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Bridging THE GAP
KRIENGSAK NIRATPATTANASAI
If you knew that half of what you said was a waste of time, would you still keep saying things the same way?
Recently I tested some of my theories by sending out a mini-survey to 30 people by e-mail. Twenty people replied, nine of them CEOs, eight senior managers and three middle managers. Here are the questions and results.
1. On average in your waking time (6 am to 10 pm) how much do you spend on these five activities: listening, talking, writing, reading and others? The results: listening 33%, talking 18%, writing 15%, reading 20% and others 15%.
2. How effective do you think most people are at: listening, talking, writing and reading? (Most effective is 100%). The results: listening 46%, talking 35%, writing 42% and reading 42%.
We spend 85% of our time on communication. My mini-survey indicated that we are effective in communication only 41% of the time (46+35+42+42 divided by 4). If we look at the 59% ratio for ineffective communication, we spend 15% on other activities, 35% on effective communication (41% from 85% of total time) and only 50% on effective communication (59% from 85% of total time).
Talking has the lowest score in terms of effectiveness. Why? Humans started to communicate with body language about 200,000 years ago but we developed spoken language only 50,000 years ago. We are very young in terms of oral communication compared to our eight million years of evolution. Many people do not realise that we are unable to express in words very little of what we are really thinking.
Perhaps it's time to look at improving the way we talk. Here are some tips:
1. Plan what to talk about. Prepare prior to speaking by asking:
- Who is the listener?
- What are his or her background, values, attitude and beliefs?
- What do you expect the listener to do after listening to you: understand, believe or do something?
Then, modify your style accordingly. Remember that people speak effectively only 35% of the time so two-thirds of your speech could be wasted.
2. Speaking slowly usually works better than speaking quickly - particularly if you speak in English to Thais. Pause to give them time to translate in their minds.
3. Be aware that when you communicate, 55% is body language 38% is tone of voice and only 7% is words. Even when you do not speak, it's still communication.
4. Repeat something if you want to emphasise it. Use a key message or a theme. Think about Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, one of the greatest pieces of oratory in history. He mentioned his key phrase several times. Our brains are designed to forget the majority of what we take in. Keep on repeating your key message frequently.
5. Check for understanding but don't do so by simply asking, "Do you understand?" Ask your listener about the content: what do you think about, what are your concerns, which part would you like me to explain more?
Here are more tips from Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The authors give six principles of "sticky" ideas: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness (visibility), Credibility, Emotions and Stories. You can remember in acronym as SUCCES.
Let me share an example of how communication can go awry:
On Jan 16, 2003, Nasa launched the space shuttle Columbia on its 28th mission, with its crew carrying out a multitude of experiments during 16 days in orbit. On Feb 1, 2003 when Columbia was re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the shuttle disintegrated and the crew of seven perished.
In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at Nasa released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle exploded. As expected, the ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint.
Nasa, the board argued, had become too reliant on presenting complex information via the ubiquitous Microsoft software, instead of by means of traditional ink-and-paper technical reports. When Nasa engineers assessed possible wing damage, they presented the findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide - so crammed with nested bullet points and irregular short forms that it was nearly impossible to untangle.
"It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realise that it addresses a life-threatening situation," the board sternly noted.
This is an example of the high cost of ineffective communication.
Kriengsak Niratpattanasai provides executive coaching in leadership and diversity management under the brand TheCoach. He can be reached at coachkriengsak@yahoo.com. Copies of previous columns are available at http://www.thaicoach.com
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