September 2011

Even good arguments have counter arguments. So how do you note alternative views without sounding like you’re being… argumentative?

It helps if you define what you’re doing. For example, you could say,

• May I vocalize the counterargument so we can see if it has any weight?

This invites the other person to align with you in an effort to see what value, if any, other perspectives offer to a discussion. It keeps you from being two people on the opposite side of a discussion to two people side-by-side looking at a challenge, considering perspectives.

Oh – I LOVE collaboration! Adversarial communication brings out different views, too, but ultimately it’s a barrier to effective communication skills. People are too busy trying to win to be able to hear reason, logic and truth. 

There’s something really nice about receiving an email from a new work affiliate that starts with, 

• Goodie for you! Another person to work with!

That’s how Jennifer at IAAP opened her email to me explaining what I need to know to tell people how they can get credit toward recertification for training that I offer. I felt like my inquiry was more than welcome.

If her response had been fluff, I wouldn’t have appreciated the tone as much. However, the response was thorough and clear. 

In my research for my book on Virtual Team communication, I read about how “The 100 best companies to work for in America” all share an celebratory feel in normal communication.

Is that cool, or what! We don’t have to leave our playful selves at home. 

That is worthy of celebration! Maybe I’ll celebrate by sending Jennifer a quick email! Goodie for me!

I love looking at words and considering their roots and deeper intent. Today I was reflecting on how the term in decision got a bad rap. It comes from “in” and “decision”. So being in decision implies to me that you’re taking the time to decide, not that you’re being weak or wishy-washy. Of course it doesn’t work for any of us to be perpetually in decision. But there is too much of a signal that people being in decision for a while is not a sign of leadership.

Then there’s “mistake”. Think of a miss take like in a film. Cut! Run the scene again! 

I am an advocate of continuous improvement and am personally motivated toward developing excellence. That requires the willingness to be in decision until decided and to have miss takes. That’s how I learn. It’s how we all learn. Powering through and feigning perfection is a barrier to natural striving toward perfection. Generally, I find words to be far more forgiving than we interpret them to be. 

Black and white thinking is a barrier to effective communication skills. Too often we discover how we’ve limited ourselves and flip into the opposite view. The “but” hunt you hear among motivational and communication professionals is an example of good observations gone bad by over-application. (“How big is your ‘but'” and “‘but’ negates everything that went before it and should be replaced with ‘and'”.) 

The result often is unclear and convoluted speech where people overlook legitimate concerns because they don’t want to have a big ‘but’ and where people awkwardly use other words to say what ‘but’ says perfectly well.

If I say,

• I’d love to come, but I already made plans

…the use of the word ‘but’ does NOT negate the fact that I’d love to come, and is a much clearer way to say no than “I’d love to come and I made other plans”.

The point of this post is not so much about how you need to stop the ‘but hunt’ as it is about how effective communication skill involves taking what you learn and asking if it helps you communicate what you really mean. If it doesn’t, tell the professional who gave you the rule, “Thanks, but no thanks” and opt for clarity.