We all know that feeling of puzzlement, or worse (!) when we’ve explained an idea, checked for understanding and the team head off in different directions as if the briefing had never taken place. It’s certainly happened to me. Reflecting on those occasions I’ve identified three root causes and three key learnings. Each learning can be explored in a safe and fun way through a simple facilitated workshop.
I
The management team were in a large meeting room gathered around a set of instructions that their facilitator had just issued them. The Board were outside in the corridor. Inside the room a maze leading from the door of the room to the far corner was being constructed from available materials; tables, chairs, flip chart easels and hazard tape. The management team had a clear brief: set up the maze, blindfold the board and verbally guide the board safely through the maze. The Board waited outside in the corridor, literally in the dark. After 45 minutes the maze was ready and an authoritative spokes- person had been nominated to issue carefully crafted instructions. The Board were blindfolded and led into the room. The clear and concise instructions were read out. The Board members hung back, hesitated, looked confused and hung back at the entrance to the maze adjusting their blindfolds self-consciously. The spoke-person repeated the instructions with added emphasis and volume speaking slowly and clearly to urge the blind folded Board to form up in single file, each touching the shoulder of a colleague ahead and walk through the twisting maze.
Half an hour later the task was accomplished. “How did that feel?” asked our facilitator; “Management Team feed-back first.”
“They wouldn’t follow the instructions, it was really difficult, really slow. I’m not sure what went wrong I thought our instructions were really clear.” said the crestfallen spoke-person.
“We didn’t know what was going on, what we had to do. We were just left in a cold corridor, blind folded and marched in. I felt frightened and confused. I didn’t know what expect” said our MD with some passion.
We sat down and explored what the exercise had felt like for each participant. “What could we do differently next time?” asked our facilitator.
“We should have let the Board know before they came into the room what was going to happen, what to expect, what the aim was” came back the reply from the Board and the management team.
Key learning: Communicate any change and the purpose of it as early as possible to all stakeholders.
II
We sat back to back on the floor in groups of eight. In our hands we held wooden shapes. On our eyes we wore blindfolds. We were in cross functional groups. We all worked to make the same brand a success. We all had different professional skills: Accounting, Marketing, Engineering, Procurement, Sales, Product Development, Consumer Insight, Manufacturing and Human Resources. The mood in the room was light hearted. As a brand team we worked closely together and knew each other well. Banter and laughter flowed as we enjoyed our break from the day job and speculated inventively and at each other’s expense about why we had driven to a Yorkshire farmhouse to sit blindfolded on the floor.
“The first part of the exercise is for each group member to describe your piece to the rest of the team” called out our facilitator, straining to be heard over the rising volume of debate and humour.
Silence fell momentarily. “Well I’ve got a sort of pillar box with a cloud on top” ventured a voice within our group. …. Then “Mine has a straight bottom section with a slight rebate, there is a right angle corner, followed by a lobe with a radius whose diameter is half the length of the bottom section”…… There is a pause. “I’m really sorry but I can’t picture that”comes the voice that had described the pillar box and cloud. ….”I couldn’t really understand yours either I’m afraid” replied the voice which used the geometrical description. Our group falters momentarily, unsure of how to move on.
We’re saved by a clap of hands from our facilitator. “Anyone having difficulties?” It turns out that we’re all up against the same problem. Each group is clear about the task and keen to succeed at it. We suspect there will be prizes at the bar later! We routinely work together in exactly these mixed cross functional groups so this should be easy. But it isn’t. “What’s holding us back?” asks our facilitator.
“We’re talking different languages” volunteers the pillar box and cloud voice. I need to see an image to understand and then add detail later. …”Really?” queries the geometrist “I’m the other way round; I build up an understanding of the whole from its component parts.” There is silence in the room as we truly understand the implications of something that every one of us thought that we already understood; that we each have different communication styles.
Key learning: Communication style is about more than just dialling up or down data or concepts within a message to tune it to an audience. The message must literally be in the language that the audience speaks in order for the message to understood let alone acted on.
III
“Okay, I’m going to read a description out to you twice. The first time I read it I’d like you each to just listen. The second time I’d like you to draw what I’m describing on the pad in front of you.”
There is a shuffling of notepads, seeking of pencils from the jumble of water bottles, discarded hand outs and dishes of mints littering the table in front of us. It’s the closing exercise of a four day course. Among the dozen of us in the room thoughts are turning to home, our families and traffic on the journey back.
“It has a brown almost hairless body, an elongated face, tubular ears, a steeply arched muscular back, powerful hind legs, shorter front legs with claws for digging and a long snout with nostrils that can be closed for burrowing on its end.”
After the second reading we all hold our pictures up self-consciously and amid comments that explore the bounds of the corporate Diversity policy.
“Anyone know what I was describing?”…..none of us do……..”It’s an ardvaark.”
“I don’t know what an ardvaark even looks like” calls out one of the team.
“Actually it looks exactly as you’ve drawn it.” Around the room every picture is different. There are elephants, rabbits, one ardvaark, a gruffalo, two kangaroos, a mole and a couple of “unfinished masters.”
I understood two things from that exercise. The first was, I think the intended message; that we all heard the same words and yet we each interpreted those words very differently. The second was to me more important; that the only person who had accurately interpreted the message had been open to what he heard and “gone with it.” The rest of us had filtered what we heard to fit into what we knew and missed the point.
Key learning: Communication is about how we listen as much as it is about how we speak.
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