Let’s face it, most bosses aren’t exactly an open book. Truth be told, most employees do not share a list of personal goals and opinions, or their true use of company time or their honest observations about work. Secrets abound at work and I have interviewed enough workers and bosses to know that some secrets may be, best left untold.

How do you know when to stop keeping secrets? When it is okay or even ideal to tell the boss what you think she needs to hear?  Is it time to tell the employees the truth about what you really need from them? Will your honesty be well-received? What if you change your mind after you tip-toe into the land of honesty – can you safely return to denial land or is it a one-way trip? Which taboo topic should we tackle first?

The best-kept secret at most companies is not as juicy as you think. In fact, it is almost boring unless it is your career on the line (and it may be, by the way). It’s the company goals. That’s right; the boss’s top priorities – what they need most - your purpose for being there in the first place.  This is not way beyond my own research. The Harris Polling Group surveyed over 12,000 employees of Fortune 500 companies to learn that 49% of employees said they could name their companies top three priorities.  When asked to do so, only 15% could name even one of the company’s top priorities, and most of them could not say how their own work played a role in meeting those priorities.

At the same time, nearly everyone is being pressured to produce more outcomes with fewer resources. The problem is not resources; the problem is direction. When asked to produce more, the employee is afraid to ask “more of what?” The fear is a communication problem.

The boss wonders why the employee needs to know everything –they should be assigned a task and be expected to do it - properly and on time. That is why they are paid. Of course, one motivation for taking this approach is we don’t know another way. Another reason is that the employer does not want to be exposed for not really knowing his or her own goals, which would be embarrassing. If that strikes a nerve, don’t panic. I am not going to ask you to share your goals in front of the class. Besides, you are in good company. Not knowing your own goals is far too common even among very accomplished people. It requires serious time and energy to re-examine our personal and company goals from time to time, lest we wake up one day wasting our lives without purpose. Most of us do not work in factories doing work that a robot or computer could do. Today’s work environment requires human interaction,
creativity and thought. Experts on motivation, such as Daniel Pink, author of Drive – (The gap between what science
knows and what business does), argue that the carrot and stick method of motivation is largely outdated and only works for menial, repetitive tasks where creativity is not required. Science has proven that reward-motivation
tends to diminish results that require any level of cognitive skill. This is not some new-age-hippie-leadership school that only works in California. Leading corporate experts like Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and Stephen Covey have
been warning us about the death of the industrial age leadership model for decades now. Old habits die hard without the tools to replace them with new habits. 

My conclusion is most people (the ones you want to keep anyway), are starving for the opportunity to apply themselves in a more meaningful way. People want to be treated like grownups, they want a chance
to get better and excel at their work and they need to know that what they do matters. This will require goal work and communication to identify what is important to both the employer and the employee. Let’s discover what each can
offer the other that results in a win/win relationship. This applies to entry-level retail workers, payroll clerks, laborers and top-level executives. There should be something worthwhile in it for everyone. The big question before you know “what’s in it for you”, is to be able to know what you want from it in the first place.  I could recommend a group workshop on goals for your entire team, but for now, I recommend going online and looking for books, webinars and articles on goal setting. You should find vast amounts of resources from very basic to very advanced. If you are ready for personal attention in either goal setting or communications, you know where to find me.


 
 

By Michael Kline
The Conway Daily Sun
Nov. 6, 2013

Email saves us time and money, and costs us time and money.  How do you know when to use it and when to pick up the phone instead?  Last week, I sent an email to five people I know pretty well and speak with frequently. As usual, I reviewed the email carefully before hitting send. Convinced there was no way to confuse my point, I closed my eyes, said a little prayer and hit clicked send.  You guessed it; every person misinterpreted my point. But wait, it gets better – when the first person hit “Reply to all” and gave their response, the rest of the group misinterpreted that person’s position as well.  Does this sound familiar? How much fun is this?!  It’s like doing “Who’s on first” via group email. We created the old fashioned he said/she said, but with a written record of it. What a total waste of time and energy.

Most people I work with think and function very differently than I do. These differences can create challenging relationships, but I find it refreshing, interesting and far more productive than working with people who think just like me. I never get much argument when I say that one of me is enough!  My point is that we all have different communication styles and even when we are talking with someone who“gets” us, they still are not privy to what was going on in our head before we wrote the email. It is very easy to miscommunicate via email. 
 
My favorite four tips about email. 
1.      When sharing facts and figures, copies of larger documents, reports, and short answers to simple
questions, use email. 

2.      Never, ever, not even once in a while, discuss emotional issues via email. Sorry kids, emoticons are
not legitimate expressions of emotions. Yes, a happy face is cute, (especially the one with the tongue sticking out), but not when used merely as a means of avoiding actual communication.

3.      When attempting to negotiate, make a sale, discuss scheduling needs with staff, terms of payment
with a customer, etc., it is wise to understand the other person’s interests, not just their position on a given subject. You want to explore what they are trying to achieve, not just address the solution they are proposing. This
requires talking with them and asking deeper questions that invoke more understanding. Pick up the phone to double your chances of success, or discuss it in person to quadruple your chances of success.

4.      Stop hitting “reply to all” as your default. When sending email to a group, you can put all their addresses in Bcc, which will help by keeping them from replying ot all, but as the recipient of a group emial, there may be a setting in your email that allows you to set this as a default – if so, change it. If you do it manually, think first. Is what you are saying necessary for everyone in the group to hear? There is no need to try to sound smart in front of the whole group, unless everyone really needs to know the information you are sharing. Don’t contribute to email fatigue. People have to read your response to discover if there is any information relevant to them.  It’s bad enough we have to listen to every response when we are suffering
through meetings, don’t make us all suffer through it via email meetings.  You don’t want to train people to not read your emails if you ever want them to pay attention to you when you need them  to.

When discussing our likes and dislikes, body language and facial expressions represent 55% of our communication. The tone of our voice and inflection contribute 38% of the interpreted meaning and the actual words we use contribute only 7% of the meaning. These widely used statistics from Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA, are subject to debate as to their application in real life. The study applies to what elements of communication people trust when spoken words are incongruent with body language, tone, voice, etc. 
People trust body language and facial expressions more than they believe  your word choice. Can we apply this or more recent complex studies to email use?  If you are a scientist, probably not. If like me, you are just trying to get through life more effectively with less stress, then yes, it applies. Read the following sentence aloud several time, each time, placing the emphasis on a different word. You will instantly see how the meaning of the sentence changes dramatically each time. “I did not say you have an attitude problem.”  Do you trust the reader of your email to choose at random, where they place the emphasis?  

Now that nearly everyone has a $200 phone in their pocket, we talk to each other less than ever. Improved understanding saves time and money with staff, improves customer service, makes more sales, negotiates better terms, builds higher trust, and saves untold amounts of grief and stress.  Let’s start listening and speaking to each other, shall we?

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.