What are You Trying to Say?

Learning on The Job

When I was just starting my career, I made a number of mistakes out of ignorance and wound up learning from them. Some of the experiences were painful, others not so painful. However, I've learned important things about communication that I might not have learned elsewhere. I learned the importance of figuring out what I was going to say before I said it.

One of my first jobs was as a business analyst for a transportation company. We were in the middle of an aggressive schedule for implementing a new computer system. This schedule increased risk to the project because there were many potential points of failure in these projects. Much of my work involved testing new programs to ensure they worked correctly. Our team had to do a lot of programming in order to prepare the new system. However, we were in a situation where new programs weren't working correctly and people were getting angry. I was panicking and decided to tell my boss about the situation.

Thinking at the Speed of Speech

To this day, I have no idea what I actually said to him because the words shot out of my mouth much in the way that the cork and champagne going flying through the air when you open a bottle. My boss stared at me and then held up his hand for a moment.

“Stop. Take a deep breath, then tell me this again.”

Pow. Stopped in my tracks. I did what he said and I was able to intelligently communicate the problem to him. We decided on some steps to fix the problem. Everything worked out just fine.

Get a Grip On Yourself

Some people panic more easily than most. Other people seem unflappable. Most of us are somewhere in between. This means that many of us are going to experience states of anxiety or fear during our lives. We're going to be slammed along the wave of adrenaline rush and we're going to try to communicate in a state of mind where rational thought gets shunted to the side very quickly.

Many of us panic when we experience great fear or nervousness. We have to fight the primal urge to run away screaming from the source of our fear. Our mental processes speed up as a million thoughts simultaneously spawn and demand our attention. We desperately need to find someone and share our fears with them.

However, this jazzed-up panicked brain will cause torrents of words to flow from our mouths. We'll be talking so quickly, trying to keep up with our rampaging brainwaves, that we'll make almost no sense at all.

In times like these, my boss's advice is sound. You need to take a moment to clear your mind and slow down your galloping brain. Deep breaths and counting are a common relaxation technique during these times of stress.

Speak Quickly, But Take Time to Craft Your Message

Once you've reestablished coherent thought, it's time to use it. You need to plan what you are going to say. What is your subject? Who is involved with the problem? Where is the problem occurring? What appears to be the cause (why is it happening)? What is the impact of the problem? How can we solve the problem?

This time to compose your thoughts is an extremely efficient and effective way to convey the message and arrange for an appropriate response. You must remember that although you may be intimately involved in the details of the problem, if you are informing your boss for the first time, then he or she will need to be briefed on the problem. You owe it to them to give them enough essential data so they can understand the problem. You need to present the information in chronological sequence to help them understand.

Time To Switch Gears

There's another important consideration that impacts this communication process. If you are a knowledge worker, particularly a software developer or someone who needs to devote significant concentration to doing your work, you'll appreciate this point. This point is the need to switch mental gears.

Believe it or not, bosses do some important work, although they may appear to spend a lot of time in their offices either taking telephone calls, meeting with people, and typing E-Mails. They need to spend some significant time thinking and planning in order to make sure everyone else can do their work efficiently and effectively. This work can involve its own fair share of concentration. When you get into this thinking zone, you lose contact with the outside world. For many of us, it takes a minute or two to focus back on the here-and-now.

So, while panicked communication is tricky to understand when your mind is receptive, it's exponentially harder when your listener is not focused or ready to listen. This time to refocus is very important. The listener may only be able of understanding very simple messages during that first few seconds as they refocus. Do them and yourself a favor: don't spew out your concerns all at once. If the boss's attention isn't back to normal, you might as well be talking to a brick wall because your words won't penetrate. Take that moment to get the message down. Then deliver the message.

Communication: A Two-Way Street

So there you go. You've got to consider both yourself (the communicator) and the audience (the listener) in order to accurately transmit information. Not only do you have to organize and present your thoughts logically, you also need to make sure that your boss's brain is engaged and ready to listen. Do these two things and you'll make up for any time delays through improved productivity and better decisions.