Communication Break-Down

I recently gave a talk about nonverbal communication in the workplace, and shared that I would be presenting our brand new workshop, The Language of Leadership, next Tuesday.

A woman in the audience raised her hand and said, “I’ve asked my manager for approval to attend this workshop, but I don’t think he sees me as a leader. How do I persuade him to grant me permission to attend?”

I responded, “You don’t. Don’t give your power away. Attend, pay for it yourself if you have to, and instead of asking him to see you as a leader, show him your leadership. In other words, don’t wait for permission to lead, lead from where you are.”

Too often we believe that leadership is something that’s awarded to us, or something that’s linked to our role or position. But in actuality, leadership is a decision. Lead from any chair, says Ben Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, and author of The Art of Possibility. Whether we’re a member of an orchestra, school board or a team of engineers, we don’t need a title or permission to lead.

Seth Godin, in his book Tribes- We Need You to Lead Us -a book I can barely put down- says, “The question isn’t, Is it possible for me to do that? The question is, Will I choose to do it?”

Will you?

Everyone can be a leader. You just need a vision, a voice, and a connection with your followers. But first you must decide to lead.

So put aside the reasons why you aren’t leadership material, or why you can’t afford it, or why it’s too hard to get time off, and make the decision to lead from where you are. Join me this coming Tuesday, March 29th, to learn how to speak the language of leadership. No more excuses. Decide, take action, and step into leadership. As Seth says, we need you to lead us.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook, then you know I love love love the movie King’s Speech, which is up for 12 oscars this coming Sunday. If you haven’t seen it, GO.

Oh, and stop reading. <Spoiler Alert!>

One of the greatest scenes in the movie is when Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who the soon-to-be King of England hopes will cure him of his stuttering, insists on calling the king by his first name, Bertie. You can imagine how the royal takes this informal way of speaking from a commoner. In addition, Lionel insists that “Bertie” call him by his first name instead of  ”Doctor.”

Here’s the dialogue:

BERTIE

Aren’t you going to start treating me Dr Logue?

LIONEL

Only if you’re interested in being treated. Please, call me Lionel.

BERTIE

I prefer Doctor.

LIONEL

I prefer Lionel. What’ll I call you?

BERTIE

Your Royal Highness, then Sir after that.

LIONEL

A bit formal for here. What about your name?

BERTIE

Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George.

LIONEL

How about Bertie?

BERTIE

(flushes) Only my family uses that.

LIONEL

Perfect. In here, it’s better if we’re equals.

BERTIE

If we were equal I wouldn’t be here. I’d be at home with my wife and no-one would give a damn.

Thus begins an amazing story of healing and friendship.

Imagine my surprise when I encountered, in a workshop this past week, an almost identical situation. As I worked with a group of elected officials, the subject of how they preferred people address them came up. “Constituents insist on calling me by my elected position, rather than by my first name,” a member of the audience said. “I continue to correct them, but to no avail.”

So why did it work when Lionel insisted on being called by his first name, but backfire when the newly elected official insisted on the same? On the face of it, both situations seem alike. But there is one crucial difference: the level of responsibility.

In my workshops I draw an x/y axis grid, writing “position” in the right-hand upper grid, and “person” in the left-hand lower grid. I then draw a diagonal line from grid to grid. The higher you are on the level of responsibility, the more appropriate it is to operate from your position. The lower you are on the level of responsibility, the more appropriate it is to operate from your person. An elected official is high on the level of responsibility. He or she steps into a role that many have filled before. There is a culture associated with the position, one that requires the official to use the proper title. Although there will be times that the official can ask that people call him by his first name, the expectation is that he be called, and answer, to the title of which he has been elected. In other words, whether she likes it or not, an elected official must operate from her position.

Lionel was lower on the level of responsibility. He worked one-on-one with clients, and believed that being on equal footing better served the treatment process. He was able to operate from his person.

Oftentimes we get stuck in what we prefer, rather than what works. Just like it wouldn’t work for the King to ask his subjects to call him Bertie, it doesn’t work for the elected official to insist his constituents call him by his first name. When you occupy a position, you must operate from that position. You no longer get to be “Dan Johnson” you must become “Commissioner, Congressman or President” Johnson. The title isn’t you- you’re just borrowing it for a time. But to be successful, you must increase your positional communication. Lionel was just that- Lionel, and therefore could operate from his person. To be successful, he increased his personal communication.

There’s a reason why we say it’s lonely at the top. Sometimes the job requires you to act against your instincts.

A few years back I was hosting Thanksgiving at our house. My brother-in-law was dating a woman who would eventually become his wife, and she was included in the invitation. She is from Russia, and I am from Finland, and well…perhaps that’s where the trouble really started. But in any case, she asked if she could bring some Russian dishes to the meal, and I readily agreed.

Thanksgiving arrived, as did my brother-in-law and future sister-in-law, their arms full of casserole dishes. I asked them to come in, at which point she walked over to my -I most humbly point out- perfectly laid Thanksgiving table and started shoving things out of the way to make room for the casseroles. She demanded various serving utensils, and handed me something that needed to be heated up.

As I stood there, stunned, I thought, “she doesn’t have permission to do that.”

Now, I don’t mean she didn’t ask for permission. Had she asked, like any good hostess, I would have bitten my lip and given it. But all she would have ended up with was my verbal permission. Nonverbal permission is unspoken- it’s how receptive we are to the influence of others.

When we have permission with someone, even if our communication is clumsy, they still get our intent. They give us a pass when we aren’t as clear as we mean to be. Usually, this type of trust comes over time. And yet, we don’t always have the luxury of time, in both our professional and personal lives, to create strong relationships that lead to increased permission. We must be able to get our message across, even with people we don’t have a relationship with.

We do this by increasing our nonverbal intelligence. When we become nonverbally intelligent we become more aware- both of what we’re sending nonverbally, and what other people are sending nonverbally. Because nonverbal communication translates the majority of any message, our verbal and nonverbal communication must be congruent. Since we also increase our awareness of other people’s nonverbal behavior, we can watch carefully as we communicate to see how we’re doing and adapt our approach based on what we observe. When we communicate clearly and sensitively, we end up increasing permission- which often leads to the strong relationships we seek.

So this Thanksgiving I am going to be thankful for the people in my life with whom I have a lot of permission. They allow me to be me, even when I’m not exactly pleasant. And while I’m at it, I’m going to try to be less uptight about my holiday table arrangements.

I love pajamas. If I’m at home, I’m in my pajamas- no matter if it’s 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. Sometimes I even wear them to run errands. I wish I could wear them to work. But just like one outfit won’t get you through life, neither will one communication style.

Thinking it will is the biggest communication mistake you can make.

What do I mean by communication style?  It depends on who you’re listening to these days. One school of thought says you can be an expresser, driver, relater or analytical. Another divides it into colors. Yet another says people can be categorized as doers, thinkers, creators and listeners. Even one of our programs uses the analogy of household pets to understand the different ways people communicate.

There’s nothing wrong with learning about ourselves- it can be fun to label and compare. But fun isn’t the same as effective. All effective communicators have more than one way of communicating. They understand that not only do they need to be aware of their own preferences and biases, they need to be aware of other people’s preferences and biases. Good communication only happens when people are in sync. Knowing how you communicate is only half of the equation. Learning how to adapt to the person you’re communicating with is where the magic happens.

Happy (late) New Year.

Many of us are still recovering from the holidays- the overspending, the overeating:

The time with family.

Don’t get me wrong, spending time with family can be great, but it can also be a pain in the neck. Especially with in-laws.

My friend and I were talking about in-law relationships recently when she asked, “Why are they so hard? What’s the deal with in-laws?”

It really comes down to permission.

I don’t mean the act of asking permission. I define permission as how receptive someone is to you or your message. The more receptive they are, the more permission you have, and vice versa.

The problem with in-law relationships is that in-laws often feel that they have more permission than they really do. Meaning, they feel we are more receptive to their influence than we actually are.

When you think about it it makes sense as to why: when we first meet our future spouses we are overly polite and bend over backwards to get our future in-laws to like us. Which means we let the small annoyances go and overlook the nosiness of our future mother-in-law or the pushiness of our future father-in-law and just figure it’s more important that everybody get along.

Which is fine until we actually get married and the little things we overlooked become big things. But because we overlooked them in the first place we’ve now sent the message that asking when we’re going to have children already or suggesting we have the Smiths over for dinner because, well, didn’t they have you over last month, and it is important you reciprocate- is just fine with us. Except that it’s not.

As I was working on writing this post I asked my husband Kevin for an example of in-law permission, figuring since we are temporarily living with my parents, he’d have plenty of examples.

“Your mom’s brutal honesty,” he said without even pausing to think. “She didn’t have permission with me to be so honest.” This is the woman who, when I said we were thinking about having children, said, “aren’t you too old to have kids?” Ouch. (In her defense she said it out of concern, not to be mean.) She’s equally honest with Kevin, not understanding that when he asks how she likes a meal he prepared (he’s a professional chef) a simple, “It’s great, thanks!” is appropriate. His feelings have been hurt more than once.

“What changed?” I asked, knowing that it bothers him much less than it used to. “Well,” he said, “I now know your mom a lot better and know that’s just her way. It’s also comforting to know that if I want the truth I can go to her and be sure to get it. There’s no bull with your mom, and I like that.” Which is the beauty about my mom. What you see is what you get, which, when you think about it, is so rare in today’s world.

The Permission Principle states: “The amount of permission we have is directly related to the strength and quality of our relationships.” When my mom and Kevin were first getting to know each other she didn’t have permission to be brutally honest. But as their relationship grew, so did the permission.

Lack of permission (read: boundary crossing) is detrimental to relationships, sure. But if we realize that the forced “instant intimacy” between the in-laws and the new spouse contributes to the false sense of permission, we might think about giving our in-laws a little more grace.

Now that the holidays are over and they’ve gone back home that is.

“I’m writing my Coach blog,” I told my sister when she asked what I was doing. “Oh good,” she said, “I have a coaching question I need to ask you.” “No,” I said, “not a coach blog, a Coach blog.” “I don’t get it,” she said. “The purses,” I said. “Coach purses.” “You’re writing a blog about purses?” she asked. “What does that have to do with nonverbal communication?” “Because of the unfriendly salesperson,” I said. But let me back up.

I have a Coach problem. I don’t have a problem coaching people, I have a problem -some might say addiction- with the designer handbags.

I’ve tried to explain this problem to my husband by pointing out the numerous benefits of a Coach purse. For example, they last forever. His reply? “If that’s true, then you only need one.”

Good point.

Last Christmas I received a Coach gift certificate for $100. If you’ve ever been inside a Coach store, you would know $100 buys half of a wallet, so I decided to save it and use it at a Coach Outlet.

My friend and I arrived at the outlet one afternoon and started shopping. By the time I made it around the entire store I had 15 purses slung over my shoulders, and Rachel even had a few.

I caught the eye of a bewildered-looking saleswoman and asked for help. She plucked a purse out of the pile and began describing its features -zipper vs. snap, two straps vs. one, adjustable straps vs. nonadjustable. This went on for the better part of 20 minutes, until we had finally weeded it down to three purses. At this point, I simply could not make a decision between the remaining three. I said, “What do YOU do when you need to decide on a purse?”

Without hesitation she turned, pointed to another saleswoman and said, “I ask HER.”

She said it with such reverence and finality you would have thought we’d overlooked the designated Coach oracle, whose advice we should have known to ask in the first place. I looked over to where she had pointed and saw a saleswoman standing in the middle of the store, arms crossed, eyes scanning the store and its occupants. She didn’t seem interested in helping anyone, so I assumed she was on the lookout for shoplifters. But I was obviously mistaken. She was THE ONE TO ASK.

She walked over to where we were standing, and I explained my dilemma. Unlike a typical salesperson, she never made eye contact, smiled, or engaged in conversation. She quietly looked over the purses on the countertop and then down at the purse I had come in with. She pointed to the one in the middle, said “that one,” and walked away.

“Ring it up,” I said.

I tell this story a lot, because we believe salespeople should be friendly. But that’s not always true. Salespeople, like all of us, need to understand permission.

Permission is how receptive someone is to you or your message. The unfriendly salesperson had my immediate permission. Why? I needed someone to make the decision for me, and she did. No muss no fuss. Add to that her credible body language and voice pattern, and it was a done deal. She positioned herself as the “expert” and -wouldn’t you know it?- that’s just what I was looking for.

We increase permission by understanding and accommodating the needs of others. Some people need us to be friendly, others will need us to get to the issue. Sometimes we need to be credible and other times we need to be approachable. But we don’t have to guess or rely on luck. We can increase our awareness of what other people are communicating nonverbally and adapt our approach based on that information. Everyone can learn to do this. If we have only one approach to people or situations, we are severely limited.

My assistant and I stopped in the Coach outlet recently. It had been over a year since I had been there last, and Val, who had heard the story many times, wanted to know if the legendary salesperson was still there. I wasn’t sure, since I couldn’t remember what she looked like. I tried on a pair of sunglasses and asked a salesperson if they could be adjusted. She looked up and said “no,” then went right back to what she was doing. There was no mistaking her. She hadn’t changed her approach.

Sometimes it pays to be unfriendly, but not always. I didn’t buy the sunglasses. Turns out I needed a friendly salesperson that day.