If there is only one thing you are going to dedicate more time to in the future, make it be listening.
Do not rush to tell your piece, learn to sit still with your assumptions and conclusions, give others the space to come up with their own version, accept that silence is not you giving power away.
Listen. Truly listen. To understand. To help the other understand.
It is the greatest gift of all.
Three ways to go about change in companies.
And change is so much more than this. But since none of the above ever gets done, you could try starting here before complaining that your people resist change.
We are bad at communicating in written form.
We overestimate our capability to share meaning via a written message, and most importantly to share the underlying emotions, mainly because we fail to understand that our audience is often in a different state of mind.
Two considerations.
If you are about to send a written message, and even more so if you do that for a living (as is the case for marketers), you will increase the chances to be effective when you spend enough time understanding who you are sending to. Also, if you plan to add some color to the message (anger, sadness, sarcasm, humor), use visual cues (emoticons, GIFs, images).
If you are responsible for the internal communication of an organization, you will increase the chances for your employees to be effective by providing more training and tools that support visual communication rather than written communication.
If you look around for fairness, you will find little of it.
Different people see the world in different ways, and fair becomes a fluid concept when you change perspective.
If you look inside for fairness, on the other hand, that is something you can more easily work with. You can train it, build it, apply it, and eventually spread it around. You can make it contagious, and impact those who are close to you.
And it all starts with being fair to yourself. What can you expect of you? What will you hold yourself accountable for? How will you express this to others, how will your actions impact them, and how are you going to find out?
Before asking the world to be fair, ask that of yourself. Imagine if everyone would do that.
Just because you say it needs to happen, doesn’t mean it will happen.
If you give somebody an urgency, you better frame it in a way that makes sense to them or to the greater cause. Important is subjective, even when you are close, even when you work in the same team, even when there is a generic agreement on high level targets.
A sure way to inspire action is to build rapport first. Trust is what makes things important for a group of people. Not because somebody says it, but because we have a common understanding and we are in this together.
Just because it will happen, doesn’t mean you have changed their minds.
Of course, if you repeat that something is important enough times, people will eventually go ahead and merely do it. And next time you will have to ask again, repeat again, exhaust them again.
A sure way to inspire change is to sustain rapport. Dedicate time to it, expand it, nurture it, heal it, prioritize it, protect it. Not because somebody wants something, but because you care.
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