Episode 108: My Morning Second Shave - Communication at First and Second Glances

This week's episode centers around communication. What if we all took just a few extra moments when communicating to ensure everyone is on the same page? Listen to this episode for some important communication tips that will make you a more effective communicator in and out of the office.

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall", your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

I'm always grateful when you join me, Randall, here on "Around with Randall". I find myself in the last several episodes of the podcast talking a lot about interpersonal professional skills. Several episodes ago, talked about listening. Then about the communal experience, and then a little bit about power in the office place. Today I've naturally kind of moved into this, which I find to be a pattern which means I'm seeing these challenges professionally with clients more often into this idea of perception.

Every morning, and if you know me or listen to my podcast you know I'm incredibly ritualistic, you do the same things. Every day, and my first blog that I ever wrote I actually talked about one of those rituals. When I get up I shave with an electric shaver before I get into the shower, and then when I get out of the shower with a you know little handheld mirror so I can see close, I shave again. And I always think of it as a chance to reassess how I look. I like to look clean-shaven. Works for me. But to do so, I do it before and after because when you take a warm shower the hairs expand a little bit or stand up a little bit so that second shave I get to see my face again and see what places I missed, and I get to shave it a little bit differently. And right now you're probably going, what in the world does this have to do with interpersonal office relationships? I called the second shave process in the very first blog I ever wrote about how we communicate and look at each other, because the way I look at my face when I get in the shower, I think I'm clean shaven. And when I come out and I look in that same exact handheld mirror to get up close, I see the places where I missed. So with a little bit of steam and heat, and a little bit of time, three, four minutes, I see my face differently. And I equate that to sometimes the way in which we communicate, that we jump to conclusions, and that we have trouble in the professional environment with communication skills. And what I want to talk about today is this concept of a second shave.

First, why is communication so troublesome, hard, difficult in the office place? And then number two, what can you do to help yourself in terms of communication, particularly as you perceive others giving them a second look, a second shave? So let's start with, why this is so hard? First and foremost, there's medicine, medical studies about this. It's neuroscience that when you are communicating with someone or you're perceiving a situation or watching communication occur and there's a level of uncertainty, you're not on the same page. Neuroscience tells us that actually that's considered a threat and that the body and the brain naturally react in a way that is protective of you because you're uncertain. It's kind of the same in a life's, life challenging, life-threatening situation that your brain, our brains, my brain are built to protect you. And so when there's a level of uncertainty, there's natural things that occur in our brains that pull us back from the edge, so-to-speak, for most of us. And when communication is a challenge, the same thing begins to happen. It's uncertainty. And that releases certain types of hormones that cause you to pull back, to be more reticent. And so the first thing I want to start with is, some of this is biological and I don't think we always want to talk and admit that. But at the end of the day it's important to realize.

The second thing is, it's just plain complicated. And I'm thinking of it as an X, Y axis. We have a depth issue. The amount of things we have to process in terms of content and communications isn't what it used to be 150, 200 years ago. It's more in depth, and then you bring in the personal side. So when we talk about finance and politics, there's this intersection of all of these content areas that we do. And from a, have a personal opinion that we also have to bring into the professional environment, the level of depth in the conversations is incredibly deep. At the same times the ways in which we communicate, the y-axis, is totally more in depth, more there's more of them, more options than we've ever had certainly. Face-to-face communications, if we go back 2,000 years, was maybe a letter or some type of writing, but with limited communication vehicles. Today we still have face-to-face. We now have email, which we really can't read someone's intent correctly because it's words on a computer screen. We have texting, we'll talk about a little bit about that here in a few minutes, and we have social media. There's all of these new ways in which people communicate and they may say something to you face-to-face, but say something else or so you perceive in another method of communication, it's complicated. Much more so today than it ever has been.

We also have what I call truncation issues. If you are on social media, you truncate. There's like a separate language for those who use texting and other social media platforms of which I do not understand. When I send a text message, I tend to speak the whole things out, the whole thing out, the whole message, the whole including period, comma. I mean, I'm because I don't want my message to be misconstrued. One place I do see truncation in my life is, I tend to shorten people's names. Guy that I know that I really have a lot of respect for, he's got a name that starts with with a B and it's kind of a longer name and so I just call him B. I truncate, and that's probably a detriment to be candid.

Number four is is that emotion is a part of what we deal with every day in communication that sometimes we can't even see that emotion. That's where emails and texting have limitations. We can't see the level of despair, concern, awareness that maybe the communicator of the message has in a typed message. In the same vein sometimes we think there's a lot of emotion there, and there's actually not, which gives us a perspective about how important it is. All of this is a balancing act of figuring out, okay, how people are communicating, what they actually mean, and how important it is to them, it's hard to do when you're not in front of someone. There's also... we talked about this in the podcast about are we listening so I won't go into a lot of detail here. There's a lack of listening and feedback in our world, particularly in social media and in electronic communications. We think we know what they're saying. Did we actually ask them? Listen to the podcast on "Are We Listening?" I think that will be helpful to you.

We also are not on the same page, particularly coming out of the pandemic, when it comes to the idea of teams of being on the same page, having similar goals. We all are trying to figure out this new world of offices, and in part, I think this is why you're beginning to see some for-profit corporations begin to really discuss, we need people back in the office. U.S Bank just announced that they want their people in the offices three days a week, and they're very honest to say our productivity levels haven't dropped but we're seeing a degradation of and decay of our communal experience. Another podcast that I spent about 20 minutes talking about why this community thought, of community, so important and they want to rebuild that. So we're pulling away from the idea of the team because we're more isolated, because we can communicate without being face-to-face with people.

The final is that everyone has different communication styles, and not all styles match or mix well. Sometimes we have to realize, and there's testing that allows you to know this. Whether it's DISC or the Berkeley Personality and Communication Test, there's a lot of different tests out there. It's more important you realize what other people, and how other people communicate versus your own, although it's really important to know your own because you want to be able to read people better. You want to know what they're actually trying to get to. And what I like about DISC is it talks about the natural and adaptive state. When things get stressful people change their communication styles naturally, and so that adaptive style gives you a sense of when things are a little stressful they begin to adjust their communication, and you can have a better understanding who they are and what they mean.

These are just seven things I think of that are critically important so the Neuroscience. That this is all complicated. That we truncate a lot, makes it hard to read. We can't see the emotion in a lot of written communication such as emails and texts. That we have a challenge in skill sets when we come to being listening and actively engaged in conversations, on the receiving end that we have dissimilar goals. We're not as much on the same page professionally as we used to do because of remote learning, or remote access, or office environments. And then finally we have different communication styles to begin with.

So, the last part of the podcast here, which I always try to get to, is the tactical. How do you help yourself when we talk about a second shave? How do you figure out, I need to realize that what I perceive as what they are saying or the level of its importance? Are there hidden meanings? May or may not actually be there.

So the first thing I would say is, don't immediately judge someone's communication in what I will call in concrete or in totality. Give yourself, like my shaving, a second look. Were there other dynamics, a part of the conversation, were there other concerns that were going on? Did the person have something going on personally that's stretching into their professional life? What you'll find is that, I think you'll see the conversation differently if you review it mentally. I tend to do that a lot. I replay conversations in my head and go, what did they actually think about? What were they meaning on this, or did I misread it? So the first thing is just a general don't jump to conclusions. Protect yourself. Someone's overly aggressive or inappropriate that's one thing, that should never happen, and you should defend and protect yourself. But if it's not that, by not jumping into conclusions maybe there's a different way of looking at it, so that's the global.

The first tactical thing is something I stole from my sister who's just incredibly bright. She mentioned early on in the pandemic that we have to have two really important kind of perspectives or things to keep in mind as people are trying to figure out what's going on in the pandemic. She says number one, you have to assume everybody's doing their best because everybody's looking at the pandemic differently, and I've taken that in a myriad of different ways, and it starts with communication. Everybody's doing their best, generally, you hope, take it but I start with that. They're trying. And the second thing is that I need to be respectful in this conversation, so what does that mean in some detail? So being respectful and everyone assuming at least to start until they prove themselves differently, everyone's doing their best is I look at this and go what are the actual facts? How do we identify those and how do we agree upon those? They're going to be times where you don't agree upon the facts. They see one pattern, you see another. The key here is realizing that you're not seeing the same facts and defying common ground. The second thing is, I like and I steal this from my mom a lot of I feel messages. When I was a kid I can't remember what it was about or deal, dealt with, but Mom said something like when you do this I feel this way. And I said well that's not fair and she said whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You may have a lot of control on a lot of things, but you don't control my emotions. I feel this way. You don't get to make that change. The question is how you feel about it and what you're going to do about it. And I found that when I use I feel messages, it's harder for someone to say well you're wrong. Well they're my feelings. So if you can find a way to find facts and find a way to use I feel message, I think what you end up with is a more honest dialogue about where people are at in that conversation.

Number two, back to the data piece, triangulate information. Maybe it's because I've written so much academically, publicly in terms of publications working on a couple things that I think are along those lines in terms of bigger projects. The the ability to cite factual sources is really important, but not just one. If you can look at a series of facts or data and see the same data from different perspectives that's that triangulation. And if someone uses facts and can you identify where they got them, can you verify that they're correct, again going back to the idea of getting on the same page of a fact or data perspective or or situation, I think is critically important. So triangulation is a word that I used often to make sure what we're seeing is actually true and valid, and sometimes that takes multiple sources or perspectives or vantage points to be able to to identify, to triangulate your information.

Number three is one of a judgment call in what I say, pick your battles. It's kind of the way I look at raising my kids. There are certain things I'm willing to go to war over because they're value-based. They're morals, they're ethics, they're lifelong issues. There are other things that I would do differently than my kids, but they're not mission critical, so really them doing them the way they want to doesn't affect what we're doing as a family or doesn't cross certain rules. Ethics, morals as a family, we have pick your battles. If you go to war every time there's communication the only person is going to lose is you because you're going to run out of energy and you're going to be viewed not in a very positive manner. So pick them pick the ones that are worthwhile. Let the other ones go and be okay with letting them go.

Number four is to differentiate between personal and professional. Two kind of thoughts on this. Number one, are there personal things in your life that are affecting your ability to listen and communicate? Are there things in their life that are affecting their ability to listen and communicate? I've learned when there's stress at home, health issues, relationship issues, financial issues, people's ability to openly and honestly communicate changes dramatically, particularly if someone's pretty even-keeled and all of a sudden there's a large deviation from that normal pattern. I'm kind of wanting to pull back and ask the question, are you okay?This isn't normal. You, you're very normal, communicative, even-keeled person. This is really emotional. What's going on? Are you okay, or are you overly emotional or a little bit unsettled? And it's because of something going on at home, the realization that there are outside indicators in our communication is important because if you judge someone, second shave, just based on that initial overly emotional, overly reactive communication, and don't give them a second chance they may come back with a different kind of emotional state. If things have settled, and I'm sure you've experienced that, so keep that in mind through kind of differentiate what's going on at home and in their personal life, and maybe professionally you're not even involved in that part of their professional world.

Number five is, don't truncate when it's important. I don't truncate very often. I mention the names a few minutes ago and how sometimes I'll shorten those. I send texts, emails with no abbreviations, punctuated. I review what I write before I send it because I don't want there to be a miscommunication. And in some ways this is the reason I don't have Twitter or Instagram, because an immediate reaction might not be construed as a positive reaction. And so make sure that your messaging is clear and if you're using abbreviations, sometimes you might be using the wrong ones that get you in trouble. Give yourself a chance to be clearly understood.

Number six is about active listening. If you're concerned about communication, active listening skills can be an incredibly powerful tool to create clarity. Active listening skills at a very high level are doing things like, I heard you say this is this what you meant so that there is a understanding between the two of you of what the base level conversation is really about or what you're actually talking about or what the answers might be. Thank you that's really interesting. What I heard you say was a, b, and c. If you use active listening skills, you might find it advantageous in terms of creating clarity for you in the communication.

The final one is where I started. Don't overreact immediately. Take a second look. Now, if you have the same pattern of behavior and communication, four, five, six, seven, eight times with this, with the person, well now we're into a different conversation because there's a pattern. I mean you get used to it, start looking for other things that might be able to, like we've talked about, help you clarify. But if it's the first communication or an unusual communication, don't react quickly. I love what the Jesuits and Saint Ignatius taught, at least me. in the idea of reflection. Take a moment and reflect on the communication and think about, is this normal, natural? This is what we normally see. Consistent versus different. And then do the second shave. Give it some time. Let the steam roll over it. Go back and look in the mirror and see what was missed because you'll see it differently if you give it a little bit of time.

I love the idea every morning of thinking about in that second shave how am I going to allow people to really express themselves in a way that's meaningful. And then secondly how am I going to make sure I communicate well with others so they know exactly my perspective. If we had more of this idea of a second shave we probably have less problems, not only professionally but personally and around the world.

Don't forget, check out the website. Two blogs a week. Love posting them. just things to get you thinking. 90 second reads you can get in feed and be sent right to you RSS feed. If you'd like to communicate with me, email me podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Glad to chat. Don't forget what you're doing is critically important. You're changing the world. Philanthropy isn't about money, it's about the definition that we find in ancient Greek and Latin. Love of mankind. It's the ability to help someone else be better, and if you're doing that every day then you fit in the first category of my all-time favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. Being someone who makes something happen, partnering with people who make things happen for the people and things in our community that need the most attention, those wondering what happened, that's a great professional pursuit. I hope you know how important you are to what you're doing. I appreciate your time. Thanks again for joining me, Randall, here on "Around with Randall". We'll see you next time right back here. Don't forget, make it a great day.