Having stressed the importance of the communication process, it is appropriate to
develop further the hypothesis is that communication in organisations is a great deal
worse than most people realise. This will be done by explaining the nature of
communication processes, and the potential for breakdown. Case examples are given
to illustrate some of the major points.
Listening problems
It is appropriate to explain one major misconception about communication at this stage.
This point is not only important in its own right but develops the argument that the
approach of many managers to communication may not be sufficiently sophisticated.
Communication is usually seen as the need to brief other people. The reality is that most
of a manager’s time needs to be concerned with the receiving rather than the imparting
of information and views. The reason for this is simple-in any conversation between two
people there is a need to alternate between talking and listening. There is not much
point in yone talking if the intended recipient is not prepared to listen. If the two people
involved in a discussion take equal turns talking and listening, they will obviously spend
half of their time in the listening role. As much of the communication in organisations
involves face-to-face discussion between more than two people, it follows as a
mathematical fact that most managers will need to spend more time listening than
talking. There will, of course, be exceptions to this, but the very existence of exceptions
reduces the time available for others to do the talking Admittedly managers may often
need to take the lead in explaining things to their subordinates, but a statistically unequal
share of talk in this direction may easily be counter-balanced by the time they have to
spend in discussions and meetings involving a number of people when they talk only for
a minority of the time. The basic point of this argument is that managers may fail to see
that they will normally need to spend more time listening than talking.
Effective listening does not come naturally to all managers, particularly if they do not
recognise the
importance of it. The mistake of assuming that ‘good communication’ is synonymous
with the imparting of information and views is often made by people who set out to
improve the quality of communication in organisations. House magazines, letters from
the chairman, briefing meetings and training in public speaking are based mainly on the
assumption that the problem is in disseminating information. The reality may be that it is
more important to unblock the obstructions to information
and views flowing in to the decision-makers. The problem may be though that, until
such time as communication is effective, managers may not realise that the obstructions
are there. In any case if everyone concentrates on imparting information and views, just
who will be left to receive all these messages?
One case which illustrates this point concerns a nursing officer who attended a review
meeting three months after he had attended a middle management training course.
When asked what had happened as a result of his training, he explained that the area on
which he had been able to concentrate was the developmet of his communication
skills. He had worked on his listening skills and had put a chair by the side of his desk,
on which people were invited to sit when they came into his office. He explained that he
was amazed at the extra amount of information that he obtained this way compared with
his previous pattern of letting people stand up or sit on a chair the other side of the table.
He then realised the limited nature of the information he had been obtaining before and
on which basis he had been taking decisions. Before, being unaware of the information
that was available, he had not tried to get it. It was only after he had discovered his ‘blind
spot’ that he realised that it existed.
Lack of feedback
The problem of effective communication is unfortunately greater than just the recognition
of its scale and importance and the comprehension that one needs to receive
information as well as disseminate it. It is all too easy for people to assume that they
have effectively communicated and be blissfully unaware that their attempts at
communication have been partially successful or, in some cases, totally unsuccessful.
We have often used a simple exercise to demonstrate the undue optimism concerning
the effectiveness of communication..with groups of managers on training courses. This
particular exercise involves’ asking one of the group to tell the rest, withorit any questions
by them, how to draw a diagram consisting of six rectangles. The manager is asked to
sit facing the wall and convert a diagram into words so that the group can reproduce the
diagram from his oral instruction. This exercise is described in detail in Leavity’s
Managerial Psychology. In practice one would not trY to explain how to reproduce a
diagram by oral instruction, but there are advantages in using this artificial example. It is
easy to check the accuracy with which it is reproduced and it is no more complicated
than some of the instructions that people do try to explain orally.
either at the comer or the midpoint. Invariably there is considerable error in the attempts
of the groups to convert te oral instructions bck into the original diagram. Sometimes
the results are devastating. On one occasion a zero score was achieved by a group of
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