conversations just once.

Below are three practices that will allow you to better read the room. You can start implementing them today.

Step 1: Focus on “how” instead of “what”

In any conversation, there will be two parallel threads happening simultaneously. The first is the “what.” This is the content (or the topic) of the conversation. It’s what you and the other person, or people, are talking about.

The second thread is the “how.” This is how you’re talking with one another—the way you’re engaging together, the kinds of language being used, and the spoken or unspoken rules about whose voice holds more power in the interaction.

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