23
Communicate Successfully by Seeking Balance
DEBORAH A. CAI AND EDWARD L. FINK
How often we hear the charge, “What we need around here is good communication”? Human communication, or the verbal and non-verbal transmission of meaning, is an aspect of everyday life that is too often taken for granted; we all do it, but how often is it done effectively? In fact, there are many misconceptions about communication in the workplace. Someone who talks louder does not necessarily know more than someone who speaks softly or who hardly talks. Someone who is more outgoing is not necessarily more competent than someone more introverted. More talk about a problem is not necessarily better. And venting does not necessarily help to resolve a conflict.
Communication is a balancing act between a sender and receiver; between talking and listening; between what is said, how it is said, and when it is said; between task and relational activities; between conveying types of trust; between using formal and informal channels; and between communicating with one’s peers (if one is a newcomer) and with organizational veterans. And the balancing act varies for the level at which the communication is targeted, whether to individuals, groups or teams, departments, or the organization as a whole. This chapter examines the challenges of balancing the various needs that drive communication.
To communicate can include many different aspects. It can be associated with providing information, resulting in a plethora of memos, newsletters, articles, announcements, reports, and e-mails. It can mean participatory involvement, accomplished through team meetings, formal and informal discussions, negotiations, and brainstorming sessions. Or it can mean engaging employees, in the goals and purposes of the organization and in the relationships that surround them every day in the workplace.
Each approach to communication is driven by different assumptions. Some managers approach communication as a one-way barrage, sending out messages with regular frequency with the assumption that well-informed employees will be effective in what they do. Some managers approach communication as a group activity, holding regular meetings with groups of people to brainstorm, discuss, and determine directions to pursue. And some managers view colleagues and employees as both relational beings and goal oriented, involving them in a variety of ways in the various levels of deliberation and decision making that occur within the organization.
Although communication is one of those every day and all day human activities, its effectiveness can vary greatly. Just because a manager is a good talker, sends a barrage of memos and e-mails, or holds frequent meetings does not mean the manager is an effective communicator. When it comes to communicating, more is not necessarily better; it’s how it is done that matters. Communication, although used throughout the day every day, is a skill like running: Most people are able to run, but only the trained athlete can competently compete.
The classic model of communication proposed by Shannon and Weaver in 1949 highlights a unidirectional mode of sending messages from sender to receiver (Shannon and Weaver, 1963). The message is encoded by the sender, sent through a channel, and decoded or interpreted by the receiver. The whole process is influenced by noise, which can be physical (e.g. aural, visual, gustatory, tactile, olfactory) as well as emotional or psychological. In other words, noise can include an ambulance siren as well as physical fatigue that can make paying attention to a message difficult. Lasswell (1948) summarized the communication process with the following statement: Who said what to whom through what channel with what effect?
More recent iterations of the process have advanced Lasswell’s model of communication: Communication is not unidirectional from sender to receiver; rather, if a sender provides a message, the receiver interprets it and responds to it, even if the response is a grimace or a smile. In addition, communication often involves many parties - groups, mass audiences, readers, and message designers. While one person is speaking, another may communicate boredom or frustration or excitement just as clearly using non-verbal cues. An effective communicator pays attention to the multiple messages that are being delivered between parties as well as to the effectiveness of those messages in accomplishing the many goals of the communicators involved (Wilson and Putnam, 1990). Communication done well requires a sense of balance, between the sender and receiver of messages, between talking and listening, and between too much versus too little communication.
For example, in a recent communication training session for about 25 managers, one trainer delivered her presentation using a series of PowerPoint slides, which she scrolled through with little emotion. She held the microphone too low for it to pick up her voice, read the material verbatim off the slides, and presented the information on the assigned topic in a cursory manner. This one-way approach to communication - from presenter to audience - missed the multiple non-verbal messages being sent in the other direction by the others involved in this interaction: yawns, drooping eyelids, and glazed looks. At the end of the presentation, when the audience was asked if it had any questions, there were none, indicating that the presentation was so complete as to accomplish the training goal in its entirety, that the audience wasn’t alert enough to know what to ask, or that the audience was just grateful that the presentation was over. Presentations are too often assumed to be one-way communication, yet they are much more effective when framed as interactions, even when the communication is delivered in a lecture format.
Communication, even between a speaker and a large audience, should involve a balance in the participation of both sender and receiver. Another way of saying this is that each party to the communication should play both the roles of sender and receiver. From this perspective, a manager should not be the one-way deliverer of messages to employees but should be engaged in a two-way or multiple-way exchange of messages with the team members, employees, or negotiators. A sender-only approach would be to simply send memos out to employees - one way, disappearing into the void of organizational oblivion; but a two-way, sender-receiver approach means that the effect of the memo should be assessed: Did the employees receive it, attend to it, understand it, evaluate it, and give the message sender the necessary feedback? These processes - receipt, attention, comprehension, evaluation, and feedback - are all part of communicating, but feedback is essential if the organization is to benefit from the experience, knowledge, ability, and attitudes of the organizational members. Furthermore, the implementation of any directives in the memo as the sender expects, and responses to future memos, require the complete cycle of communication, including feedback.
One of the common mistakes made about communication is that it predominantly involves talking, leading to the fallacy that the more messages sent out the more communication has occurred. Managers often make the mistake of assuming communication occurs in only one direction: “From me to you.” Thus, messages are treated as if they are unidirectional, aimed outward, and rarely returning, rather than listening, watching, and responding to feedback or messages sent in return. What’s more, an employee’s opinions, questions, and, most importantly, criticisms are often viewed as disruptive or even a waste of time (Senge, 2006).
The idea that “more communication is better” needs to be reconsidered. More talk may help, but more talk is not sufficient to improve communication, and at times, more talk can even be detrimental to problem solving. It is not enough for an athlete to say, “I need to run more” or “I need to play more tennis” or “I need to swim more.” Whatever the sport, the athlete improves through a planned program that includes targeted improvement across needed skills, good nutrition, and careful attention to prevent injuries. At times, too much activity, especially when done wrong, can cause more injury than benefit. In the same way, too much talk can actually hurt the communication process rather than help it. More talk is not sufficient; more effective communication is what is needed.
Communication involves both talking and listening, neither of which is as simple as it sounds. But here’s a good place to start: To talk effectively depends on the ability to listen effectively. And the balance between the two should be that some talking should be balanced with a lot more listening.
Listening has been significantly associated with perceptions of communication competence in the workplace (Haas and Arnold, 1995) and has been shown to contribute to promotion and advancement within organizations (Sypher, Bostrom, and Seibert, 1989; Sypher and Zorn, 1986). It is one of the most important abilities for employees and employers (Wolvin and Coakley, 1992). Listening involves both accuracy and support (Cooper and Husband, 1993), seeking input and suggestions, willingness to put one’s own thoughts aside, empathy, willingness to respond to others’ questions and suggestions, and willingness to ask questions of others and seek their response to those questions. Listening behaviors include not interrupting as well as acknowledging others’ comments with both verbal and non-verbal responses. And most of all, listening takes time, an ability to remember the content of the conversation, and a willingness to act on what was heard (Halone and Pecchioni, 2001). At times listening may require ensuring that there is sufficient time to listen and consider suggestions and options rather than coming up with an immediate plan of action.
Generic listening responses include nodding and backchanneling (e.g. giving vocal responses such as mmhmm, yeah, or go on), whereas specific listening behaviors include leaning forward to punctuate a point the other has made, adjusting one’s posture to mirror the other person’s physical position, or providing responses that signal specific acknowledgment of the other person’s points such as found in empathic listening (Pasupathi, Stallworth, and Murdoch, 1998). The empathic listener summarizes the emotions expressed by the speaker. In addressing how to communicate effectively during crises, Donohue (1992) has provided the Four R method for effective listening:1. Receive the other’s comments without interruption and don’t get defensive.
2. Repeat the person’s comments as objectively as possible.
3. Request the other’s proposed ways of dealing with the problem.
4. Review the options and decide on the best approach. (p. 41)
This approach focuses on allowing others to work through their emotions (see Chapter 8), helping them move to considering viable options, and respecting their conclusions before issuing or pushing one’s own views of the matter. Effective listening requires the balance of putting one’s own views aside long enough to really comprehend what others are saying and then determining the messages that will be most appropriate and effective based on this information.
Too often communicators emphasize only the verbal aspects of messages - the words with which the message is expressed - without attending to supporting cues, such as paralinguistic features, the role of pauses, and the value of silence. Communication is much more than just the content of the message, or what is said.
Manner. An effective communicator adapts not only the message but the delivery to what is known about the other party. Not only is it important to attend to how messages are communicated to others through one’s tone of voice or supportive cues, but hearing through the paralanguage of others is also needed. Paralanguage consists of the vocal elements and vocalization that modifies verbal communication by expressing emotion through tone of voice, speech rate, and other audible sounds, such as hisses, uh huh, tongue clicking, and shhh. The paralanguage associated with how a thought is expressed can be as important as the words that are used to express the thought. If one is inattentive to how one comes across, a speaker may sound frustrated or angry or apathetic when communicating simply because the speaker is tired, in a hurry, or is having difficulty hearing over background noises. Communication over the telephone is especially challenging to the use of paralinguistic cues: Laughter must be communicated aurally - with sound - not just with a smile, because the person on the other end cannot see a smile over the phone; low or monotone voices can come across as unfriendly or uninterested when no facial cues are available to suggest otherwise.
Misunderstandings and conflict often occur between people more because of how something is said rather than because of what is said. Furthermore, national, ethnic, and regional differences in paralanguage can result in misinterpretation of someone’s meaning simply because of the tone of voice or the pace at which a person speaks. For example, for Korean men, slower speech rate is considered more competent, whereas for American men, faster speech is perceived as more competent (Lee and Boster, 1992). For Arabs and Greeks, louder speech indicates strength whereas soft speech indicates frailty; for Filipinos and Thai, a soft tone of voice is considered more competent and respectful than a loud tone of voice. Japanese, Austrians, and Americans tend to use louder speech whereas Swedes, Norwegians, and Dutch use more relaxed speech patterns (Ngai, 2000). Native Japanese and Spanish speakers were found to misjudge emotion communicated in spoken English, misinterpreting anger and hate as indicating nervousness and depression (Graham, Hamblin, and Feldstein, 2001).
Many examples are available to illustrate the importance of attending to paralinguistic features of communicating (see Chapter 33 on cultural differences). The Chinese language, for example, tends to be spoken with a bit louder tone of voice and a more clipped articulation than English. To a native English speaker, this louder and clipped vocalization can sound angry. In addition, Chinese culture uses fewer polite forms than most Americans are used to, such as please and thank you. In Chinese, polite forms are reserved to “give face” within relationships that need to be nurtured and preserved (see Brown and Levinson, 1987). As a result, to a native English speaker, a native Chinese speaker can sound pushy or upset when speaking English. A phrase such as “Please, have a seat” may be expressed as “Sit here,” which seems impolite to the English speaker, especially when, as mentioned, it is clipped and louder than the English speaker is used to. Although the meaning of “Please, have a seat” means the same to the English speaker that “Sit here” means to the Chinese speaker, the paralanguage along with the lack of the polite form, please, results in the Chinese speaker being perceived to be unfriendly and curt by the English speaker. Especially in a diverse workplace, in which diversity can include gender, ethnicity, and cultural and even regional differences, effective communication includes realizing that the delivery of the message may have as much to do with how a message is understood as the verbal content of the message.
Time. Because discussions of communication generally center on what is said and how it is said, the effects of silence, pauses, and timing are often overlooked. Silence can have both negative and positive effects on communication, depending on how it is used and how attentive people are to its use. Some people are silent because of personality or because of cultural norms: Japanese and Finns prefer silence because it is an opportunity to learn and a protection of privacy, whereas excessive talking is viewed as indicating arrogance. Americans, French, and Italians value thinking out loud and expressive communication to share ideas and gain the confidence of the listener (Lewis, 1999). As a result, brainstorming - the process of quickly emitting ideas, whether good or bad, to encourage people to be creative in coming up with new ideas - is a process that is not comfortable for people from cultures in which being wrong creates a loss of face or in which only leaders are expected to provide direction. A brainstorming session, or similar group discussions, may leave a person who is reticent, due to culture or personality, out of the discussion, even when the person has good ideas to contribute. Team members, and especially team leaders, may find that the reticent individual has much to offer to the discussion when given the opportunity to express ideas in a different setting. Thus, such individuals need to be encouraged to give their input during the meeting or they need to be talked to one on one outside of the meeting if their input, which may be very valuable, is to be obtained. (Technology can be used to facilitate communication without the threat posed by face-to-face interaction; see Chapter 32.)
A more subtle influence of silence is the use of conversational pauses. Ford and Thompson (1996) found that a pause of 0.3 seconds was noticeable in conversation, and pauses of as little as 0.13 seconds have been found to have psychological relevance to listeners (Hieke, Kowal, and O’Connell, 1983). In a study of conversational patterns, people who paused before responding, especially when they then responded with um after pausing, were judged to be less honest and less comfortable with the topic of discussion (Fox Tree, 2002). A pause of only half a second is likely to be interpreted as meaning that the speaker is giving up his or her turn to speak (Wennerstrom and Siegel, 2003).
Pauses can be helpful or harmful depending on their use within conversation and the national, ethnic, or regional meanings attached to them. A person who pauses longer, waiting for his or her chance to speak, may be left out of the conversation and may even be perceived as uninterested or as having nothing to contribute, when what is actually happening is that the pattern of conversation simply leaves that person out. Gender and regional differences as well as non-native English speech patterns can result in longer or shorter pauses than those used in standard spoken English. When a question has been asked, people from some cultures wait longer than half a second to answer, which could shut them out of the conversation in most American business meetings. Similarly, women in the US are often socialized to wait for a speaker to stop speaking, signaled by a brief pause, before taking their turn to speak, whereas men tend to begin speaking at the very end of someone else’s sentence, picking up the turn to speak just before the other person has finished. This pattern can leave women out of an ongoing discussion with men if the women don’t adjust their speech patterns or if turn-taking is not enforced, as it is, for example, by parliamentary procedure (Robert, Robert, Evans, Honemann, and Balch, 2000).
In contrast, Ngai (2000) found that Ethiopian and Tanzanian negotiators, once they began to talk, often continued talking for five to 15 minutes without giving up their turn to speak; when others tried to break into the conversation the negotiators from these countries continued to speak over them. But Ngai also found that Ethiopians used long, dead silences to communicate displeasure or show disagreement.
The use of filled pauses - uh, er, ah, and um, for example - gives a communicator time to think and reflects the range of word choices that a speaker has (Schachter, Christenfeld, Ravina, and Bilous, 1991). Thus, speakers who are searching for what to say resort to filled pauses, which should be noticeable to the audience. Some communication topics give the speaker fewer word choice options, and therefore the speaker will emit filled pauses at a low rate (Schachter et al., 1991). Schachter et al. (1991) found that those lecturing on the natural sciences emitted filled pauses at lower rate than did those lecturing on the social sciences, who, in turn, emitted filled pauses at a lower rate (but not significantly lower) than did those lecturing on the humanities. Thus, if a speaker emits filled pauses at a relatively high rate, the listener may either attribute that to the speaker’s lack of expertise on the topic or to the topic’s not being very “factual.”
So differences in pauses can leave someone out of the conversation unintentionally and lead to misattributions about the quality and quantity of one’s contributions to the group. To address this issue, a good communicator will not only listen to the person talking but also watch to see who is not talking and find ways to involve those people who appear to be less responsive to the conversation (see case example “Managing the babbler,” below).
But pauses can also be helpful in communicating. Long pauses can be used strategically to put pressure on another person to respond to a question or to concede an offer. Because even a half-second pause means something to listeners, Americans find pauses that exceed more than a few brief seconds to be uncomfortable. Thus, creating a long pause puts pressure on the other person to fill the pause. Teachers use this tactic to pressure students to respond to their questions, but teachers must be taught to wait, to count to 15 seconds, before restating the question or providing an answer. Similarly, trained negotiators use this tactic to pressure an opponent to give in. The one who breaks the silence is often the one who concedes. In a study conducted by the first author, participants from Taiwan and the US engaged in negotiation, and a repeated pattern was observed: An American participant would make an offer; the participant from Taiwan would look down at his or her profit sheet to consider the offer; a long pause would ensue, during which time the Taiwan participant was thinking. Inevitably, the American would make a conceding offer before the Taiwan participant could respond to the initial offer. The Americans couldn’t wait through the extended pause, taking the pause as a rejection of the offer. In fact, the pause could have been an opportunity for both parties to think through their options.
Communication involves a balance between knowing when to speak, when to listen, when to let others speak, and when to wait. And waiting can sometimes take hours, days, or even longer. When emotions are intense or the path of decision is unclear, waiting a period of time, to let emotions cool or to gather more information about interests and options, can be a worthwhile investment of time. Rather than continuing to meet in an attempt to force a decision, allowing interested parties to consider information provided in an initial meeting and to think through options made or new options may result in a more reasoned decision, one that the parties are more willing to accept and agree to.
Technology affects the pace, structure, and ambiguity of communication. For example, e-mail and text messaging encourage brief messages, “point-for-point statements and rebuttals” (Kolb, 1966, as cited in Rice and Gattiker, 2001, p. 561), and, due to the absence of paralinguistic and other non-verbal cues, misunderstandings especially with regard to the emotional tone and intent of the sender. Emoticons, such as ☺ and ☹, developed in part to deal with this problem. Furthermore, these high-tech high-text methods of communicating generally lack the formal structure of, for example, a formal meeting or business letter, and the norms for these forms of communication within and between organizations are just being developed: Does one begin an e-mail as if it is a letter or as if it is a telephone call or as if it is a face-to-face conversation? Conversations, even business conversation, typically have a playful element prior to termination; does one engage in non-serious communication with a business associate via e-mail, and if so, how? In addition, because these communications are asynchronous, it is often hard to interpret a non-response: Is the other party angry or busy or consulting others or considering and weighing options or merely engaging in other activities rather than responding? Strategic non-responses, such as seeming unavailable when actually available, are easier to pull off with technology because it is harder to find out the communicative availability of the other party when one is at a distance. Finally, initiating these high-tech high-text communications when angry is frequently disastrous: When the “send” key is clicked, there is no recourse.
More communication is not better when emotions are high, not if the communication is no longer effective at sharing information or if the greater amount of communication may lead to damaging relationships. Sometimes delaying the communication and then approaching the issues from a different direction, such as by one-on-one discussions, providing summaries of the variety of interests covered in the initial meeting, and allowing emotions to subside, is a more effective approach. Then returning to communicate about the issues at another time can generate a fresh look at the problems at hand, one that can be successful in part because tempers have cooled and new ideas have come to the forefront (see case example “The team dissent over hiring,” below).
For an organization, there are several balancing acts that are notable. Most importantly, there is a balancing act between the task and relational (socio-emotional) functions to which the organizational leadership must attend. According to Bernard, “the survival of any organization depends on its ability to solve two problems: the achievement of the purposes for which the organization was formed, and the satisfaction of the more immediate needs of the members of the organization” (Slater, 1955, p. 308).
A communication may convey information about the task at hand (related to “the purposes for which the organization was formed,” for example deciding whom to hire), relationship information (related to “the satisfaction of the more immediate needs of the members of the organization,” for example how solid the friendship is between group members), or both. And communication is the medium by which these activities are accomplished. An example of task and relational activity phases over time is found in phone and hallway conversations: However task-focused a conversation is, it will often end with a joke or some other unserious remark that brings the conversation to a close.
Early coding schemes differentiated task from relational communications (Bales, 1950). Communications that are positive and socio-emotional are those that show solidarity, tension release, and agreement; those that are task related are those that give or ask for suggestions, opinions, or orientations; and those that are negative and socio-emotional are those that show disagreement, tension, or antagonism. When we communicate over time, we go through phases when either task or relational communication predominates. In addition to this over-time specialization, groups tend to have individuals who generally focus on task matters and others who focus on relational matters.
The differentiation of task and relational leadership in an organization is sometimes captured in the formal organizational roles. Managers are, generally speaking, supposed to focus on organizational success, as, for example, determined by sales, productivity, and corporate image. Some organizations overlay this management structure with counselors, ombudspersons, and human relations staff, whose function is to solve problems associated with inappropriate communication, animosities, and cliques in the workplace. Modern organizations have HR departments to deal with relational issues, although the “bottom line” may still be the implicit underlying consideration.
In organizational groups or teams, there is likely to be a differentiation between both the relative amounts that group members communicate and the orientation of their communications between tasks and relationships. As for the first, there is evidence that sheer talking helps create a leadership hierarchy (Mullen, Salas, and Driskell, 1989; Stein and Heller, 1983; but cf. Pavitt, Whitchurch, Siple, and Petersen, 1997). Talking more helps make one a group leader (for better or for worse). On the other hand, there is some evidence that leaders specialize in task activities or in relational activities (Slater, 1955; cf. Lewis, 1972). Burke (1968) stated that “inequality of participation [by group members] in task activities leads to the emergence of separate specialized task and social-emotional roles [when task activity is low in legitimacy]” (p. 404). Thus, the amount of communication along with the balance of specialization in task activities versus relational activities helps to create the group’s hierarchical structure.
This hierarchical structure has important implications for the way that antagonisms and disagreements are created and transform the group. A relationship has been found between the amount that the group’s task leader exceeds others in task performance and the amount that the low-status group member is scapegoated, at least in groups whose activities are low in legitimation (i.e. the acceptability of the tasks to the group members; see Burke, 1969). Further, if the task leader does not support the low-status member, scapegoating the low-status member increases (Gallagher and Burke, 1974). In other words, group members are likely to be antagonistic and disagree with the low-status group member, rather than show solidarity toward or agree with this person, when the task leader is performing admirably and doesn’t support the low-status group member.
Consistent with these ideas, a simulation found that the most effective five-member group had members with different roles, including a social organizer and a democratic task leader (Hare and Hare, 2001). Furthermore, in student groups, “the nature and frequency of the leader’s communication,” among other things, affected the quality of what the group produced (Harper and Askling, 1980, p. 6). In this study, the leaders of successful groups communicated more about task than about socio-emotional matters and were perceived as communicating more than others. Finally, scapegoating undermines group effectiveness, because it lessens the involvement and productivity of the person scapegoated, takes the time and energy of group members to “excommunicate” a group member rather than integrate the member in the group, and in most bureaucratic organizations it takes additional time and energy if the scapegoated member is to be dismissed: Typically, the leader must repeatedly (1) document the failures of this individual, (2) document the attempts to improve this individual’s performance, (3) sanction this individual, and (4) document the acknowledgments by the scapegoated individual of these documents and meetings related to them. Although these activities may be necessary if a member is not competent or is particularly disruptive to the group, these activities are usually quite costly to the group and to the organization.
Thus, several balancing acts are needed:• Leaders may wish to democratize group meetings by encouraging greater communication by all group members, but doing so may undermine the leader’s role as a leader. Therefore, the leader must realize that equality of communication by group members is not realistic and is ultimately inefficient, but promoting task-related communication generates support for the leader and efficiency in the group.
• Leaders may concentrate on task-related activities, but they also should be aware that relational concerns require time and effort. Therefore, leaders may designate another person to give these concerns their necessary attention, and they should not minimize the importance of maintaining morale and preventing scapegoating.
• Joking and other unserious activities may appear to reduce task activity, but at various times they may be necessary for the group’s communicative health. Therefore, the leader must recognize this need for playful communication, especially as groups complete their scheduled work time; they should not view these activities merely as diversions from work; and they may need to provide organizational resources - release time, space, and funds - for these activities.
• If task activities are not viewed as acceptable, or if support for the low-status group member is not communicated, group members may resort to scapegoating, which is an unproductive and divisive activity. Therefore, a leader needs to persuade group members that its tasks are legitimate and needs to avoid undermining any low-status (but potentially valuable) group members, which, in the long term, builds a more effective group. These ideas also suggest that reprimands be private whenever possible; otherwise group members may either scapegoat the individual who has been reprimanded or, if that individual can form a coalition with other group members, the coalition can undermine the leader.
The process of becoming integrated into an organization also requires a balancing act. On entering an organization, a new employee is expected to be successful in handling a new job, which requires acquiring new knowledge and becoming acclimated to new expectations, decision-making processes, and relationships. Furthermore, these “novelties” take place in an environment that is new to the recruit or novice. Socialization is the process through which an employee comes to understand the knowledge, values, norms, and behaviors needed to participate as a member of the organization (Van Maanen, 1975; see also Jablin, 2001). These aspects - organizational knowledge, values, norms, and behaviors - must be learned, and they are learned through communication (see Chapter 20), via formal as well as informal channels. Furthermore, the formal and informal channels both provide information, which is sometimes reinforcing, sometimes independent, and sometimes contradictory. So there is a balancing act between learning about the organization through formal policy documents, hierarchies, and plans, and adhering to them, versus utilizing informal interactions and organizational norms to generate one’s organizational conduct and understanding. Both the formal and informal structures and norms are necessary to learn, and successful newcomers’ behavior is a synthesis of these normative systems.
Informal channels are typically replete with stories - narratives that are presumed to tell the “real” version of what’s what (Mumby, 1987) - and gossip. Gossip, even if ultimately wrong, mean spirited or innocuous, is a means to acquire influence by selectively sharing information, and information is power. Biological anthropologist Robin Dunbar (1996) hypothesized that gossip provides the same “positive strokes” that grooming does among other primates. In addition to gossip, much of the novice’s organizational learning involves listening to and interacting with third parties, vicarious learning (i.e. being influenced, often unconsciously, by what happens to others), and surveillance (purposeful observation). One sees who talks with whom, who is formally rewarded or punished, who is informally derogated or praised, who has broad freedom of action and who does not, who has formal or informal influence over others, and who knows how and with whom to connect to get the job done. As Mechanic (1962) has shown, often lower-status people - an office manager who handles files, or, more humorously, company clerk (and bugler) Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly in M*A*S*H (Hornberger and Gelbart, 1972-1983) - control access to people, information, and the flow of information (see Katz and Kahn, 1966).
People who learn and adopt the organization’s values develop strong interaction skills, become competent communicators within the organization, are generally more satisfied in their work, identify more closely with those with whom they work, and become more integrated into the organization’s communication networks. This integration results in greater accessibility to information and facilitates further integration. But the hard part of the socialization process is not to put too much stock in the informal network, nor to put too much stock in the formal one. And it should be noted that there are ethical limits on organizational commitment: Some organizations may not be worth one’s commitment (see Chapter 20).
If a person is new to an organization, with whom does that person talk? On the one hand, the organizational veterans presumably know how the organization works; after all, they have already been integrated, with varying degrees of success, into the organization. On the other hand, these veterans may appear (and often are) unapproachable - they might want to distance themselves from the newcomer because of an “anti-fraternization” ethos - and they might even delight in some small degree of hazing the newcomer. There may be a veteran who serves as a mentor, but even if this were the case the interaction of mentor and newcomer may be limited and too “official,” that is, too closely tied to formal communication channels and the information that it provides. On the other hand, one’s peers may be quite approachable, but they may lack the requisite knowledge that the novice needs. Furthermore, being seen as too closely tied to other novices may give the appearance of being too loosely connected to the organization. If the newcomer uses peers for social support, how is the newcomer to “learn the ropes”? Interacting with veterans to acquire organizational knowledge may have the inadvertent effect of looking like a brownnoser, and no one wants to be characterized in this way. Hence, another communication balancing act.
There is evidence about how this balancing act works. Fink and Chen (1995) studied a university’s faculty members. They divided their sample into three groups based on the number of years that each person had been a faculty on that campus: 17 or more years (“HI tenure”), five to 16 years (“MI tenure”), and less than five years (“LO tenure”). Comparing the high- versus the low-tenure groups, the high-tenure group was found to be significantly more homogeneous with regard to university-related beliefs and attitudes. Furthermore, members of each tenure group spent significantly more time communicating with their own group members than with members of the other group. The higher net amount of communication within the HI tenure group was thought to explain why its members were more homogeneous than the LO tenure group was.
The effect of this communication pattern to relative veterans versus to relative novices was clear: An individual’s attitudes and beliefs become more similar to the group with whom he or she has greater communication. The balancing act for novices involves having greater communication with their peers but sufficient communication with their seniors so as to accelerate their integration into the organization. Integration into the organization makes newcomers more effective organizational members, and the more that newcomers communicate with veterans, the faster their integration into the organization.
Finally, it should be noted that communication with non-peers has a special informational advantage when one is seeking ties that go beyond one’s immediate organizational “neighborhood.” Granovetter (1973, 1995) has shown that one’s peers are likely to want to be of help, but they are likely to have the same base of information that one already has. On the other hand, those with whom one is less associated - in Granovetter’s terms, those who are weak ties - are likely to have information that one doesn’t have. So, for purposes of connecting to those outside one’s immediate communication network, such as for getting a job, one might turn to those with whom one is weakly attached. Granovetter (1973, 1983, 1995) has shown that these weak ties are associated with the diffusion of ideas and fashion as well as finding out about job opportunities; his 1983 essay clarifies the weak-tie hypothesis and its relevance to a broad array of studies. The communicative balance discussed here is between the support but ignorance of those who are close and the inaccessibility but knowledge of those who are communicatively far.
It should be obvious that communication affects the trust people have for each other (see Chapter 21). At the negotiation table trust can make or break a deal; trust between parties allows the negotiators to focus on the instrumental issues, whereas low trust can redirect the negotiators’ attention to psychological and emotional issues. Lulofs (1993) showed that the level of trust between people affects the level of uncertainty they have interacting with each other, which in turn affects the goals they are likely to pursue during their interaction, which then affects their likelihood of using power strategies: When parties have low trust, they are more likely to use defensive power strategies that exacerbate conflict rather than constructive problem-solving strategies.
Trust is often described in unidimensional terms; Pruitt and Carnevale (1993), for example, defined trust as an expectation that the other person will cooperate in the future. But trust is a multidimensional concept, so communication with co-workers must entail a balance between four different types of trust (Cai and Hung, 2005), each of which affects different perceptions about the communicator (see Chapter 21 for a more detailed discussion of trust). The first dimension, competence, has to do with conveying to others that they can trust in the abilities and capabilities of the communicator. In the case of a manager, the competence of the manager affects the perceptions employees and colleagues have of the manager’s ability to deliver promises, accomplish goals, and lead effectively. Low competence on the part of the manager can quickly lead to distrust on the part of the employees and result in lack of attention on the part of those receiving the manager’s messages. Similarly, perceptions that an employee lacks competence can have negative consequences on gaining increased responsibilities, promotion, and raises. Communicating competence requires that a person understands what is expected for the roles that one plays, as an employee, a negotiator, or a manager; further, the individual must understand how these expectations are shaped by the culture of the specific organization. The individual needs to be able to enact those expectations when they communicate.
The second dimension of trust is integrity, which is the expectation that a communicator will adhere to high ethical and moral standards A manager may be competent in her job performance, but if she lacks a moral compass, acting without clear principles for determining fairness and discipline or without attention to organizational policies designed to protect and uphold rights of employees, distrust will quickly ensue. Communicating integrity involves articulating the fair and reasonable principles that guide judgments and actions.
Dependability (or what is also referred to as conscientiousness, see Chapter 2) is the third dimension of trust: knowing that a person can be counted on to do what he says he will do. When a job needs to be done, the best person for the job is one who is both competent to do the job as well as dependable to get the job done (and, of course, will do so with integrity).
The last dimension of trust is benevolence: communicating that the other person’s best interest is kept in mind. This dimension involves letting people know that they are important, that their goals and needs have value, that their ideas are heard and considered, and that the communicator can be trusted to act on their behalf. However, communicating this aspect of trust requires careful attention to that fine balance of attending to the job and attending to the people doing the job. A manager cannot act with too much integrity, but communicating too much benevolence can undermine the working relationship that the manager maintains with the employees, especially if benevolence is not balanced with competence and dependability. And too much benevolence on the part of employees may be perceived as weakness or may result in a manager taking advantage of employees who communicate too much goodwill. By all means, communicate benevolence but do so with attention to the requirements of the organizational roles one must play.
Communicating trust, in all its dimensions, involves a balance between taking into account both who you are as the sender of the message and with whom you are communicating. One size does not fit all when it comes to communicating trust. Messages must be tailored with the recipient in mind and adjusted based on the feedback the recipient communicates in return. Credentials, which communicate competence, only go so far. The most competent employee who is not dependable may soon be left out of decision making. And a manager who acts only as a sender of messages is likely to find that his or her communication is not reaching those meant to receive the message or the message has but a limited effect.
Managing the babbler
Sally works with a group of managers that meet regularly for planning meetings. She has come to view the meetings as a waste of time because it seems nothing ever gets done. One person in particular is the source of the problem; in private, Sally refers to this person as a babbler: someone who jumps into the conversation before anyone else has a chance to speak, dominates the discussion, expresses strong opinions on every issue that arises, and speaks far too long to say what could have been said in a sentence or two.
Given the economic challenges the company is facing, some important issues are coming up in the next meeting. This meeting is especially important because it will require the managers to work through some tough decisions over issues such as whether to replace some of the old initiatives with new ones and whether layoffs will be necessary. Sally feels strongly that this meeting is not one in which one person should dominate the discussion. A variety of perspectives need to be heard, and there needs to be an opportunity to debate the issues and listen to options to come to a joint agreement about where the company is headed. Sally’s afraid that this process of discussion won’t happen with the babbler on board.
1. Suppose Sally were the group leader: In that role what could Sally do to address her concerns?
2. Suppose Sally were a relative newcomer to the organization. In that role what could Sally do to address her concerns?
3. As a group, what could be done to manage the communication for better decision making before the meeting? During the meeting? After the meeting?
4. Review the balancing acts that are discussed above. What types of communication need to be balanced in this situation? How should they be balanced?
The team dissent over hiring
In recent months, Kampen Company has hired several people to fill important positions. Not only has the competition for the jobs been fierce, but conflicts that have arisen over whom to hire have been fierce within the organization. In one recent situation, the team in charge of hiring consisted of seven team members plus a team leader. Although the person to be hired will be a member of the team as a whole, some of the team members will work more closely with this person than others. Having narrowed the choices down to three candidates, the team was split in its decision as to whom to hire, and strong emotions drove the discussion. Group A, which consisted of the three team members who would work the most closely with the new hire, felt strongly that the first candidate was clearly the most qualified, that the second candidate met the basic job requirements, and that the third candidate was not at all qualified. Because they would work closest with the new hire, Group A believed strongly that its preference should carry the most weight in the hiring decision.
Group B, which consisted of four team members, saw the situation quite differently. These four people all agreed that the third candidate was the best person for the job and should be hired because this candidate not only met the job requirements but also brought much needed diversity to the team overall.
During the meeting in which the team was to discuss whom to hire, a long and heated discussion unfolded. The team leader tried to maintain a civil discussion, but managing the group’s emotions and keeping the communication from becoming too heated was a challenge. Group A felt that it was being treated unfairly and was being dominated by the rest of the team members, who they believed did not fully understand the requirements of the position. As a result, Group A felt disrespected and distrustful of Group B’s motives. The discussion continued to disintegrate.
In the final analysis, the team leader had the authority to hire whomever the leader considered to be the best candidate for the job. But the team leader faced several challenges. One challenge was to be responsive to the interests of all the team members. Another challenge was to hire the best person for the job. A third challenge was to somehow prevent the divisive rift that seemed to be emerging on the team. And a fourth challenge was to support diversity in hiring.
In an effort to be responsive to the interests of the team members and to end the long and heated discussion, the team leader called for a vote. As was predictable, Group B outvoted Group A, and the third candidate won the vote. Also predictable was that, although Group B “won,” everyone walked out of the room feeling angry and betrayed by some members of the team.
So now the team leader had a new dilemma. The team leader agreed with Group A that the first candidate was a much stronger candidate than the third candidate, who was the least qualified for the position. The leader must consider whether to rely on majority rule and hire the person who won the vote or to exert authority and hire according to her judgment. In addition, the leader must consider the ramifications of these choices.
In the end, the team leader did neither. First, the team leader delayed hiring for a week to give the process the time that was needed for tempers to cool and to give the team leader a chance to talk with people one on one about their preferences. Second, based on individual discussions with each team member, the leader wrote up a list of several issues that seemed to be central to various team members in making the hiring decision, putting in writing the objective interests and then circulating this list of concerns to the members of the team. Third, after time had passed, tempers had cooled, and everyone had time to consider the scope of interests that influenced the hiring decision, the team leader called another meeting to discuss once again whom to hire. This time the team members assessed the three candidates based on the list of interests that had been provided. Discussion ensued, resulting in a reconsideration of all the candidates. In the end, rather than polarizing around two candidates, the reassessment resulted in all of the team members realizing that candidate two, who had been largely overlooked because of previous polarization around candidates one and three, met the interests of everyone on the team. When a new vote was taken, candidate two received nearly unanimous support. This time the team leader’s decision of whom to hire was clear. Candidate two was given the offer and, after some negotiating, accepted the job.
Several principles arise from this case:1. Preserving relationships in the long run is better than reaching a decision in the short run if the short-term decision is at the cost of sacrificing relationships.
2. Majority rule is not always the best rule for team decisions.
3. When group communication falls apart, sometimes talking one on one may be more effective than trying to force discussion and a decision within a group setting that is over-run by strong emotions.
4. Finding ways to move away from emotionally charged communication to focus on interests can redirect the discussion to what matters most, but sometimes it takes effort and creativity to find ways to redirect the communication.
5. Buying time to make a decision can be a very good investment.
Discuss these five principles and relate them to the seven communication subprinciples discussed in this chapter. Are the five principles new ones, or are they the same as or corollaries of the seven principles in the chapter?
CONCLUSION
This chapter has focused on several balancing acts that a successful communicator must manage. Aristotle, and many others, has written about seeking the golden mean by avoiding both deficiency and excess. For communication, one must balance
• the needs of senders and receivers;
• the requirements of speaking and listening;
• the content, manner, and time of communicating;
• the different phases and roles associated with task and relational activities;
• the resources provided by use of formal and informal channels;
• the costs and benefits of learning from newcomers versus veterans;
• the value that different types of trust have for the communicator.
Of course, there are other balancing acts that are not discussed here; for example, Eisenberg and Goodall (2004) subtitle their book on organizational communication “balancing creativity and constraint.” But if a communicator within an organization can balance the seven aspects of communication discussed here, that communicator will indeed have achieved the golden mean of effective communication.
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Take-home exercise - sociograms
Communication is both the substance and the medium for information flow. To learn how information flows, we need to gather data on communication behavior, in particular, who speaks to whom about what. A sociogram is a diagram in which people are points or circles and lines represent types of relationships between the people.
1. Keep a journal of everyone whom you spoke to for one day at work. Write down to whom you spoke (individuals or groups), for how long, about what topics, and the type of relationship you have with those persons.
2. Group these people together according to the reason you interacted with them; for example, people you work with on a particular project are grouped together, people who are in particular departments are grouped together, clients are grouped together, and so on.
3. Draw a sociogram (or network) that connects these people or groups of people (use no more than 10 people or groups) to you and to each other. Use thicker lines to denote strong relationships, thinner lines to denote weaker but important relationships, and dotted lines to denote relationships with people that are both weak and not important to you.
4. Now redraw the sociogram to illustrate the amount of time you talked with these people. Use thicker lines to denote more minutes, thinner lines to denote fewer minutes, and dotted lines to denote very brief conversations.
5. Compare the two sociograms. What do these illustrations tell you about whom you communicate with, why, and for how long? Do these sociograms suggest ways you may improve your communication with others?
In-class exercise - effect of trust on communication
Describe a recent dispute that you had with another person where the trust between you and the other person was either very high or very low. Describe the relationship between you and the other party, why there was high or low trust between you, and what happened in the dispute?
1. Did the level of trust you had with the other person affect the way you communicated with the other person and the outcome of the dispute? In what ways? Which of the four aspects of trust were involved?
2. If the level of trust had been the opposite of what it was, how do you think your communication would have been affected? Do you think the outcome would have been different (in other words, if there was high trust, what do you think would have happened if trust had been very low, or vice versa)?
3. What do you conclude about the influence of trust on how you communicate? How can knowledge about trust help you communicate more effectively in the future?