Communication Miracles at Work: Effective Tools and Tips for Getting the Most from Your Work Relationships - Softcover

Gilbert, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573248029 ISBN 13: 9781573248020

Publisher: Conari Press, 2002

Synopsis

Communication Miracles at Work is about experiencing breakthrough moments of connectedness and understanding with coworkers, managers, staff members, and clients. Developed out of Matthew Gilbert's experience as an employee, communication consultant, manager, and facilitator, Communication Miracles at Work will help readers develop effective communication and relationshipbuilding skills for achieving workplace harmony.

Topics include the "corporate culture" and how it enhances or hinders the ability of people to get along, the role of stress in ineffective communication, issues of gender in talking and listening, and how to use good communication in everyday situations. Readers are carefully guided toward seeing their own personal obstacles around communicating and are given effective tools on how to make almost any workplace encounter an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth.

This book is for anyone who wants to have a better daytoday experience at work, reaching out to people wherever they are on the corporate ladder, from those just entering the workforce to more experienced workers to managers and CEOs.

About this title

About the Author

Matthew Gilbert was the managing;executive editor of a publishing trade magazine for six years and has been a manager and consultant for many small companies. He has written extensively on business, psychology, and spirituality and is the author of Communication Miracles at Work and Take This Job and Love It. Gilbert is now the editorinchief at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and lives in California with his wife and their two cats.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Communication Miracles at Work

Effective Tools and Tips for Getting the Most from your Work Relationships

By Mathew Gilbert

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2002 Mathew Gilbert
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-802-0

Contents

Foreword by BJ Gallagher
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE Workplace Cultures
CHAPTER TWO Why Am I So Mad?
CHAPTER THREE The Gender Factor
CHAPTER FOUR Getting Along with coworkers
CHAPTER FIVE Communicating Up and Down the Ladder
CHAPTER SIX Treating Customers as Human Beings
CHAPTER SEVEN Working in Groups
CHAPTER EIGHT What the Best Companies Are Doing
CHAPTER NINE Who Do You Want Be?
Resources
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author

CHAPTER 1

"Thinking about corporate culture might sound somewhat 'touchy feely,' but Iwould argue that few characteristics are more important to a company's success."

—The Motley Fool, a financial website

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

—Martin Luther King. Jr.

Workplace Cultures

Before exploring workplace communication or the potential for miracles, let'sfirst talk about the workplace itself and how it has (and hasn't) changed overthe years. If you watch old movies, for example, you'll notice that mostcompanies were depicted as pretty straitlaced, with lots of earnest men in theirstarched white shirts and conservative ties performing their narrow butimportant roles with a steadfast commitment. There were specific rules, chainsof command, and the general drone of commerce without much variation. It was atime when companies like Ford, IBM, and General Electric ruled the Westernworld, where you took what these paternal giants gave you and were happy just tobe a productive cog in the economic machine.

No more.

Today, with more women in the workforce, more autonomy for employees, partneringand teamwork, flextime and job shares, and growing multicultural diversity, theworkplace bears little resemblance to the one to which our fathers made alifetime commitment. Workplaces are changing with the times, spurred also by aflood of new strategies for getting more out of less: hierarchy leveling,quality circles, theories Y and Z, "best practices," and the list goes on. Thegoal of these strategies has been to improve workplace performance while givingmanagement—and employees—more of that they need.

And yet despite all that effort and adaptation and, for many workers, growingwages, job satisfaction remains surprisingly low:

• A study completed in 2000 by The Conference Board, a nonprofit membershiporganization for business executives, found that almost half of all workersweren't happy with their jobs.

• A recent study of 1000 workers commissioned by Headhunter.net found that 78percent of them would take a new position if the right opportunity came along,while 48 percent were actively looking for a new job.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that American workers hold on averagenine different jobs before the age of thirty-two (which isn't all that amazingif you think about how many restaurant jobs you had before the age of twenty!).

According to these and other reports, the most frequently cited reasons that weleave our jobs, or would like to, include a lack of recognition, salary issues,a weak sense of purpose or mission, few opportunities for advancement, andinsufficient training. Many people surveyed also reported a drop in satisfactionwith their workplace relationships, historically a key component of jobenjoyment.

And yet workplace benefits have never been more generous. Companies are goingout of their way to meet their employees' needs, sometimes out of a true senseof giving, sometimes as a desperate measure to keep staff, and sometimes as aresponse when cries for change can no longer be ignored. Many of these changesare designed to help working folks better integrate their personal lives withtheir professional lives. And still they don't seem to be enough.

What's going on here? From what well does such deep dissatisfaction draw?

Sure, there are legitimate problems in our workplaces, many of which will bediscussed in the pages that follow. Workplace stress, much of it fueled bydysfunctional relationships and communication breakdowns, has never been higher.But maybe we're asking for too much from our jobs. Should work be all things toall people? Can it be? Are acknowledgment, a big paycheck, limitless potential,and limited hassles more than any company should be expected to give?

Wanting It All

In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow presented his famous "hierarchy of needs"theory. At the bottom of the pyramid are the basics: food, water, shelter. Thenthere is safety and security (money). Next come social needs (a sense ofbelonging, love), then ego needs (self-esteem, respect from others), and finallyself-actualization—achieving our highest potential. It was a process he feltthat all human beings are born to follow, the natural stages of humanmaturation. But is it a process that stops at the office door? Perhaps it'sunrealistic to think that we can meet all our higher needs at our jobs. Thereare many who believe that our expectations have simply become too high, that ourjobs were never meant to provide much more than a fair wage and a reasonablypleasant place to work.

This claim was best expressed in a provocative article entitled "The Myth of JobHappiness" In Workforce, a magazine for "human resource" professionals. Itquoted both an author and a professor defending the notion that the problem ofworkplace dissatisfaction lies not with the companies but with their workers.The author, Dave Arnott (who wrote Corporate Cults: The Insidious Lure of theAll-Consuming Organization), believes that "employees are expecting the wrongthings from the workplace. They are expecting emotional satisfaction from work,not just financial satisfaction."

Professor of leisure studies Benjamin Hunnicutt goes even further, stating,"It's a myth that we can find identity, meaning, and community at work." Hecalls this the "Mary Tyler Moore myth," a reference to the optimistic heroine oftelevision sitcom fame. "In reality," he says, "employees find dullards andirrational bosses" because the politics of work "is about control."

Well, he's right up to a point. But the whole purpose of what came to be calledby management theorists the "human relations movement" was to counteract thetask-oriented models of workplace performance with a more people-centeredperspective. And while it's also true that work has taken up more and more spacein our lives, what's wrong with a company with a healthy sense of community,where people working together can stretch for something larger than the nextpaycheck? Our jobs shouldn't supplant a healthy life outside of work wherefamily, friends, and being in nature take precedent, but if we leave too much ofourselves at home, our performance at work can only suffer, and so too will thecompany that employs us.

And don't assume that companies or groups whose primary mission is to save theworld have it any easier. These workplaces can be just as dysfunctional as anyglass-towered corporate Goliath. Having worked with Green Party USA in the early1990s, I can tell you that just because a group of people is committed to loftygoals of societal and planetary change doesn't mean it knows how to worktogether or to get a job done. In fact, with so much passion and purpose on theline, the organization's members spent as much time figuring out how to getalong as they did working on how to actually get their messages out. Ironically,though, by focusing so much energy on an inclusive process of making decisions,they were changing the world, one disagreement at a time.

Corporate Personality

Fortunately there are companies—more than you may think—that receiveconsistently high marks for employee satisfaction, have low rates of turnover,and earn impressive financial returns. They have integrated corporate values andpersonal values into a way of doing business that honors the need for both. Therecipe for success is slightly different for each, but they all sharecharacteristics that make them stand out in a crowd.

This is where the nitty-gritty of workplace culture comes in.

In short, workplace culture is defined by a company's mission, goals, and valuesand by how those things influence the working environment itself and thebehaviors of those who work there. It's basically what differentiates workingfor one company from working for another. From the pressed-suit rigidity of WallStreet to the "anything goes" philosophy of dot.coms (at least in the earlydays), each company has its own spoken and unspoken rules of conduct, furtherinfluenced by societal standards and gender conditioning of what is and isn'tOK.

Hospitals, for example, are in the business of preserving and saving lives, andthat overarching commitment affects the urgency with which that mission iscarried out. A cake factory, by comparison, will probably have an entirelydifferent atmosphere. Yes, there may be an urgency to getting cakes in the boxand out the door, but they are cakes, not people (just imagine the fringebenefits, though!).

But even companies in the same business can have very diverse dispositions. WhenI was working in the casino business back in the late 1970s, there was anestablishment on every corner and quite a few in between, but each one wasslightly different. There were the high-roller hotels, where dealers wereexpected to act with a certain decorum. Chatting with the customers wasdiscouraged, and the dress and grooming codes were strictly enforced. In others,the prevailing attitude was that the fewer rules, the better. A truck-stopcasino near Reno, the last chance to gamble before crossing the state line intoCalifornia, was famous as a place where dealer-customer repartée was part of theshow. The friendlier you were, the more likely you'd walk away at the end of thenight with a pocketful of tips.

To get a better sense of your workplace culture, think of it as having apersonality. Is it loose or rigid, fun or serious, caring or cold? Could it becharacterized as a race car driver, a mother hen, a stuffy patriarch, an absentmindedprofessor? Is it more like Gordon Gecko, the character in the movie WallStreet, ready to eat someone's lunch at a moment's notice, or like good-guybanker Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life? Is it the kind of place wherehonesty and respect are considered fundamental corporate values, or is it nose-to-the-grindstone,don't ask questions, punch the clock, and go home?

What does all this have to do with communication? A lot, because the more acompany encourages openness, camaraderie, and teamwork on the job, the morefertile the conditions for a communication miracle to occur. Camaraderie, andteamwork on the job, the more fertile the conditions for a communication miracleto occur. In fact, the more open and human-centered the company, the more likelythat a communication breakthrough will seem like an everyday part of businessand not a miracle. A manager goes out of her way to ensure that an employee haswhat he needs to do his job. A co-worker will make it a point to be friendly toa shy new hire. The boss of the entire company asks you what should be doneabout the new federal regulations.

And so how we communicate at our jobs—what, where, when, why, and with whom—isinfluenced by what is and isn't valued in our company's particular culture.

Is Your Company a "Great Place to Work"?

Believe it or not, there is an organization called Great Place to Work(r)Institute, which for the last several years has identified companies whoseworkplace cultures resonate with the kind of qualities that keep employeessatisfied and loyal. They publish an annual list entitled "The 100 BestCompanies to Work For," which occupies significant editorial space in eachyear's January edition of Fortune magazine.

Institute founder Robert Levering defines a "great place to work" as one whereyou "trust the people you work with, have pride in what you do, and enjoy thepeople you work with." As Levering and his associates see it, trust is measuredby credibility ("Are managers approachable? Do they deliver on theirpromises?"), respect ("Are your contributions recognized and your ideas soughtout?" "Does the company realize that you have a personal life?"), and fairness("Is good work properly rewarded? Is everyone treated equally?"). Pride is aboutthe job itself: Does your work have meaning? Is it helping to make the world abetter place? And finally, it is measured by camaraderie: Is your workplacefriendly? Do you feel like you can be yourself? If you answer yes to all thesequestions, you've struck it rich!

The institute's work confirms the belief that the real reason people stay in thesame job is not because of an impressive benefits package or the latesttechnological tools, but because their work satisfies and fulfills them on adeeper level. How one feels at work and the quality of the relationships theyhave with others are often at the heart of their contentedness. Such anexperience of what a company and its people are capable of can inspire the kindof loyalty that money just can't buy.

The TDI Story

TDIndustries is a construction and service company that has provided a varietyof mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and energy services to customers in Texasand throughout the Southwest for more than fifty years. It has been a consistenthigh scorer in the institute's "Top-100" rankings, is employee owned—which sayssomething about the company's commitment to those who work there—and staffloyalty is legendary. The mission statement reads, in part, that the company"focuses on our customers as the engine which drives our ability to provideoutstanding careers for all of our employee owners and security for theirfamilies."

Spokesperson Jessie McCain explains that TDI's success is largely the result of"our concern for and belief in individual human beings. We believe that theindividual has dignity and importance, that people are basically honest, andthat each person wants to do a good job. We believe that no one has ever reallyfound the limits of human ability. In addition, [we value] individualdifferences, honesty, building trusting relationships, fairness, responsiblebehavior, and high standards of business ethics."

This sounds very impressive, doesn't it? It's important to know, though, thatTDI's accomplishments didn't happen overnight. They are the result of a long andpersevering process, both a bottom-up and top-down commitment, which McCaindescribes as "long experience with mistakes and triumphs, and a spirit thatsustains and uplifts." And a big part of their success has been their emphasison communication.

The company has what it calls a "no-door" policy. This means that anyone canvisit anyone else at any time. If the mail clerk has a bone to pick with thevice president of distribution, he or she is encouraged to do so. In fact, saysMcCain, "Our wonderful CEO, Jack Lowe, is disappointed if "partners" (allemployees are considered partners) do not visit him. Jack leads a series ofmeetings every few weeks where a group of thirty or so partners are invited tohave breakfast with him to discuss anything that is on their minds. The meetingsare called Partner Roundtables and have been a very effective vehicle forletting Jack 'in on the grapevine' and knowing what is concerning our workers."

TDIndustries also believes in "open-book management." On one Friday each monththey discuss with anyone who can attend all sales and forecast information "soeveryone will know where we are from a financial standpoint."

TDI empowers its employees to resolve problems at their source. "The personclosest to the problem is probably the one who knows best how to correct it!"says McCain. "We aren't a very formal or structured company, but somehow we'reusually able to solve most of our problems without mediation or formal review.When you get conflicting parties together in the same room with a win-winattitude, there isn't much you can't accomplish together."

Finally, TDI has an extensive "new partner" orientation process that spans atwo-year period and covers everything from the company's culture and benefits toits emphasis on quality and opportunities for growth. "Needless to say," McCainenthuses, "communication is the key word at TDIndustries. In fact, we've beenaccused of overcommunicating!"

Assessing Your Company's Culture

Now, all of this is well and good. We applaud the TDIs of the world (and you'llread about more of them in chapter 8). We love the idea of an open, honest,functional workplace where everyone is treated like a human being, where thereare no real bad guys, and where sales goals are always met. But in reality, theworkplace is usually a very mixed bag. You may love your co-workers but thinkyour boss is a loser. There may be a great benefits package, but mistakes aretreated harshly. There may be an open-door policy with management, but perhapsyour ideas are never implemented.

So it's important to get a better handle on the culture of your workplace—itsstrengths and weaknesses, its written and unwritten codes of conduct—and howthose things affect your comfort level and performance. Its written andunwritten codes of conduct—and how those things affect your comfort level andperformance. Once you determine the kind of company you work for, you will startto understand how that "corporate personality" Influences your interactions withothers.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Communication Miracles at Work by Mathew Gilbert. Copyright © 2002 Mathew Gilbert. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Conari Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573248029
• ISBN 13: 9781573248020
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224