Workstorming by Rob Kendall

Author:Rob Kendall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Workstorming
ISBN: 9781780289175
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2016-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

After a few more minutes, Matt proposes an action to review progress in a fortnight’s time. He asks Lois to write down her recommendations and email them to him.

TIPPING INTO JUDGEMENTS

Afterwards, Matt thinks it’s been a productive meeting but Lois feels flattened and thinks they’ve had a nonversation. In her view, he showed no interest in what was bothering her, failed to listen and engaged in Dominatricks. She disliked the way he used the term ‘we’ when he said, ‘we want to keep you’, and ‘we can’t offer you more money’. ‘He sounded like my bank manager or a corporate consultant,’ she thinks.

On Matt’s side, he’s glad that Lois has come to him and that they’ve agreed a plan of action, but he’s got a slight concern that she seemed unclear and hesitant. ‘As a member of my leadership team, she’s not very proactive,’ he says to himself.

To figure out why their conversation’s gone wrong, we need to understand their preferences. Lois’s style of communication is all about affinity. Being an excellent listener herself, and highly sensitive to visual and non-verbal cues, she dislikes it when people cut across her or don’t listen. If a solution is put forward, she wants to think about it and discuss it with people she trusts before coming to a conclusion. While this might take a little longer, her decisions are well considered and she stands by them.

The emphasis for Matt is on forward momentum. When Lois is speaking, he’s thinking about actions and solutions. Conversations work better for him if he understands the intended outcome at the outset. He also prefers people to come to him with options or recommendations rather than problems; if they don’t, he’s likely to come up with solutions on their behalf. While Lois talks about how she feels, Matt talks about how he thinks. Neither communication style is right or wrong but they are different, and that increases the likelihood of Mixed Messages.

Matt doesn’t have bad intentions. He just communicates in his preferred style, but this doesn’t work for Lois. On the back of their meeting, they both draw conclusions about each other’s personality. As these turn into judgements, communication between them becomes increasingly strained. Matt tells his deputy that Lois was ‘a bit all over the place’ when he met with her. Lois refers to Matt as ‘the head robot’ when she’s at home. Although they agree some further actions at their subsequent meeting, Lois still feels that Matt has fundamentally missed the point by failing to understand how she feels: demoralized, frustrated and unsupported. What’s more, she has little confidence things will be better if she raises the issue again.

BEING FLEXIBLE

Lois and Matt need to recognize that their preferred way of communicating isn’t necessarily the ‘right’ way. They also need to follow the principle of Aristotle’s rule and be flexible enough to adjust their style. A lawyer can’t expect a positive response if he says to his 12-year-old daughter, ‘I put it to you that you haven’t done the washing-up for two weeks’, even though he talks like this all day in court.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.