You’re No Harvey Weinstein (not even close), but is your Communication Generating Unintended Consequences?

Once again, tales of horrid misconduct and harassment have grabbed the headlines. If it’s at all possible to look beyond the criminality of this behavior, there is another angle from which to approach these headlines so something positive can be gained from this. It is utterly clear that in spite of all the progress and gains that have been made on the gender, racial, and sexual orientation front, there’s still a long way to go before a true measure of equality is had for all.

Those who are out to offend will offend. Those who simply don’t care won’t care. Those who have criminal intent will have criminal intent. Then there are the rest of us.

When I say the rest of us, I’m speaking to those of us who, through our communication, may be unintentionally and inadvertently offending others. We don’t offend because we are mean. We don’t offend because we enjoy placing people in uncomfortable situations. We don’t offend because we feel we’re better than others. We offend because we are “blissfully” unaware of the impact our communication has on others.

However, we have offended, and as a result, our credibility is diminished, and the other person’s experience with us is more negative than positive. So on one level, it doesn’t matter if it’s intended or not because the result is equally toxic for the other person. So, in that light, to those of us who fall into the unintended category (as I’m in no position to help those who wish to cause harm intentionally), what can we do differently to address this issue before we cause any additional damage to the workplace relationships we so desperately need.

In the wake of the high profile, inappropriate and criminal behavior by men in power now is the time to take a more in-depth look at how our communication practices may be having the unintended consequence of generating discomfort and mistrust in those with whom we interact.

Ignorance is Not an Excuse

To be fair, I’m not immune to any of this. Looking back to some of the choices I made earlier in my college teaching career when I was younger and single, I dated two different students who were around my age. I failed to see or perhaps ignored, how the student-teacher power dynamic was right there.

Perhaps I was “blissfully naïve,” thinking my being the teacher didn’t matter. Fact is, it did. I downplayed that power dynamic so that I could justify dating them. And although we were all adults, and although a meaningful and fulfilling relationship was mutually desired, and although everything was respectful and on the up and up, it was still wrong of me.

I like to think I’m a thoughtful and caring person, so imagine what happens when someone who isn’t so thoughtful and isn’t so caring takes advantage of a situation like a power dynamic. Those results can be far worse, far more devastating, and far more long-lasting, as we have seen.

Three Pillars of Exceptional Communication

Let’s look at our communication through the Three Pillars of Exceptional Communication; Trust, Emotions, and Reason.

• What about our communication causes people to trust us or not?
• What about our communication causes someone to have a positive or negative experience with us?
• What about our communication allows someone to view us as reasonable or rational, or unreasonable or irrational?

When looking through this lens, we can begin to diagnose our communication strengths and shortcomings to strategize what to do better. Be it gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation; there are simple steps we can all take to ensure we are not inadvertently sending negative messages to colleagues at work, clients, guests, customers or any other stakeholders in our business life.

Trust

It has been said by the likes of Stephen Covey that in every interaction we have, we are either building or diminishing trust. Therefore, it is essential to recognize how some of our communication behaviors and actions may be reducing trust.

What builds trust for one person may diminish that trust in another. Just as an immediate reply to an email can come across as being prompt or too eager, what builds trust for us may not be the same for the person we are communicating with. To help determine what best builds trust for another person, we need to ask ourselves, “What do they need or want so they experience me as being trustworthy?”

In the spirit of diversity, this requires a person to step beyond the experience they know and attempt to imagine what it may be like to be that other person, to experience the world as they experience it, and perhaps most importantly, experience ourselves through them.

Simply asking the question, “What might they need?” is a significant first step, and although you may not hit the mark right the first time around, you’ll at least be heading in the right direction.

For many men, particularly men who do not fall into any minority category, it can be hard to imagine a world where all avenues are not possible and that all one needs to do is work hard to achieve one’s goals. In some cases, that’s nearly impossible, because without experiencing true discrimination, how can anyone know what that experience is like?

At the same time, however, that does not alleviate anyone from making an effort to at least try and understand. It may take some real creativity to create a metaphor that at least provides an inkling of that experience.

Imagine playing poker and knowing all you need is that one card to create a winning hand; the feeling of anticipation combined with the deflation you feel when the card you receive is the wrong one. It’s that feeling of being so close, yet being disappointed that the outcome didn’t turn out your way.

But unlike poker – where there will be another hand and another percentage chance to win – imagine that card consistently kept away from you. How frustrating and unfair that feels.

Well, that’s a taste, albeit a very small one, of what many people face every day. So, why be the person who is inadvertently and unintentionally keeping that card from those who need it?

Emotions

What might another person be feeling when we communicate with them? More significantly, what might another person who has already been on the receiving end of countless intended, unintended, or otherwise offensive interactions, be anticipating when interacting with us?

We might not be the problem, but the problem also does not disappear with us.

How do we monitor and regulate our interactions with these facts in mind? What might we need to do differently to help minimize the chances that our communication will produce a negative experience for the other person?

Once again, it means to stop thinking of ourselves and to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. We need to make ourselves a secondary priority and them the primary priority.

Sure, it can be difficult, awkward, and even counter-intuitive, but in the end doing so opens up communicative possibilities we otherwise would not see. We all have the ways we communicate to make it easy on us and produce the least discomfort for ourselves. But sometimes, to create comfort for others, we may need to get a bit uncomfortable ourselves. Think about the times you’ve bitten your tongue so another person could have the stage and you’ll understand what I’m saying.

Reason

What’s reasonable in one situation may not be in another. As a concept, it may be reasonable to save 10% of every paycheck for a rainy day, but if you are living on a shoestring budget where every dollar matters, 10% less spending may be impossible.

The same can be said of our interactions with others. What seems reasonable and logical to us, based on who we are, our experiences, and where we fall within the hierarchy of things, may not hold true for someone else. Just because something may seem unreasonable to us does not minimize the fact that it DOES NOT seem unreasonable to the other person.

Bear in mind, as contradictory as it sounds, you cannot argue away another person’s sense of unreasonableness. On paper, you may be able to do so, but for a living, breathing human being, perhaps not.

Our experience of what is reasonable is inextricably tied to our emotional state.

For example, the experience of being stressed has a tremendous impact on our brain’s ability to discern what is reasonable. At the same time, elevated emotional states can allow us to embrace a momentary reasonableness that, with time’s passing, has proved quite unreasonable.

It may seem entirely unreasonable to need to change our communication style, so someone else isn’t uncomfortable. At the same time, if we know communicating in a certain way will produce negativity in someone, does it not stand to reason that we may want to alter our approach?

Once again, without the prolonged experience of being the recipient of offensive remarks (intended, unintended, or otherwise off-putting), how can we be expected to understand what we need to do differently?

As true and reasonable as that seems, given what we know about human communication, and in particular the Three Pillars of Exceptional Communication, not doing something different is about as unreasonable a position to take as any.

Here’s a little story that demonstrates how one small action can have large consequences.

Neighbors of ours were having work done on their home. Their architect found a contractor who came complete with glowing references. Our neighbors, husband, and wife kept in regular contact with the contractor, and as with all construction projects, little things came up from time to time. Most of these exchanges were done via text, and in some cases, a phone call was required. All went very smoothly.

The contractor did an outstanding job on the couples’ home, completing the project on budget and under the timeline. So happy were our friends, that they were considering this contractor for an additional project within the next year. In one final exchange between the wife and the contractor, the wife thanked the contractor for doing an outstanding job and complimented him on the professionalism of his team of employees and subcontractors. The contractor replied to this text with the following:

“thank you, it’s nice to hear, you are very good customers, and you are very beautiful” (smiley emoji here)

Whoa! Did he just do that? Both the wife and husband were surprised by this boundary-crossing text. When they contacted their architect to let her know about the contractor’s actions, the architect let them know that she too had received a questionably inappropriate text from the contractor.

However, the architect’s husband chalked it up to a cultural difference, as the contractor happened to be originally from Russia, so nothing was made of it. As comforting as that idea may have been, and they wanted to work with this contractor again, our neighbors were not convinced this was a cultural faux pas.

When the neighbor-husband sent the contractor a text indicating their disappointment with his boundary-crossing text and that any future work with him was now in doubt, the contractor replied with an apology and stated that his text was “a worthy compliment to you and your wife and no more.”

I don’t know about you, but commenting on a client’s wife’s attractiveness, directly to her and her alone, is hardly “a worthy compliment.” And given this contractor did something similar with our married-with-two-young-children architect, a pattern had emerged.

Now, it’s entirely conceivable culture plays a role here. At the same time, in spite of his origins, he’s lived in the United States long enough to know proper professional boundaries. This one text, specifically the words, “and you are very beautiful,” combined with a smiley emoji significantly damaged this professional relationship. Then the reasoning for the text, a “worthy compliment” as it was put, was the final nail in the coffin. Never again would they be doing business with this contractor.

The lesson here? Even if the contractor did mean this to be a “worthy compliment” (which I doubt), the blatant lack of awareness of how this would be received – and when confronted, he explained it away – is symptomatic of many slights people have received over the years. So, what can be done differently?

3 Steps to Change Your Communication

1. Take stock of our current communication practices and the people we interact with. Where are our strengths? What are our blind spots? Where can we improve?
2. Consider the people we are communicating with. To the best of our ability, determine what they need from us, so they view us positively through the Three Pillars.
3. By cross-referencing our communication style with their needs, we can identify the specific areas we need to focus on and begin to reach out for assistance in doing so (friends, family, colleagues, or professional development services, are some places to turn).

Do the Right Thing

Sure, this takes time. Sure, this takes effort. Most certainly, it takes energy and commitment. The rewards of doing so can be monumental. The costs of not doing so, however, have been paid for far too long and it’s time for all that to come to an end.

We’re human. We like who we like. We’re attracted to what we’re attracted to. But we are more than just our urges and our desires. Part of our humanness is the ability to overcome and move beyond our animalistic instincts and desires.

This is what parenting is all about as we teach our children to discover there are choices beyond their impulses. It takes years and years for humans to get to that point and, as today’s headlines, unfortunately, point out, we still have a long way to go.

Don’t allow your communication to undermine you. We can look beyond the moment, to recognize the consequence of action, and do the right thing, no matter how difficult.

Do the Right Thing… for you

If the moral argument for doing so holds little sway, then perhaps a business perspective will do the trick. Every person in an organization is a wealth of potential value. Why in the world would you want to do anything that may inhibit or undermine that value from being cultivated?

As cold-hearted as this may seem, it makes business sense to broaden our communication repertoire to get a much value as we can from the people around us. Why leave money on the table? Inhibiting people from making valuable contributions to our organizations is just bad business.

Don’t allow your communication to undermine you.

The choices are out there via the Three Pillar of Exceptional Communication. It’s your job to take advantage of them!

Get the Help to Communicate Well

Shapiro Communications offers a 2-hour program designed to bring awareness to how to help ensure that our communication keeps people at ease while still getting your point across.

Using the Three Pillars of Exceptional Communication, we’ll devise methods and approaches to building the Trust, establish positive Emotions, and generate the Reason that builds deeper and longer lasting business relationships.

This IS NOT sexual harassment training.
This IS NOT sensitivity training.
This IS effective communication training that takes into consideration the unintended missteps everyone makes and turns those missteps into opportunities to deepen the professional relationships we all depend on.

Reach out to begin to build your communication skills; it’s a win-win for everyone.