Reading and thinking, I realised something. I had made my work problems a proxy for the problems I faced at home. I did not want help because, on some subconscious level, I felt that if I could solve my problems at work, things would become better at home. When phrased like that, the idea is, naturally, ridiculous. Unfortunately, logical fallacy or not, the feeling it embodied did not go away. Having stated it, though, I could potentially mitigate it.
My third sin of communications, and one I still struggle with today, is what I call "turtling." When I get under enough stress, I huddle down and start working on some personal product (e.g., a report, a new server architecture, or whatever) and ignore my real job: communications. On one level, I say to myself: "If I can get this done, I'll let the person know what is going on and they will be happy to have a product." On another level, the thrill I feel from successfully creating something helps to lift the stress.
Those are both fine statements. Unfortunately, as a manager and a leader, my real job takes place in the realm of communications. In the end, it doesn't matter one way or the other if one of my reports comes in a day late. However, if my team fails to move forward because I decided to spend the day playing with cash flow, I may well lose my company contracts, or my client tens of thousands of dollars.
Moving forward
Recognising my sins is one thing. Fixing them is another. I wish I could say that I've successfully fixed them all forever, but the truth is that all three still plague me from time to time.
However, I do generally use the following mitigating strategies:
- Before I communicate with someone, I force myself to review their current status and our relative positions. For most relationships, this takes no more than five seconds. It allows me to gauge the impact of my statements based on our relative positions and authority, and makes me conscious of my communications patterns.
- When I receive a communication requesting information or containing a suggestion, I first allow myself to feel whatever emotion it generates. Then, after a minute or three, I consider what the other person really wants. If I am not clear, or I think my own emotional response prevents me from being clear, I either ask for clarification or begin to use reflective listening.
- I include communications tasks on my list of things to do. In fact, my planner typically has more communications tasks than production tasks on any given day. This psychological trick allows me to treat communications as just another task and derive satisfaction from removing them from the list of things to do.
These actions do slow down my communications. Frankly, I'm proud of that. In today's business world, we often mistake speed for clarity and responsiveness for understanding.
