Where managers and teams fail: typical communication traps
Do you know these communication patterns?
- Hardly any communication from the bottom up, often due to a belief in authority or fear
- Little creative exchange with other managers, instead focus on operational management of own team, “downwards”
- Little creative exchange in a team, instead working according to instructions from the manager
- Unidirectional communication, without respect and appreciation for other perspectives, no so-called “active listening”
- Destructive dominance: One person in the team dominates communication in a destructive way
- Substitute discussions on a substantive level instead of addressing frustration, disappointment or anger
- Messages are consciously or unconsciously filtered out by the recipients.
- Trench warfare and intrigue, especially in the case of organizational changes (“old rope teams”)
- “We’ve always done it this way ” instead of innovation
- Frustration, demotivation, silence and withdrawal
With such dysfunctional communication, no new ideas, no new solutions, no better mutual understanding and no trust arise. Instead, frustration, anger or fear lead to friction, loss of quality, demotivation, increased fluctuation and so on.
Good communication is the basis of successful leadership. Companies and their managers must intervene if they notice the patterns of dysfunctional communication described above.
It is therefore not surprising that we are regularly asked for support in communicating more clearly, effectively and convincingly.
Six building blocks for clear, effective and convincing communication
Based on our practical experience, we like to structure our work with managers on all aspects of communication into 6 building blocks:
- Building block 1: Clarify and change your “ecosystem” of communication!
- Building block 2: Create trust, i.e. create “safe spaces” for your communication!
- Module 3: Learn to really listen together!
- Building block 4: Allow tension and emotions!
- Building block 5: Give real space to think together!
- Building block 6: Communicate boldly and clearly!
Along these five building blocks, we provide you with concrete, practical and simple tools in coaching, team development and training to change your communication patterns and enable really good communication.
Of course, you don’t have to use every tool immediately in practice – if you choose 2-3 tools that will help you today, that’s perfect!
Incidentally, these building blocks are taken directly from the fantastic work “Dialogue or ‘The Art of Thinking Together'”by William Isaacs.
Building block 1: Clarify and change your “ecosystem” of communication!
We often find that managers or teams want to improve communication. However, they have never realized where and how formal and informal communication actually takes place in the status quo and which forms and structures of communication make sense for the specific situation.
On the one hand, it is of course worth looking at the situation from the manager’s perspective. However, we also recommend analyzing the team’s structural and underlying issues – with the team.
Module 1a: – Preparation from the manager’s perspective
Examples of approaches to working on communication structures from the manager’s perspective include
- Communication and stakeholder mapping: This can be done from an individual perspective, but just as well from the perspective of teams “on the outside”. What are the relevant stakeholders? How high is the respective interest and influence in relation to the goals of you or the team? What does current communication look like? Formal and informal?
Visualizations such as relationship diagrams or the power interest grid (representation of stakeholders according to influence and interest in a four-field matrix) may help. Develop actual and target representations. - Group dynamic models: Visualizations of the group dynamics within the team can create further transparency, for example in the form of a ranking dynamic assignment (according to alpha, beta, gamma or omega team members) or in the form of the so-called group field (four-field matrix with the dimensions proximity/distance and change/stability).
Ask yourself the following sample questions about these analyses:
- What insights have you gained as a manager from this exercise? On the content level?
- What needs to change in the organization or processes?
- Where do you think there are issues that need to be resolved at the relationship level?
- How does what we want to do or change fit in with our goals?
- As a manager, how would you like to consciously and actively shape formal and informal communication and decision-making instead?
Module 1b – Working in a team: Structural topics
You can also analyze how your “ecosystem” influences your communication within the team itself. This term “ecosystem” includes all your explicit and implicit, formal and informal framework conditions, your conventions and habits. All of this influences the content, form and atmosphere of communication:
- Which topics are discussed where? Where are decisions made? Is there a lack of clarity around the organization of communication? Do those who have to implement decisions feel marginalized? Frustrated? Not heard? How consistent are places of communication and places of decision-making?
- Who in the organization feels like the bearer of “meaning”, perhaps in the face of change? Have harder or softer fronts developed, perhaps between “what we have always stood for” and “what we must now pay attention to (margin)”?
- How clear, focused and swift are decisions made? Are things talked through or are decisions made blindly without thinking? Where? By whom? What do these decision-making processes do to the organization?
- What do formal and informal incentive systems look like? For example, are particular interests promoted, but the communication “from the top” emphasizes cooperation and the “we” like a mantra?
- How do historical structures, e.g. from mergers, influence the actual communication in an informal way? What influence do such structures have on formal communication channels?
Module 1c – Working in a team: recognizing and resolving underlying patterns
The next step is to make transparent which underlying, often automated patterns influence your daily communication in the team. It’s about recognizing the communication traps you practice every day:
- How authentic is your communication? Is there a difference between “walk” (acting) and “talk” (talking)? And why does this sabotage good communication? And what can you do instead?
- How dominant is the more dominant “assertiveness” compared to the more open, exploratory “learning” in your communication? And why? How can you deal with this? How do you find the right balance for you and the specific situation?
- Who plays what role in communication in your team? Who is more of a doer, who is a supporter? Who is in the opposition? And who is on the sidelines? And why? How can you make these roles transparent? How do you recognize dysfunctional patterns and how (e.g. the “toxic saboteur”) and how do you deal with them?
- What beliefs and taboos influence your communication? What else influences your trust, your learning and your actions? How can you reveal and change these beliefs and taboos?
Module 1 – Summary: Working on the communication ecosystem – our recommendation
We invite managers and teams to regularly take a meta-level look at their leadership and communication – internally, externally and externally. And to consciously design formal and informal communication structures and not leave them to chance.
Managed teams should be allowed to help shape communication structures themselves. From the manager’s perspective, we recommend regular, conscious, active calibration with the respective teams in the form of an annual “workshop on the meta-communication of leadership“, a clearly structured, initially moderated format.
Building block 2: Create trust, i.e. create “safe spaces” for your communication!
When can good communication arise? Or: What is good communication? In our opinion, good communication is based on trust – trust at the relationship level.
Trust is the certainty that my counterpart will not use what I have said against me. Trust is the security of being able to passionately express controversial things without being punished. And vice versa, it is the permission given to oneself to perceive, respect and consider dissenting, passionately expressed messages.
The idea of a “safe space” is so fundamental that it reappears with many authors and in many coaching and training sessions, be it with Simon Sinek as the “Circle of Safety” or with Lencioni (5 dysfunctions of a team) as trust and the ability to deal with conflict.
Building block 3: Learn to really listen!
In order to learn to really listen together, we would like to invite you to take part in the following exercises:
- Actively use the so-called ladder of inference: This tool helps to understand how we or others get from an input (stimulus) to an output (behavior), how our brains work.
We distinguish between the following Rungs of the reasoning ladder:- Rung 1: Observation (What do I hear and see? What do I observe in others and in myself?)
- Rung 2: Explain (Why is the other person saying what I have perceived? How do I explain the message? The wish? What is behind it?)
- Rung 3: Evaluate (How does what I hear match my values? To my needs and feelings? To the perhaps different needs and feelings of the other person(s)?
- Rung 4: Reacting (How do I react? How do others react?)
- We or our conversation partners often stumble along these rungs – our listening is then dysfunctional:
- When emotions boil up, we are in the tunnel and then observe in a highly filtered way.
- We quickly come up with ready-made explanations: “Now he’s coming up with this again … he just wants this and that.”
- We immediately jump to an assessment: “That’s bad, my values are different.”
- Resolving dysfunctional listening – in oneself, in the management team, in operational teams – is the basis for good communication, intensive exchange, new perspectives and thus for good performance. We therefore recommend: consciously separate observation, explanation and evaluation, allow other explanations and evaluations. And encourage this within the team.
- Be aware of your own thoughts and feelings: be aware of how much of your perception actually comes from outside, from others, and how much and what of your perception results from your feelings, your beliefs and therefore your imprinting.
- Listen without resistance: Try to identify inner, emotional or rational resistance while listening, let it remain within you and consciously try to let go. Mentally and emotionally step aside once again.
We invite you to try out and use these tools. Find your individual way to make space for others, to allow new perspectives, different explanations and values.
Building block 4: Allow tension and emotions!
This module is about discovering, allowing and using the richness of tensions and emotions. The following exemplary practices are helpful:
- Support other or emotional perspectives: Allow different perspectives in communication, encourage debate, even in situations with strong feelings (anger, rage, fear). If the unspoken is not dealt with, it will surface again and again and “sabotage” you.
- Learn to endure tension: Learn to endure tension and not fall into a “fight, flight or freeze” mode.
Emotionally charged conversations are often highly dynamic. Allow this dynamic and imagine that you are in the center of a wheel, in the hub. You observe the dynamics from there. The spokes of the wheel are the different perspectives, the wheel turns fast, but the hub is quiet.
Find your personal ways to get back into the image of the hub under pressure or stress. Sitting on the outer edge of the spinning wheel will only make you dizzy. A certain body awareness or breathing exercises can help you with this. Other good approaches come from Aikido or somatic coaching.
We invite you to try out these ideas too. Observe how you can center yourself better and better and perceive more and new perspectives from the hub.
Building block 5: Give real space to think together!
The previous modules were about really listening and enduring tensions and conflicts. We listen intensively, interrupt dysfunctional processes around the ladder of reasoning and see and respect different perspectives.
How do we get from there to joint thinking, to a genuine, creative, open dialog?
There are a number of useful tools for this, all of which aim to expand the mental communication spaces, for example:
- Question supposed security: Reflect: What are you (are you) sure about? Why are you (are you) so ‘damn’ sure? What is the benefit of believing in this certainty? What would happen if you let go? What could happen? What are your fears?
- Look for questions, not solutions: Think: Which questions are still important? The difficult, deep, complex questions are particularly interesting. Take time to “dig for questions” without answering them straight away.
- Examine the “in-between”: Identify the issues in which the group communicates in a polarized way. What are the extremes? What is ‘in between’? Perhaps you will find perspectives, options, solutions that are fundamentally new, better, good. And not just a compromise.
- Externalize the thinking: If you have a conflict issue between two parties, do not let it be fought out between them, but find voluntary substitutes who are not so emotionally or substantively involved in the conflict. The deputies conduct the dialog for the conflict parties (following instructions from them). Addresses new perspectives, feelings, thoughts, etc. in the debriefing.
We also invite you to try out these tools here. Find your individual way to stop, go deeper, ask more questions. Enable real, creative, new dialog.
Building block 6: Communicate boldly and clearly!
After all, this module is – finally – also about how you can express yourself and confidently find and communicate your own position. And your team finds this clarity and courage.
We also address this in coaching, team development and training, for example with the following tools:
- Ask yourself: “What is your music – and who should play it ?” What are your themes? Your self? Your messages? Your music? Do you “only” want to repeat the thoughts and perspectives of others or find your own “thing”? And do you want to play your music or have it played?
- Overcome self-censorship: Playing your own music is sometimes scary. Observe yourself: Where do you censor yourself? Why? Try playing new music, opening new doors, sending new messages. You will realize: It’s not to your detriment.
- Speak from your center: You will find the courage to play your music within yourself. The somatic exercises described above under “Centering” help you to find courage – and to play music well.
- Jump into the void: Do you feel empty inside during conversations? Don’t know how to react? No idea? No answer? Allow pauses, center yourself and allow yourself to improvise. Reflect what you feel, let your thoughts and questions flow from a strong centering.
- Let music emerge in the team: Exercise for a group – allow a second of silence after each speech. Feel what emerges from the speech. What music is played together in the team.
We invite you to find your and your music, your and your “I”, to overcome self-censorship and to make music as a team!
Our invitation
Communication is the central foundation of your success as a manager, your teams and your company.
We are happy to support you. Perhaps all you need is a little food for thought or training. Perhaps we can also guide you and accompany you on your way to more calm, more confidence, more security, better dialog and great results.
We are happy to support you. Give me a call, tell me about your individual topic and let’s think about what measures will improve your communication.
You can make a non-binding appointment here .