The Communication Blues

Robert Hutchins, the long-time president of the University of Chicago and one of the great social thinkers of the twentieth century, once spoke of the need for a “civilization of dialogue.” Civilized dialogue is essential if people of different types of interests are to come together. But you cannot have a productive conversation without attention to other people’s styles and assumptions. The diverse perspectives that should be a source of strength and wisdom become debilitating.

Let’s say you want to get a colleague’s point of view on an important business issue. In order to get any value from that person’s opinion, you must understand his style. (E)ntrepreneurial types toss off solutions, some only tangentially related to the problem at hand. Ask them to outline a detailed solution to a problem and they will probably lose interest. (A)dministrative types, on the other hand, will invariably want more data. They can find the holes and pitfalls in any proposal, but they can also get lost in minutiae. (P)roducers often rush to judgment, just to get out of the meeting and back to work. And (I)ntegrators consider any decision reached without full consensus to be an unacceptable risk.

In addition, we have seen that different types of people understand words differently; look for different needs to be satisfied; and make decisions in different ways. To successfully communicate and sell your ideas to them, you need to adapt yourself to their style.

This is complicated, because nobody is really a perfect, exclusive (P) or an exclusive (A); we are usually an amalgam. This is why good managers must necessarily be sensitive. If a manager tries one approach and sees it’s not being understood, he tries another. He’s constantly watching the person he’s selling his ideas to, and adapting his style of communicating until the other person fully understands.

But what happens when you are trying to speak to several people simultaneously, as in a meeting, where several or all of the basic managerial styles are represented?

If you speak in “(P) language,” an (A) might misunderstand it or resent it. And the same applies if you speak any other (PAEI) language. The problem is even further accentuated in global companies, where multiple cultures work side by side. For a German, whose style is likely to be (A), a budget is a policy that cannot be violated. For an Israeli, probably an (E), a budget is, at best, a guideline. For a Brit, who is often an (A) type, a delivery date is sacred, whereas for a Mexican, whom you can expect to be a (P), mañana – “tomorrow”– might mean anything from next week to next year.

Even the word “decision” has a different meaning for each style. For a (P), a decision means “This is a done deal; now let’s go do it.” For an (A), it means, “We have arrived at something that we can now, cautiously, begin to think about implementing.” An (E) reacts to a decision by thinking, “Aha, this is very interesting! Now let’s see if I can improve on it”; in no way has the (E) committed to it as a finalization. And an (I)’s interpretation of a decision is, “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

Trying to communicate as a team while each manager is attaching different meanings to the words being spoken is like trying to play a team sport in which one player is following the rules for ping-pong, another the rules for tennis and a third the rules for rugby. How in the world could that team ever win a game?

Thus it is no surprise that such meetings often escalate into shouting matches – with some participants accusing others of lying, intentionally miscommunicating, sabotaging, or undermining a decision that’s been made – or else they collapse into cold silence, in which not even the silence means the same thing to all parties. This is not what Hutchins had in mind.

In my work with organizations, I continually insist that we stop and define the terms we are using, because we cannot move forward effectively until everyone understands what is being discussed, what they are being asked to agree or disagree with, what their colleagues are saying when they make comments.

My clients often have difficulty with this practice of mine. The (P)s, especially, go berserk: “Oh, so we are paying you to teach us English now?” To illustrate how important it is to understand the concept behind the words, I tell them a joke, about a 23-year-old Jewish man who goes to a surgeon and says he wants a castration. “Why on earth would you want to do that?” the concerned doctor says.

“It is my religious conviction, and that’s that,” the young man replies. So the surgeon, reluctant to challenge the man’s religious convictions, makes him sign a release form, wheels him into surgery and castrates him.

When the young man is wheeled to the recovery room, he finds another young man lying next to him.

“What are you here for?” he asks.

“For a circumcision,” the other young man says.

“Argh!!!” screams our castrated young man, “that is what I meant to say!!!!”

Defining Terms: “Policies,” “Rules,” and “Guidelines”

Although good communication is essential to effective and efficient functioning, most executives have a hard time believing that the time spent on clarifying our vocabulary is well spent. Most seem to believe that not only are they themselves excellent communicators, but that their organizations’ goals and requirements are also well organized and documented and that everyone understands them.

Here is one way to test that theory. Obviously, everyone in a company, regardless of his role, must know the difference between what must be done under a given set of circumstances; what should be done (unless there is a defensible reason not to); and what is merely recommended.

Guidelines are instructions that can be ignored at will. They are the accumulation of a body of knowledge and experience, either written down or in someone’s head – and then whoever is supposed to implement them is free to implement them or not implement them. That’s why they’re called guidelines.

Rules are instructions that you can violate if conditions warrant. When you’re in the field and have to make a decision whether to follow a rule or not, you are free to violate the rule if you judge that the situation you are looking at constitutes an exception to the rule. However, if you violate a rule, you must inform your superior, who will need to do damage control, or else might reconsider the wisdom of the rule itself and decide, “Ah, this rule really should not be a rule, it should be a guideline.”

What is a policy? A policy cannot be violated without getting approval upfront.

There should be very few policies. That’s why the Bible has only ten commandments, no more, because more would be too difficult to follow. Then there should be some rules, and there could be thousands of written and unwritten guidelines. But everyone in the company should know which is a policy, a guideline, and a rule.

You would be surprised to find how often the employees in an organization, especially in global companies in the older stages of the lifecycle, cannot actually look at the company’s manual and say which is which.

Yet without that knowledge, your employees might be paralyzed, believing every guideline is actually a policy set in stone; or they may be too freewheeling, confident that the rules are made to be broken.

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Either way of adapting is potentially disastrous for an organization.

For a big (A), everything will be a rule or a policy. For an (E), because he is impulsive and changes his mind all the time, everything in the manual ends up being treated as a guideline. A (P) will be totally confused. If he works for an (A) he will become paralyzed, and if he works for an (E) he will get so frustrated that he’ll lose confidence in his decisions.

Another reason to periodically review the company’s regulations and strictly label each one as a policy, rule, or guideline is that companies tend to accumulate policies and rules over time without officially getting rid of the ones that have become obsolete. The difference between a young organization and an old one is that in a young organization, in general, everything is allowed unless specifically forbidden. In an old organization, everything is forbidden unless specifically permitted. The older the company (and I am not talking about chronological age so much as behavior), the more likely it is to have what I call “manualitis:” Everything must be documented; all processes must be written out step by step.2

When there are too many manuals, at a certain point the organizational culture changes, and employees start to assume that everything they want to do must be forbidden somewhere – unless it’s specifically permitted. In such organizations, the written word becomes the dominant determiner of behavior. So everybody asks for permission instead of forgiveness. Eventually, the climate becomes so moribund that even when something obviously needs to be done, people are afraid to take responsibility for it, thinking, “I’d better not do this unless I get specific permission because who knows if somewhere there is a policy prohibiting it.” And if they ask permission, often it is denied – because the manager who must decide is beset by the same concern: “Why take chances? There’s probably a policy somewhere that prohibits this.”

At that point, people are no longer managing the policy book. It is “the book” that is managing the people.

That’s why, in a very large bureaucratic organization, nobody acts on their own unless they get permission. Look at the United States military or government bureaucracies, for example. For maximum efficiency, everything has been written into a manual in a language so loaded with acronyms that you have to decode it to understand what’s going on. But the truth is, in unusual situations that require a quick response, you may have to violate some of your efficiency rules to be effective. You have to be willing to be flexible, allow for deviations from the norm, take some shortcuts.

When I participate in a company reorganization, one of the first things we do is divide its documentation into policies, rules, and guidelines. In the manuals, we separate them by color: Guidelines on white paper, rules on blue paper, and policies on pink paper, so that when you look at a three-ring binder, you can easily see how many rules, guidelines and policies the company has. It’s fine to have a manual even for guidelines, as long as you call them guidelines. The danger is that if you write a manual and don’t label the guidelines as guidelines, they become policies. In your company, do you know which is which? If not, then it’s very likely that there are other areas in which your managers miscommunicate.

“Hard Rules”

Of course, defining each word we use is a slow and laborious process. What is really needed is a kind of Esperanto for management – a new “language” that all agree to use that is neither (P) nor (A) nor (E) nor (I) language. In my work, I have developed such a universal management “language,” which is based on rules of conduct.

My methodology for running meetings is taught at a five-day training seminar at the Adizes Institute. It would take a separate book and a lifetime of practice to excel at it. But let me give you some fundamental insights.

Before I begin a session, I ask everybody to take deep, relaxing breaths until their tension has diminished. I do not allow meetings to start when people are very tense. We have to breathe deeply and relax before we start the meeting.

Then during the session, where tensions may easily resurface, we must follow what I call “hard rules.”

What are hard rules? First and most important, whoever is speaking can speak as long as he wants to, and nobody can interrupt him or even use body language that shows impatience. Anyone who interrupts must pay a penalty, which is donated to a charity we’ve chosen.

When the person who is talking stops talking, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s said everything he wants to say. It often means that he’s processing what he’s just said, running the “tape” back to see if he’s said what he actually meant to say. So we wait. Usually he will start talking again; then stop again, listen to what he has said and resume talking again. The only person who knows whether he’s said everything he wanted to say is the person who’s talking.

When he is finished talking, usually his eyes clear up and he refocuses on the group. Sometimes he repeats himself three or four times first. When he’s truly finished, he demonstrates that he is finished by taking a deep breath and looking to the right – not to the left but to the right.

Why to the right? Because to look to the left is effortless. That is how the clock turns. That is how, in agricultural societies, the seeds were dispersed by hand in the field. You have to be conscious to look to the right. Only when you have stopped thinking about what you want to say and whether you’ve said it adequately will you be able to consciously turn to the right.

The moment the speaker turns his head to the right, that’s a signal for anyone else who wants to talk to raise his hand. They must raise their hand. The previous speaker then will call on the first person to his right whose hand is raised. He must call him by his first name.

Why must he call him by his first name? Because it’s more intimate, and thus it reduces the tension and potential conflict. In contrast, for example, when you are upset with your child, you might address him by the last name: “Mr. Adizes, it’s time to go to sleep.” That is how you distance yourself and make it formal.

If you call someone by his nickname in a tense situation, you might inject a tone of voice that is condescending or a putdown, or you might be misinterpreted as injecting that tone.

But it’s interesting: The moment you call someone by his first name, the aggressive voice disappears. I do not know why but I have now tested it in 48 countries and it works. Even if you’ve spoken very passionately and said some very strong things, when you’re ready to yield the right to speak to the next person, if you call out his first name it will always be in a relaxed, non-emotional tone, without any animosity and it effectively returns the atmosphere to neutral.

But it’s even more important that you call on the first person to your right whose hand is lifted – not the first person with a lifted hand, but the first person with a lifted hand on your right. That means that the people who lifted their hands earlier have to wait. Slowly, this forces them to develop patience and tolerance, and behaviorally that is interpreted as trust and respect for other people who are talking.

Furthermore, this method keeps the (E)s from dominating the meeting. An (E) can, and often does, start talking before he’s finalized in his head what he’s going to say. (E)s interrupt others, whereas (A)s wait for their turn – so if there are no rules of conduct in the meeting, (A)s will never get a word in. This rule guarantees that everybody participates.

When I see that a meeting is becoming heavy and emotional and people are interrupting each other, I slow down the process and prevent it from overheating by calling out: “Stop! Hard rules.” As a matter of fact, I don’t even have to do it; usually someone else in the room will call out, “Adizes rules, Adizes rules!” and everybody will stop screaming and interrupting, take a deep breath and wait for their turn to speak.

Another rule: Meetings start on time. Whoever is late gets a penalty: Ten push-ups for each minute he was late; or ten dollars per minute – whatever people can agree to without resentment.

Next rule: No talking unless it’s your turn to speak to the group. No cell phone use. No reading or signing of papers. No leaving early. If someone does leave, he is barred from returning to that session.

The sessions should never be longer than an hour and twenty minutes, which I have found is the maximum time people can stay in a meeting and remain alert and productive.

Enforcing “hard rules” isn’t easy. Most managers resent them. Knowing that, before I lay out the rules I usually initiate a group discussion: “What destroys meetings?” If you ask people why they hate meetings, they will tell you for sure that meetings are not effective. And why aren’t they effective? Because people come and go; they interrupt the flow of discussion; they do not listen; etc.

After that discussion, I present the Adizes rules of conduct and write them on the board for everyone to see and discuss how those rules will address their concerns. It’s crucial to enforce the rules: If you don’t strictly enforce the penalties, people will soon lose respect for the rules – and for you.

It is interesting that rules need to be enforced and that people resent them. Was it not them who claimed that what destroys meetings is lack of rules, the coming and going and interruptions and the lack of listening. So how come they resent now the rules that are there to prevent this from happening.

My insight on this dilemma is that people want rules but for others to follow. And that is where lack of respect starts and that is why rules must be enfoced no matter how much they are being resented.

Once we get started, I am often (by design, to tell the truth) the first person to violate the rules. So I am the first one to pay the penalty. “I am subject to the rules, too, just like everyone else,” I explain. That sets the tone and is actually very helpful.

Nevertheless, there is usually somebody – often a (P) type – who will refuse to pay the penalty for breaking a rule. He will arrive late, for example, but when you ask him to pay the fine or do the push-ups, he is offended: “I was selling, and I resent that I have to pay a penalty when I was only doing what the company needs and pays me for.”

In that situation, I do not argue; I simply take out my wallet and pay the fine for him – which embarrasses him so much that he won’t break the rule again. Meanwhile, I explain that if we start accepting excuses for why rules have been broken, then where will it end? And how much time will be wasted in deciding which explanations are acceptable and which are not?

Accepting rules is especially difficult for companies in the Infant and Go-Go stages of the organizational lifecycle, when the (P) role and thus (P)-style managers dominate. But like children, (P)s (as well as other styles) need to know that there are boundaries. I have noticed that once people have truly accepted the principle of hard rules that was imposed during these sessions, their respect for rules and boundaries tends to carry over into their decision-making and other situations, such as their ability to adhere to budgets, follow up on decisions, and honor commitments.

Is, Want, and Should

In a meeting situation, where several styles are represented, one of my rules is to insist that, for clarity’s sake, the words is, want, and should be used in the (P) sense – that is, literally.

If you sit in a meeting and listen carefully to the way people talk, you’ll find they continually confuse is, want, and should. Instead of saying, “I want this,” which sounds arrogant and thus is awkward to say, they say, “We should do this.” But when you analyze what they said, you will find that what they really mean is that it’s what they want to do. It did not have to be done.

So I insist that in meetings, people use the word want when they mean want, instead of the word should. The word should is reserved for those things that must be done because the situation dictates it. Should has nothing to do with what you want.

For instance, if an executive says, “We are the leaders of our industry,” he had better be speaking in (P) language. If the company is not the leader, then I expect him to say, “We want to be the leaders of the industry, but we aren’t there yet. What we should do in order to become the leader is…”