The Administrative Professional

Communicator’s Toolbox – Ask Doug
By Doug Coleman

We spend most of our waking hours communicating whether it’s face-to-face, on the telephone, through email, or, through letters (remember writing, folding, stuffing and sealing the envelope, and licking the stamp?). Administrative Professionals often have the double challenge of communicating for two people - themselves, and their supervisor.

To start this column, I asked an Administrative Professional I know what she feels she needs in her Communicator’s Toolbox. Her answer was an eye-opener. “Everything,” she said. “I need to know how to communicate more effectively, efficiently, and accurately. Communicating takes up most of my day.” My only response was, “Wow. That’s a big order, but, like the way to eat an elephant, let’s take one bite at a time.” So, here is our first bite.

Communicating is the act of delivering a message from your mind to the mind of other people with as little change in the meaning as possible. Notice that I didn’t say “…with no change.” That’s because it’s impossible to deliver a message exactly, and that’s the key word, the way you have it in your mind. Your message is influenced by too many unknown factors for you to count on being understood the way you want or hope it to be understood. Sorry, but that is one of the cold, hard facts about communicating. So, we start this column with the discouraging truth that all communications will be changed by the receiver in some way, possibly in a very small way, but changed. Count on it. This happens to you every day, and you may not be aware of it, but it happens.

Ok, let’s start understanding why your messages aren’t received they way you send them. First, there is nothing concrete about words. There’s no secret society that makes up our words and gives them an exact meaning that will not or cannot be modified or even changed. On the contrary; words are created by people and the meaning evolve over time. Words to meet the needs of technology like internet, television, I-Pod, so on are good examples. 50 years ago there wasn’t an internet. The word didn’t exist. The internet was created, somebody gave it a name, and the dictionaries started listing the word with a meaning based on how people used it.

You have a book-full of words you use everyday that have meanings you understand based on your personal experience with those words. They are your words and your meanings. Other people, including your boss and your coworkers have their own words and their own meanings based on their personal experiences with their words. Are you starting to see one of the big problems in communication? No word means exactly, there’s that word again, the same thing to every person.

When I tell people this fact, their immediate response is to ask, “How can I be sure to get my message delivered the way I want it?” My answer is, “There’s no guarantee, but if you don’t try, you can be sure you will be misunderstood.” There are some things you can do to reduce the risk of being misunderstood. Use the simplest, most basic words possible. The average person understands most of the one and two syllable words and some three syllable words without much confusion so keep your words simple. Even these simple words can be affected by a person’s experience. For example, if you used the word “terminate” referring to a process or a policy, can you guess what message might be received? In times of economic distress, the first thought many people will have relates to job security because that is the way this word is being used a lot at this time and it could set a negative tone.

Many people make the mistake of trying to expand their vocabulary. The marketers of vocabulary expanding training claim this is the way to get ahead and be professional. I don’t agree. The way be get ahead and be professional is to be clear and understood as a communicator. Using words other people don’t know or understand is not the way to make friends, communicate clearly, or be professional. Keep your words simple, familiar and don’t just state your thought. Explain it so there can not be any doubt about your message. Take the extra time and paint clear word pictures.

If you have a question about communicating, send me an email. I will answer every email question and will select one for each issue as the topic for that issue. Remember, your “Job One” is effective communicating. By comparison, everything else, is easy.

Until next issue, don’t forget to Ask Doug.

Words, Voice, and Body: Together They Deliver Your Message

We have been communicating from the instant we were born. Why then are courses and seminars on Communicating so popular? Those of us in business are evaluated, at review time, by how effectively we communicate. There is a commonly held opinion that ineffective communication is a major roadblock to business efficiency causing errors that often relate to increased cost and reduced profits.

Your Communicator’s Toolbox holds three main tools. Knowing how to use them is as important to you, as an Administrative Professional, as knowing how to use golf clubs is to a Golf Professional. The better you understand your communicating tools, the more effective you will be.

The Three Tools

Those three tools are: Words, Voice, and Body. Together, they deliver your message. The key point is that you want your three tools to work together to deliver the message you intend to deliver, not a message that is confusing or misunderstood. If your three tools are not working together, your message can’t be received the way you want.

Words

Early man communicated first by using hand gestures and later by painting pictures on rocks and cave walls. When the subject was a horse, they drew an outline of a horse. If the horse had a spot on its shoulder, they painted the spot on the shoulder and everyone knew which horse that was.

When sounds became used as a symbol for a horse, the identity of the horse was unclear. The sounds were symbols that people in the tribe associated with a horse, but without the picture to show which horse, the language had a problem that is still with us today.

A language was born. Different tribes used different sounds to represent a horse or tree or person. The different tribes couldn’t communicate with each other, a problem that exists today around the world.
The lesson here is that words, as we know them, are symbols that represent a thought. It has been said that no word ever has exactly the same meaning twice. That is because the meaning of a word is based on the experience the listener has had with the word. When that experience is called to mind, an emotion is also generated. A word can represent a thought and stimulate a feeling.

When I say the word “fire” to you, your first reaction is impossible to predict. You could have been burned and suffered pain, or you could have been terminated from a job and felt despair and fear, or you could have enjoyed a cozy and romantic evening by a fire and have pleasant feelings.

To be sure your message causes your listener to receive the message you intend, here’s a simple way to help your listener find the meaning you intend and stimulate the emotion you want or at least prevent the emotions you don’t want.

When you paint a picture by numbers, you seldom see the whole picture after painting only the first color. As you add color number 2 and then color number 3, the pictures becomes clearer with each color. That is what you do with words to focus the listener on the meaning you intended for your words. State your thought then, immediately restate the thought using different words. Then do it again using different words again. You may need to restate a sentence, a phrase, or only a word.
Another remedy, if you feel your words might not be understood they way you intend, is to make your statement and immediately expand on part of that statement by using an example or a personal experience reference.

The first step in having your listener receive your message as you intend is to realize that you will probably be misunderstood. It has been said the 75% of all spoken communication is misunderstood. So, don’t just toss out a brief statement and expect it to carry all the meaning and emotion you intend. Take a moment and help your listener receive your message and not generate his or her own message from your words.

Voice

Your voice has three ways of expressing emotion. Your pace, the speed with which you speak and your variations of the speed is a strong tool for delivering emotion – fast for excitement, slow for serious and important. Your pitch, the tone of your voice from low pitch to high can be used as verbal punctuation. Ending a statement with your pitch rising is a signal that you are asking a question. You volume, the loudness of your voice, adds drama and impact. Sometimes low pitch and soft volume can indicate importance, almost like a stage whisper. Put these three together and you have a wide range of combinations to add flavor and impact to your words.

Body

Body Language is a term we have all heard. It simply means that your body posture and how you use your hands can deliver a message that adds to or detracts from your spoken message. Hand gestures should be pantomimes of your words as if playing Charades, and your body position will show your belief in your message. For example, saying, “I’m so excited” while showing a sagging or slouching posture while looking down cancels your words.

If your words, voice, and body are not delivering the same message, your body will be believed first, then your voice, and that doesn’t give your words much of a chance to be understood.

Think a moment before speaking. Think of your message and what you want to send.

Use a combination of voice pace, pitch, and volume to stimulate the drama.

Be sure your posture and hand gestures match your voice and your words.

In short, effective communicating starts with a moment of thought and planning. When you follow these few suggestions, you may be surprised to see your messages being understood better with less time needed for further clarifying.

Leave your comments and questions for Doug!