You Know What I Meant! Who is Responsible for Good Communication?
Recently we were doing an onboarding of a new client, and while describing qualities she wanted in her virtual assistant, she asked for something we have heard before: “I need a VA with a thick skin,” she said, and we knew what was coming. “My communication style is very blunt and straight to the point, and everyone always thinks I’m angry or being aggressive, but I’m just in a hurry. So I need someone who won’t take it personally.”
As we listened, we noted this request with a mental red flag. Since starting Sparent we’ve been doing an analysis of the characteristics of clients who stay with us long term and use their VA to great advantage, and those who…don’t. In the Venn diagram of clients that end services in three months or less, at the very center are clients who acknowledge they have an ineffective communication style while also expressing zero interest or intention of changing (that or anything else), and who want their virtual assistant to be a mind reader.
Is it me? Am I the Drama?
I actually did a Tiktok Video about this and we were shocked to see it become one of our most watched - and most controversial - TikToks to date. I said that my new pet peeve was clients who acknowledge they practice inefficient communication, but won’t change.
@sparentco if you're being misunderstood, change how you're communicating! #leadershipskills #communication #wfh #ceoskill ♬ original sound - Sparent, LLC
To me, it seemed a fairly uncontroversial position to take. If you are saying “Everyone misunderstands me” - then you know your communications are being badly received, but blame the receiver, and then say “So I need an assistant who will understand what I mean” - you have no plans to ever accept responsibility or make changes.
But the internet proved me wrong. Outside of the reassuring number of responses agreeing with me, those who were triggered, responded in one of the following ways:
“so you’re telling me to pretend to be someone else? How dare you?! I am perfect as I am. Take it or leave it!”
“would you tell a man not to be aggressive? Why do you hate women?!”
“you’re discriminating and being hateful toward autistic and neuro divergent people! Why do you hate people with different brains?!
We all want to be understood
My overall response to these objections was this truth bomb: the goal of communication is to be understood. The responsibility to send a message that can be understood and immediately acted upon falls solely on the person initiating the communication. Said another way, all things equal, (ie, you are communicating to the right audience at the right time on the right subject) if you are being misunderstood, it’s your fault. And if you are CONSISTENTLY misunderstood, it's ABSOLUTELY your problem. You are either communicating poorly, or you're communicating to the wrong audience at the wrong time. Either way - it's YOUR job to fix it.
For the sake of this blog, let’s assume the audience and timing are fine, and the issue is the communication style. Let’s return to our short term client mentioned above - she wanted a VA who would “know what she meant.” That approach to communication means that the person receiving the information is going to have to make assumptions, jump through mental hoops to make it make sense, and likely spend a lot of time interpreting the information and deciding on the right course of action in response.
This is a very unreliable and inefficient communication system, and will be one of the biggest obstacles to business growth a CEO can face.
Good Communication is the Secret Sauce of Success
Good communication is good communication regardless of the context - business, personal, or otherwise. But our purposes here, lets focus specifically on why good communication is essential in business.
Bad communication wastes lots of resources, like time, money, goodwill, and mental energy. All of which are limited resources. For example, if your team uses all of their mental energy and the majority of their time, trying to figure out what you want them to do, they aren’t going to have much left over for creative problem solving, innovation, empathetic customer service, or other aspects of their actual job. That’s exhausting and will chip away at their feelings of goodwill toward you as their leader and toward the company as a whole.
Good communication is communication created with every effort to be clearly understood and received THE FIRST TIME. The actions or response required by the receiver is clear and they are able to react immediately, appropriately and effectively without draining any resources.
Seems reasonable right? Who would argue? The internet. It’s always the internet who argues.
Sorry, Not Sorry
So back to my haters on TikTok. After I bored them into submission with The Fundamentals of Communication Theory, I offered a specific response to each of the offended groups.
Making an adjustment to your professional presentation, or adapting your leadership skills, is NOT telling you to change your entire personality. Imagine you’re walking through a fancy store at the holidays and someone sits down at a piano and starts banging out a cacophony of sounds. You walk up to them and say “Why aren’t you playing holiday music?” And they shout “I am! This is how I play music! YOU just can’t understand it!” So you say “I don’t think you actually know how to play the piano,” and they respond “I’m sitting here making sounds come out aren’t I? I didn’t take any lessons though, because that would have made me change who I am!” Would you say “Fair enough. I’ll try harder to find the music in this barrage of noise.”? No. You’d probably call security. The point is, there is no glory in refusing to evolve, learn, or grow your skill set as circumstances require. Only embarrassment as you’re escorted out the door.
Good communication, as defined above, is good communication. Full stop. There is no adaptation or exception for gender or any other reason. I’m going to point it out anytime someone is self-sabotoging by refusing to address a problem. I’m a lot of fun at a party.
In my experience, autistic and neurodivergent individuals offer some of the very best examples of adaptive behavior around communication. Most of my experience is with individuals on the Autism Spectrum Disorder, and generally I find they are very focused on getting their prefered outcome from every interaction, and will adopt patterns or adapt behavior to accomplish those outcomes whenever possible. For example, my adult nephew has severe autism and likes to call me daily and talk about things that are important to him alone. He quickly learned that I get annoyed when he just dives in as soon as I answer. But if he says “Hello, Aunt Mer. How are you doing?” And waits while I answer, then I’m much more ready to listen to his latest obsession. When he’s ready to hang (usually if I’m talking), and just hangs up, I’m going to be mad and I’m going to call back and tell him he was rude. So he started saying “Ok, well, I’m going to let you go now.” And then he waits for me to acknowledge that and say goodbye, he says goodbye and then we have a happy conclusion to our call, and he doesn’t have to deal with a follow-up call. We all win.
We Don’t all Get a Spot on the Team
Extrapolating this to a conversation about CEOs - my nephew isn’t suited to being a CEO of a company. His ability to adapt his communication and personality would not stretch that far. But neither could he be a doctor, or a bus driver. But neither could I. That’s life. If you can’t master good communication you’re not suited to a leadership role. Luckily there are plenty of other types of jobs.
Am I the Villain?
Not sure if you’re a good communicator or if this blog is actually about you? Take an honest inventory of yourself and your communication patterns. Are you constantly finding yourself clarifying, explaining, or feeling frustrated by reactions to things you communicate? Do you churn through assistants or team members? If so, then it might be time to focus on building up your effective communication skills.
