Tag: Communication

When I started my company, Journyx, 13 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I am a programmer and technology geek by nature and I left my programming job to start my own company with nothing but an idea and a dream. Back then, I did not have the experience needed to effectively manage people. I had to learn these skills through trial and error, and I had to learn them fast, in order to keep the company going. After all, human resources are a company’s most valuable asset.

Over the years, I have done every job there is in the company. I’ve been the accountant, the software developer, the marketing and PR professional, the testing department, integration services, customer technical support and sales. I have lost sleep when we were close to missing payroll, watched as competitors copied our software bit for bit and lied about us to prospects, and then celebrated along with hard-working employees as we achieved success. Today, we have 50 employees and several million dollars in sales with absolutely no outside investment. Here are some of the things I learned along the way about managing and motivating employees to reach their highest potential.

Hire Diversely

Businesses today face fierce competition on all sides, regardless of industry. The only way to survive in such an environment is to be relentlessly creative. New products, services and ideas are the best way to outshine the competition and win market share.

In order to keep creativity alive in a company, you have to surround yourself with different types of people. Forget partnerships, listen to your customers, and hire high school kids, foreigners, people from other races and religions, and Martians, if you can find them. Different people bring different perspectives to the table, something you need not only to succeed, but merely to survive. The truth is that no matter how smart you are, you cannot be as innovative as you need to be all by yourself.

Here in Austin, Texas, we have the luxury of proximity to the University of Texas (UT). From this well of intellect we continually draw for ideas and young energetic labor. It is a well that never runs dry. In the past, we have hired interns to work on both marketing and legal projects, depending on their area of study. Since Journyx is a technology company and UT has a computer science department, we also hire IT people and developers. Not only do they bring a fresh perspective during their internships, but if they are a good fit, they can remain with us upon graduation and become a long-term asset to the company. If not, they can at least get a letter of recommendation and some real world experience to put on their resumes. It is a win-win situation.

Be Flexible

Another key to effective resource management is to be flexible about allowing employees time off for extracurricular activities, such as college or graduate school classes. For example, we have an employee who is currently working on her bachelor’s degree in social work, which has nothing to do with her work here, and we know that we will lose her upon her graduation. Even so, we allow her to take off the time that she needs to accommodate classes, internships and other requirements. I look at it this way: she is important to me as a person, not just an employee, and I do not want to hold back her education even though her career choice has nothing to do with furthering the interests of Journyx. It’s vital to take a vested interest in not only your company and its profits, but also the people who make up that company.

Your employees have lives outside of the office, and the more you recognize this and support them in the things that matter to them, the more loyal and productive they will be in return.

Build People Up

I learned a long time ago that I can only be a mentor when I know what I’m talking about, which is not everywhere. Having said that, I’m good at lots of things and when those things are relevant, I try to step in and help. I’ve found that when I roll my sleeves up and dig in alongside an employee who needs some help, they see that I care about them and in turn, that makes them care more about the company and the job they’re doing.

It is important to let people know when they are doing a good job, as well. I like the phrase, “catch people doing something right” because it expresses the best way to mentor. And as Napoleon Hill stated, “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” Encourage people to do more of what they’re good at. Find their hidden talents. There’s no point in spending lots of time telling people where they’re messed up.

Think Outside the Box

One of the most difficult tasks for a manager is to keep employees motivated, especially during tough times. It can be especially difficult to do this when money is tight and bonuses are not an option. A couple of years ago, I decided to do something creative and different in order to motivate our sales team. I bet them that they would not exceed their quota for Q1 by 33% and promised that if they did, the entire leadership team would dye their hair. Well, the sales team did not exceed their quota by 33% – they actually blew the doors off and beat their numbers by 45%. Since we lost the bet, we held up our end of the bargain and dyed our hair neon blue for a week, and I have pictures to prove it. (My wife has since forbidden me to do this again, so I will have to come up with something else next time.) It’s also important to remember that you can’t take yourself too seriously.

As you can see, there are many ways that managers today can keep employees happy and their performance high. All it takes is a little understanding and the willingness to try new things. The investment for such initiatives is low, but the return just might surprise you.

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Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx. Journyx offers customers two solutions to reach the highest levels of profitability: Journyx Timesheet – a timesheet and expense management solution for the entire enterprise – and Journyx ProjectXecute – a solution that unites project and process planning with resource management. Journyx has thousands of customers worldwide and is the first and only company to establish Per Person/Per Project Profitability (P5), a proprietary process that enables customers to gather and analyze information to discover profit opportunities. Curt is an avid speaker and author, and recently published All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource. Curt authors a project management blog and you can follow him on Twitter.

I left off my last post alluding to the need for conversation as part of the requirement process-continuous, reflective, emergent, and ongoing communication. The conversations in this case are face-to-face discussion amongst the constituents who are tasked with implementing a specific feature or component.

Even more importantly, those conversations need to be skewed towards doing the work-not simply talking about doing the work. They occur while developers are writing and testing their code, reviewing snippets of working design. They occur while testers are testing snippets, small slices of working code, and seeing what works and what doesn’t-providing that feedback to the developers. They occur while the team shows the customer snippets of working code, checking if it meets expectations and providing real-time feedback. And they occur when the functionality is considered complete and checked off as done.

In a 1967 study, Mehrabian and Wiener analyzed the effectiveness and coverage of human communication. In that study, they found that written communication (documentation, email, instant messaging, etc.) only makes up about 7% of the overall information density potential of communication potential. The breakdown follows.

• 7% of the communication bandwidth / potential was in the language
• 38% …was in the Inflexion
• 55% …was in the body language

Now there has been quite heated debate surrounding that study and how it may be applied. That it wasn’t focused on technology information exchange, but rather more emotionally charged communications. However, while I agree that it may be skewed, I also think there’s an important message embedded within it for our technical information exchange.

It’s that written documentation is probably the most error prone and least rich way for humans to communicate. Diagrams, pictures, and models certainly help-raising the bandwidth of the communication. However, the richest type of communication is when we interact face-to-face as teams. Where we can see each other and interact in that richer and higher capacity medium.

From a design perspective, some of my most successful projects were architected or designed collaboratively at the whiteboard and not at a computer. A small group gathered around the board and hashed out the design. We drew alternatives and discussed them-face-to-face. We explored strengths and weaknesses and reacted to what each others’ suggestions or critical points. When we looked back at the project, the entire team felt it was these critical moments of collaborative communication that were an important part of our critical success criteria.

In my last post I als spoke about the nature of the agile requirement artifact – the User Story. Stories are small, terse artifacts, which are left intentionally incomplete.

When an agile team plans a Story, they don’t invest too much time in it up front. Oh, they discuss it to understand the high level implications, but they defer much of the detail to later. They estimate it at a high level, while also deferring implementation details.

When they’re planning the Story for their very next iteration, they ask more questions, but again, not exhaustively. They also break the Story down into tasks for execution, and that helps drive additional conversation. Still, though, they have only explored 30, 40 or 50% of the clarity surrounding the guts of the Story.

It’s when they actually start to work on it that they flesh out the remaining details, usually in small groups. It’s this wonderful strategy of iteratively defining (and refining) your requirements that’s at the heart of agile methods. It’s allowing yourself to not fill in all of the blanks until you learn more…as you go, in a Just Enough and Just in Time fashion.

Now this is all fine, you might say, for small, co-located teams that can actually have face-to-face communication. What happens when you have real-world larger scale teams that are in distributed locations? Can these approaches still work? If there’s enough interest shown via comments that might be where I go next…

More information on the Mehrabian and Wiener study can be found here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Mehrabian

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

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Robert Bob’ Galen is the President and Principal Consultant of RGCG, L.L.C. Bob has held director, manager and contributor level positions in both software development and quality assurance organizations. He has over 25 years of experience working across a wide variety of software technology and product domains. Bob can be reached at [email protected]

We know that men have a different workplace communication style than women – but does “different” mean better?

Well, yes…..and no!

There are obvious strengths and weaknesses in the communication styles of both genders. Based on a recent research project, in which I collected responses from 387 employees and managers in the United States, Canada and Europe, I found that both sexes identified the same set of strengths and weaknesses in themselves and each other.

On that, at least, we all agree.

This study reinforces other research I conducted for my book, The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work. As you look at the findings below, notice how much of what people call “communication style” is determined not by the words someone is speaking, but what their body is saying.

Top three communication strengths for females:
1. Ability to read body language and pick up nonverbal cues.
2. Good listening skills.
3. Effective display of empathy.

Top three communication weaknesses for females:
1. Overly emotional.
2. Meandering – won’t get to the point.
3. Not authoritative.

Top three communication strengths for males:
1. Physical presence.
2. Direct and to-the-point interactions.
3. Body language signals of power.

Top three communication weaknesses for males:
1. Overly blunt and direct.
2. Insensitive to audience reactions.
3. Too confident in own opinion.

To best understand these findings, however, it’s important to consider them in the context of workplace applications and implications:

For example, there is no “best” communication style for all workplace interactions. Women have the edge in collaborative environments (where listening skills, inclusive body language, and empathy are more highly valued), and men are seen to “take charge” more readily (and viewed as more effective in environments where decisiveness is critical).

In all cases, a strength turns into a weakness when overdone. (A female’s collaborative style can come across as indecisive and a male’s directness can be taken as callousness or disregard for other opinions.)

To a woman, good listening skills include making eye contact and reacting visually to the speaker. To a man, listening can take place with a minimum of eye contact and almost no nonverbal feedback. (Women often cite a lack of eye contact as evidence that their male boss “doesn’t value my input.”)

Men are more comfortable when approached from the side. Women prefer approaches from the front. Likewise, two men speaking will angle their bodies slightly, while two women will stand in a more “squared up” position – a stance that most men perceive as confrontational.

When a man nods, it means he agrees. When a woman nods, it means she is listening.

Female superiority in reading nonverbal signals during business meetings allows women to accurately assess coalitions and alliances just by tracking who is making eye contact with whom at certain critical points.

Men are judged to be better at monologue – women at dialogue.

A man’s ability to hold his emotions in check and to “keep a poker face” is viewed as an advantage in business situations. A woman’s tendency to show her feelings more outwardly in gestures and facial expressions is perceived as a weakness.

When a woman can’t read the person she’s talking to, it makes her anxious. Men’s ability to mask their facial expressions causes uneasiness in women, who often perceive this as negative feedback.

Men are larger, taller and, because we typically equate mass with power, they gain an instant sense of “presence.” Females can compensate by standing straight, broadening their stance, and even putting their hands on their hips in order to take up more physical space.

Women sound more emotional because they use approximately five tones when speaking – and their voices rise under stress. Not only do men have a deeper vocal range, they only use approximately three tones.

Male body language is more likely to emphasize stature, composure, and confidence. Men also send signals of indifference, disagreement or smugness far more often than women do.

As women make decisions, they tend to process and think of options out loud. Men process internally until they come up with a solution. This can lead to problems if a male thinks that the female’s verbal brainstorming means that she’s looking for approval rather than just thinking aloud.

Men’s discomfort dealing with emotion leads them to believe that there needs to be a solution, rather than understanding that sometimes people just need tbe heard.

Because they access the full message (words and body language), women are better at watching and listening for reactions. This allows them to ensure that they are being understood, and adjust accordingly.

In negotiations, men talk more than women and interrupt more frequently. One perspective on the value of speaking up comes from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who – when asked what advice she had for up-and-coming professional women – replied, “learn to interrupt.”

Men make direct accusations (You didn’t do it!) while women use an indirect method (Why didn’t you do it?)

Women are viewed as less professional when they resort to girlish behaviours (twirling hair, playing with jewellery, etc.) or flirtatious body language (tossing hair back, crossing and uncrossing legs, etc.).

Men who don’t know each other well tend to keep a greater distance between them than women who have just met. This difference in interpersonal distance as determined by gender is even true in Web 2.0’s online communities (like Second Life) where many of the unconscious “rules” that govern personal space in the physical world can be found in the virtual world.

Women are viewed as lacking authority when they try to avoid confrontation and conflict, when they are unnecessarily apologetic, when they are too focused on pleasing others, when they smile excessively or inappropriately, and when they discount their own ideas and achievements.

So Venus or Mars – whichever you are – the trick is to know when your communication style is an aid to success. And when it becomes a deterrent. Comparing your strengths and weaknesses to these generalized gender differences is one place to start. And enlarging your repertoire of communication skills, so you can employ strategies that are most effective under various circumstances, definitely gives you an advantage.

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Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., is an author and keynote speaker who addresses association, government, and business audiences around the world. Carol is the author of 10 business books. Her latest is The Nonverbal Advantage – Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work. She is an HR columnist with Troy Media Corporation