Lack of Common Core Experience

Many of us assume that the learners have a common experience that the instructor has. We tailor our lessons plans and our communication to the experience we have gained assuming the learners have the same. Instructors cannot assume a common experience we have to establish the learners experience before teaching so we can avoid analogies and explanations.

A recently instructor evaluation monitored the following exchange:

Instructor: “Power supply to the Trim Pump is 4B.”

Learner: “What's 4B?”

Instructor: “It's the DC Power source”

Learner: “What's DC Power?”

It was assumed that the learners knew the basics of AC/DC power; however, it is not always the case. We do not have common experience.

Overuse of Abstractions

Abstractions are concepts, ideas or words that are not directly related to the subject being discussed. Always speak in concrete terms. Limit the use of an acronym that have become standard in our technological language, unless you are sure the learner knows these acronyms. Some learners may not understand the use of "basic" acronyms. For instance when the instructor describes the DCPO does he mean the Duty Chief Petty Officer or the Ship's Damage Control Petty Officer?

Always use clear and precise communications. This is especially true when dealing with learners from different cultures. Using even the most basic colloquialism can be confusing.

Fear

Fear is perhaps the greatest barrier to effective communications. Learners have a fear of showing ignorance, being ridiculed, losing status and a fear of judgment.

Instructors need to build an atmosphere of mutual respect amongst learners. A threat free environment inside that classroom will ensure learners participate and contribute to class discussions.

Environmental Factors

Environmental factors include the temperature of your classroom, the pictures or charts on the classroom wall, distracting noises, etc.

Some conditions in the classrooms cannot be eliminated. The noisy air conditioner required to keep the classroom cold for equipment performance has to be addressed with the learners. Inform them before hand that the lab is required to be cold and allow them to change their uniform so they are comfortable.

Build a community of respect and comfort in your classroom. This community of respect will ensure that learners provide feedback on your communications as well as the level of curriculum being taught.

Introduction

In order to improve communication we need to identify information needs and explore the many formats and possibilities available to us in order to facilitate the best way to share information among geographically dispersed individuals. Some common elements to consider include:

Common Formats

Adopting a common data interchange format will contribute greatly to ensuring consistent accessibility and "on call" availability of information for one and all. Using a universally common format and processes also helps to ensure the greatest compatibility between systems.

Consistency

Formalize the communication tools and mechanisms to be used under various specific criteria and circumstances. It is important to ensure that this is done prior to any trigger events requiring specialty plans. When an emergency situation or any other extraordinary event occurs it is time to put a prepared, tested and refined plan immediately into action. This is most definitely not the time to be thinking of what to do next.

User Participation

Although it probably goes without saying that involving all concerned as early as possible in any communications initiatives will greatly assist in establishing communications channels and aide in overcoming problems and inconsistencies before the rapid exchange of information becomes mission critical.

Habit

Remember that we humans are creatures of habit and suspect communications methods must be removed before any team members become entrenched in undesirable and/or incompatible habits in this area.

Face-to-Face Communications

We humans are generally more comfortable with face-to-face communications and so it is that this format is usually the most productive. With this in mind when we are dealing in situations where individual members are geographically separated the possibilities and feasibility of live conferencing (video if possible) should be explored as they do offer some degree of the face-to-face communications processes that we humans feel best at ease with.

Responsibility

All involved should take on a larger share of responsibility for participating in the various communications forums, bulletin boards, online meeting places etc as well as for being heard and understood. No mumbling or speaking with something in your mouth. This is especially important when we are trying to communicate over a distance without the benefit of face-to-face interactivity.

Formal Agreements

It is essential that all future parties to the communications make some sort of formal commitment to how, when, and in what format any given set of communications will take place. Once again this takes on an even greater import when individual parties to the conversation are situated over geographically widely dispersed locations.

Time Zones

Time zones must be carefully considered as they will have no small impact on decisions concerning the scheduling and commitment to when communications are to take place. It is unfair for the same individuals to be getting up at 3:00 AM so that we can all have a 9:00 AM (our time) on-line video conference. We must all share the inconvenience when our colleagues and peers are separated by great distance.

Isolation

With geographically dispersed teams this becomes ever more important as the option to tell so-and-so when I get to the office on Monday just won't be possible because so-and-so may live in another country and you will therefore not be meeting with them in person. It is also important to ensure that nobody feels "left out of it".

Scheduling

Scheduling is always important but when remote end parties (members of a dispersed team) are involved it takes on even more importance. Scheduling must include a plan detailing the format and any other additional details of specific requirements; such as completion of a document or manual, critical to a forth-coming conference or meeting.
If participants to the scheduled conference or meeting need to be conversant with the contents of the documentation/manual prior to commencement of conference/meeting then the appropriate distribution mechanisms will need to be initiated to distribute the documentation to those involved in advance.

Coordination

Coordinated scheduling of meetings and other communications channels and systems becomes even more important when geographically separated teams are concerned. The need to avoid appointment clashes is definitely a priority to implement in order to attain maximum efficiency and effectiveness of scheduled events.

Flexibility

When designing, planning and implementing communications plans the capacity to allow for unforeseen events such as a cyclone preventing some team members from participating in a given scheduled meeting need careful consideration and contingency plans entailing rescheduling need to be prepared for a worst case scenario in order to be ready for deployment should the need arise.

Communications Contingency Plans

Worst case scenarios will require special plans should they eventuate and so the need for these contingency plans to be prepared during the analysis, planning and design phases of your communications contingency planning becomes a mandatory essential rather than an additional luxury. In this way; should a natural disaster or an act of God scenario eventuate, you will be well placed and prepared to deal with it spontaneously and appropriately.

Plasticity

Team members both individually and collectively along with the communications and contingency plans will need to be more adaptable when geographically dispersed entities are involved.

Distance Inhibits Communication

Research conducted by Allen in 1977 and cited by Ginger Levin showed that people sitting 40 meters apart had o¬nly a 5% probability of communicating at least o¬nce a week and that this percentage did not increase until the distance between the parties decreased to eight meters at which point team members were found to be more likely to communicate and collaborate.

With geographically separated teams this needs to be overcome and the best ways to do this are through planning, scheduling, mutual cooperation, video-conferencing if possible, contiguous communication processes. This later point is probably the one that is most effective as we humans tend to chose "the devil we know" rather than the unknown.

Nonverbal Communication

The impact of nonverbal communication clues is something else that needs to be addressed when virtual teams are in effect. Because of reduced personal access and our natural tendency to rely o¬n nonverbal communication clues, which are not readily available in the virtual environment, any communications inadequacies in the virtual team scenario are far more deleterious than one would otherwise expect (Guss, 1977).

Video Conferencing

Meharabian's 1968 study found that words o¬nly comprise 7% of the total impact of a message, while vocal tones represented 38% and facial expressions comprised a massive 55%. These findings clearly illustrate the need for video conferencing to be taken into consideration as a viable option for all communications planning and management.

Regional Idiosyncrasies

Differences in cultural and local language variations between virtual team members will need to be addressed. Here the adoption of a standard of practice would be of great assistance and benefit.

For instance we could all agree upon a primary format such as using the international English vocabulary dictionary; which contains approximately 4,000 words, as the authoritative arbitrator in areas of dispute.

Because a word or phrase might have a colloquial meaning in a given locale and yet another all together when taken in the context of a different local inference (colloquially) the need to eliminate the potential for unintended misunderstanding or misinterpretations becomes apparent.

To overcome this in as impartial manner as possible everyone agrees to use or refer to the same agreed version of the same agreed authoritative source. In this way the idiomatic idiosyncratic nature of localized language variation can be readily clarified and what's more this can be done at a distance.

Feedback

One of the most important facets of human communications is the reinforcing adaptive intuitiveness that the communicating party(s) gain via feedback, much of which under ‘normal` circumstances is nonverbal in nature. It is quite possible that some degree of formal regimentation may be beneficial. For example communications will need to be formally acknowledged in terms of being received.

Feedback can be formally requested using a predefined Reply By plan as this will place a time frame upon the communications to ensure that the flow of traffic is not entirely one way and permanently overdue (at least from some quarters).

Remote Communications Options

Some of the options available for remote communications over large distances include mobile phones, PDAs, text messages, SMS, email, IM, on-line chat, informal bulletin boards, discussion forums, blogs and other social media.

Magnolia groups; for example, work very well as a centralized point by which individuals can independently and/or collectively access and update from this shared on-line service. A point of warning though; if you do not want the rest of the world to be privy to this information then make sure that the group you create is private and not publically accessible (publically accessible is the default option).

VoIP is another cost effective solution worthy of serious consideration.

The hardest part ever is keeping a strong mind, staying focus and not letting your feelings get involved with certain incidents. The most important thing to do is to always remain calm to assure the person that needs help feels that everything is okay and that help will be on the way, in other words give the caller positive attitude on response time.

In conclusion, this job could be very stressful at times but it is always a learning experience because you learn something new everyday. You are a very important source to the police officers because their lives and citizens lives are in the hand of the communications officer.

In their book, saving your marriage before it starts; Doctors Les and Leslie parrot said "communication is the lifeblood of marriage." Several years ago they attended a marriage enriched seminar with other couples. And at the end of the seminar, they asked the other couples what they found most helping about the seminar.

Without exception, all the couples said they were help most by the discussion that dealt with communication. Communication is communication, whether in a marriage or corporation setting, and the basic principle holds true.

The more effective communication is, the more effective relationship become. Business experts have come to the conclusion that is the inability to communicate strategies and not necessarily a lack of strategies that is the major reasons business organizations fail. It has been said that listening is the "is the cornerstone for all communication." in the work place as in other places, honest listening can sometimes be enormously painful, but if you are willing to listen with an open mind the exercise leads you out of self-centeredness. You may not agree with the things you have heard, but you will be forced to reconsider your attitudes. It starts down the road toward the development of a wholesome relationship at work.

The discipline of listening will surely be worth all the pain and trouble it caused you. You may even experience a sense of freedom, knowing you have broken loose from your pride, fear, and self centeredness.

Why Is It So Difficult To Be  A Good Listener?

While we almost never want to admit it, the truth is that we aren't always interested I listening.

Many of us filter the things other people say to us through our own prejudices, opinions and feelings; we find it difficult to listen because we second-guess other people. Most managers often do this by refusing to allow partner to put a "period" at the end a sentence. The author of the proverbs exposed the flaw of second guessing when he wrote "he who answers before listening -that is his folly and his shame." It doesn't make sense taking decision before knowing the facts.

Most of us fail to listen because we think we might be threatened by what we hear. In business life, we often hear other people's suggestion for a change; we think it will somehow erode our individual liberty. Worse yet, we fear the loose of control. Sometimes, we think, "if I really listen to my colleague, my worse fault will be exposed."

If you don't listen to your subordinates are effectively saying that you don't want to know how they think or feel. It is an indication of your lack of care and concern. It represents a refusal to display a common decency and respect toward the people you promised to "provide an enabling work environment for."

Why Do You Need To Practice The Act of Listening?

1. To show respect to those who work with or for you.
2. To meet your own basic needs. Maybe the second reason seems a bit stretched at first glance, but consider the thoughts of Dr. Williams Glasser; he said, "At all times in our lives we must have at least one person who cares about us and who we care for ourselves. If we do not have this essential person, we will not be able to fulfill our basic needs (goals)."

Dear managers, in summary, listening is vital to the development of an impactful relationship with the person who helps you meet your goals.

Policies

In short policy originates from within an organisation with the objective of delivering positive benefit or avoiding negative effect from the organisation's perspective. The degree of compliance with policy is generally not negotiable and the individual at fault will generally experience some form of penalty being imposed by their organisation. In this case the ultimate penalty would be termination of employment.

Standards

On the other hand standards tend to originate from without and may be voluntarily adopted by the organisation or their compliance may be forced upon an organisation by external forces such as government legislation or industry-wide recommendations. Standards infer compliance or opt-in. The degrees of compliance tend to be rigid in areas of regulatory need as failure to comply will ultimately result in penalties being imposed upon an organisation. Depending upon the breach incarceration may result.

The Importance of Standards

Now let us examine the concept of standards in a little more depth. We will begin by looking at the question “why do we need standards?”

Often the importance of standards goes unnoticed until we are faced with the scenario of a total lack of any standards and the chaos that ensues. Standards and the standards organisations that define them form the basis upon which technologies are developed and eventually delivered to our door.

It is through the roles played by standards and the standardisation that can result from them that we begin to see consistency and improvements in aspects such as: quality, safety, reliability, efficiency, interchangeability, and the provisioning and delivery of these benefits in the most economical (cost effective) manner. It is no good having the world's greatest product if it does not have the in-built capabilities to interact and interoperate with other devices.

Put simply we need standards in order to provide consistency and compatibility across the board for each and every class and type of device and technology. Areas of great complexity that need multitudes of individual components to interoperate in a carefully orchestrated manner; as is the case with most things in our electronic technological world today, are built on foundations based on standards and standardisation.

For example:

The Internet as we know it today has evolved through a number of various stages beginning with a simple transmission of information between a very limited number of geographically diverse systems.

• At first only text was transferred between end-points using a set of standards and protocols known as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) & the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Or as they are generally to as “the language of the web.”
• The protocol suite that was initially designed to address all of the issues involved in achieving this was defined as TCP/IP and the model that was built as a reference model to overcome the incompatibilities inherent in proprietary systems; the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) was formulated and standardised
• Then over time and as technology built on these foundations the transmission of graphics and other images became feasible. Sound was also transferred via the web.
• The quality of the images and sound transmitted improved. Compression technologies matured and the transfer of digital media such as music in the form of MP3 or photos as JPEG files became ever more popular.
• Building even more on our foundations (the OSI Reference Model and TCP/IP) all manner of digital media became transferable via the Internet. The advent of publically available, accessible and affordable email along with the popularity of e-commerce saw the massive explosion in growth of the Internet in the late 1980s and the .com (dot com) boom of the nineties.
• This explosion was fueled by the massive drop in prices of networking equipment; including PCs, home modems and network adaptors falling below $30 per unit. Added to this we saw the competition between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) become ever more intense and so we witnessed the birth of electronic communications between private individuals on a global scale.
• Eventually fully digital systems became the norm and such capabilities as streaming media, RSS feeds, and digital shopping and commerce became realities
• Today we are seeing this continue to evolve into such forms as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) at both the corporate and private levels. The capacity for us to “stay in touch” over vast distances still fuels the ever expanding realms of the Internet.

The point is that without standards and standardisation none of this would be possible; at least not now. Email is one of the more pervasive of the Internet technologies as we don't even need to be at any given physical location or at any specific particular device in order to receive or send it. The local library serves the same purpose as your home PC or the one at work and now even your mobile phone is getting in on the act.

Consider for a moment the scenario where vendor X's hardware, software and services were incompatible with those from vendor Y and you would have a world in which only those aligned with vendor X could intercommunicate and the same for vendor Y's customers. But neither would talk between the other.

What is a Standard?

A Standard is a published document which sets out the specifications and procedures that are designed to ensure that a material, product, method or service is fit for its purpose and consistently performs in the way it was intended.

A standard can be: open, proprietary, de facto, de jure, opt-in and even an opt-out standard all of which I will be discussing in the second part of this series. As the series unfolds I will be discussing such topics as:

• What is in a Standard?
• What are the Benefits of Standards?
• What is Standardisation?
• What are Standardisation Processes?
• What is Standards Compliance?
• Why Do We Have Standards Organisations And What Do They Do?
• I will provide a brief discussion of a select group of international standards organisations and the roles that they play in the scheme of things. I say select as most of the organisations that I will be discussing are in some way or another related to IT, networking, the Internet, computer systems, communications, security (especially IT related security SANS) as well as organisations that have a diverse influence across the board such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) and disaster related organisations as the tsunami disaster was very close to home (I reside in Australia as you probably have worked out by now).
• Standards, Conventions and Protocols
• The various forms and formats which different standards can adopt including white papers and Request For Comment (RFC)

So until next time enjoy!!

Here are some tips for writing emails at work:

1. Keep your message to the point. If your content can't be viewed without scrolling, consider revising your email or including additional content as an attachment. Your co-workers will think more highly of you if you are concise.
2. Although you may be used to writing informally in emails outside of work, treat office emails like all of your professional communications. Pay appropriate attention to politeness and tone as well as punctuation and grammar. Because someone reading your email cannot see your expression or body language, he or she may take something you say in the wrong way, even though you don't intend any offense. Consider cultural differences when communicating with overseas colleagues.
3. Ask specific questions to trigger the feedback you want, but don't ask bog the reader down with too many. Set questions apart from other text through bolding, highlighting, or bullet points.
4. Remember that people generally perceive capitalization as shouting, so avoid this and don't use strange fonts and colors that might seem less than professional
5. Draft a subject line that immediately conveys the topic you want your reader to consider. Your email will more likely be opened and responded to. Include actions required and due dates. People often search emails by their subject lines so include easily searchable keywords in your subject lines.
6. Consider when signature lines and confidentiality statements are appropriate. Internal communications may or may not require these.
7. For god's sake, don't hit “reply all” to say “thanks.” Consider what sort of information should be shared in a group email response and use discretion.
8. Always ask yourself if the topic of the email should be expressed in a phone call or a face-to-face conversation. There is always the danger that a private email will be seen by more than just its recipient. A phone call or personal conversation provides more opportunity for immediate discussion, which may be invaluable in a given situation.
9. Ok, for the obvious tip, avoid sending personal emails at work and keep them very short (like, “call me”) if you do. You don't have an expectation of privacy in emails you send from a company computer.
10. Really annoyed at a co-worker? Take a deep breath and don't send that email response right away - the worst time to be firing off an email is when you're angry. You'll read it later and will probably be embarrassed and even if you're justified, odds are you won't come out looking good. Respond to any emailed questions concisely and without emotion and if you need action, engage your co-worker in a way that considers his or her motivations. The win-win strategy, where you try to get what you need while allowing your co-worker to get what he or she needs usually works out better in the long run.