Canadian HR Reporter

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER EXECUTIVE SERIES 15 www.scnetwork.ca NOVEMBER 2018 is Empowered by: is Empowered by: A Great Leader A Great Leader www.scnetwork.ca Networking, Mentoring, Peer-Peer Feedback Formal Online & Of ine Learning On the job experiences & challenges 20% 10% 70% Join SCNetwork, for a monthly dose of thought leadership and grow your community of peers in a collaborative space. We welcome all HR professionals who support business success through people. Cultivating the Power of Human Capital for 35+ Years! Looking for a way to achieve the 30% you need to become a great leader? Why is no one talking to me? ree SCNetwork members discuss Mary Donohue's recent presentation on variance Sandi Channing: In-person meetings, video chats, Skype, email, text, instant messaging, phone calls, FaceTime, Twit- ter — there are so many ways to communicate these days. But ask diff erent generations which one is more eff ective and there's no consensus. at each generation prefers to communicate in dif- ferent ways is not new, but there were good nuggets of info in Mary Donohue's presentation. I liked how she linked team communications to management consultant Edward Deming's To- tal Quality Control Management. In essence, it's about reducing variance so teams trust and en- gage more, which then leads to increased productivity, helping people to meet their goals. Reducing "inputs that are slow- ing killing us with the tip-tap of the keyboard" is a necessity. How many of us communicate with our teams and co-workers in the way we are most comfortable, not recognizing their preferred method of communications — causing frustration for all? Companies that understand the impact communications has on engagement and productivity will get ahead. Increasing employees' knowledge of other's communica- tion preferences, and achieving a level of mutual respect, reduces the variance and increase the ef- fectiveness of teams. As with all elements of diversity, the importance of respecting and valuing diff erences is paramount. To help with this, Donohue pro- vided a web-based quiz for teams to increase their understanding of the styles and preferences of themselves and their team mem- bers. Self-data, team data and collaboration — it's clean, lean and easy. e changes each generation has brought to the workforce are a plus. While some of the "old- school" methodologies will disap- pear, the more eff ective ones will survive. Smart employees will embrace the diff erences, recognizing the benefi ts of a varied communica- tion tools. As Deming under- stood so well: "It is not neces- sary to change. Survival is not mandatory." Paul Pittman: is was a fas- cinating discussion, especially when you think we were looking at examples of communication amongst essentially a homog- enous group and their diff erent preferences for delivery. Compound that with the lan- guage we use to deliver messages, the shortcuts and codes we use, and how clarity or purpose can be obscured by our preference for the medium and its content. As an immigrant to Canada many years ago, it took me a while (and in fact I am still trying) to stop using expressions I learned as a child in North London that don't translate into North Amer- ica, even though we speak (more or less) the same language. As another example, a team of nine I supervised in Switzerland worked out that we had 13 diff er- ence languages in the group and for several of them, English — the language of the company — was their third or fourth language. We learned that as we moved initiatives forward, written ex- changes — particularly short- form emails — were not effi cient. Recipients would telephone or drop by to seek clarity over a word or phrase. We discovered that our pre- ferred method to communicate was verbal: To meet, discuss the plan and then at the end of every meeting, quickly go around the room and ask each member if they understood what they had agreed to. It was not only the literal but figurative meanings that got ironed out in these recap sessions. A lawyer colleague of mine has a client who insists on providing instructions via text message. Per- haps this is intentional as no record can be digitally transferred to fi le. My colleague therefore is forced to take a screenshot of the message and fi le that. In this case, the recip- ient's preference (and legal ratio- nale) is not the medium preferred by the deliverer. But, over time, haste, urgency and volume may cause one of those instructions to not make it into the chain — pos- sibly with dire consequences. Donohue's message was clear: e medium is important. And I would add so too are content and context. Provide a recipient with clarity, using the preferred meth- od, but also perspective — this is particularly important in modern business where process chains are long and little discretion is expect- ed. Play your part in the chain, but without variation. How a message is delivered — the means, the language, the content and the context — is an important consideration for the effi ciency and eff ectiveness of the way we work. We should look to those roles where these consid- erations are a matter of life and death; for example, fi rst respond- ers and surgeons have already fi g- ured this out. Jan van der Hoop: Paul, I agree wholeheartedly about the impor- tance of content and context. One critical component of context that is totally lost in electronic communication is body language — the non-verbals that speak vol- umes about the message, its true (intended?) meaning, and the sender's underlying intentions, feelings and motivations. But body language also has very diff erent cultural connotations. In many cultures, eye contact is frowned upon as disrespectful; in others, it's a sign of engagement and trustworthiness. Some cul- tures prefer veiled, indirect com- munication while others value people getting straight to the un- varnished point. So, we must be mindful of the meaning we assign to body lan- guage, and have the presence of mind to recognize we have made an assumption and check in with the other person to see if the as- sumption is valid. I've had the good fortune to work with some managers over the years who are exceptionally good at "listening" to body lan- guage — the tone and pace of what's said, posture, eye move- ment, hesitation, even what's not said — and checking in. It can be as simple as "I'm sensing X from you… What's up?" Sometimes they'd be right, sometimes they'd have misread it; either way, it has the benefi t of dialing in to get a deeper sense of what's going on, beyond the words. Sometimes, they'd put their fi nger on something abso- lutely true, which I was oblivious to. It was a powerful tool to im- prove communication and trust. We assume an awful lot over the course of a day — what some- one really means, what their agen- da is, what they are trying to get out of us or a situation. And the truth is most of our assumptions are wrong — fabrications of our own fi lters, beliefs and prejudices. If only we could build the habit of listening fully and without bias to words and context. Once we understand that, the medium is less important and less prone to error. PANELLISTS: • Jan G. van der Hoop, president of Fit First Technologies in Toronto • Paul Pittman, founder and president of the Human Well in Toronto • Sandi Channing, senior director of total rewards at Compass Group Canada Jan van der Hoop Paul Pittman Sandi Channing e traditional approach to so- cial media as a work distraction doesn't work for millennials, ac- cording to Donohue. "What do most of us do at our workplace? We say social media is a waste of time — 'You're not fo- cusing on work; you're not doing this' — Yet that's how they create." As for generation Z, they grew up being treated as a group, but are placed in solitary cubicles when they enter the workforce and are then told social media use at work is inappropriate — actions that lead to high disengagement and low trust rates, she said. "You're ripping out their mam- malian brain anchoring moments." If communication is your workplace problem, closing the variance is the solution, said Donohue. "Close the variance between teams, create standards and pat- terns based on anchoring mo- ments in your mammalian brain, and you'll increase your pro- ductivity 11 per cent, increase your engagement 34 per cent, decrease your stress 34 per cent," she said. "You'll be 34 per cent happier because you won't be sitting in those meetings going, 'Is anybody listening to me?'" Anchoring moments matter MONEYBALL < pg. 14 While some old-school technologies disappear, more eff ective ones will thrive.

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