The Inevitability of Miscommunication

Miscommunication, like conflict, is not an aberration but the norm: Inevitably, a team of people who are dissimilar in style will not communicate to each other or comprehend each other very well.

Let’s take the words “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” as an example. For (E)ntrepreneurs, “yes” actually means maybe – or “Hmmm, why not?” But when they say “no,” they’re definite.

It is just the opposite with an (A). When an (A)dministrator says “no,” it’s a provisional “no;” you can still come back and try to convince him. Thus it is a “maybe.” When he says “yes,” however, he definitely means yes. For a (P) “yes” is “yes” and “no” is “no.” For an (I) “yes” is “maybe” and “no” is “maybe.”

I saw a classic example of this miscommunication while working with a CEO in Australia, one of the biggest (E)s I’ve ever met. He was talking to one of his vice presidents as we walked down a corridor of his office. “Why don’t we have a manufacturing facility in Brisbane? What’s going on?” he said.

The vice president, an (P) type, said, “Well, should we have one?”

“Yeah, why don’t we?” the CEO responded.

The vice president got right on it as you would expect a (P) to do. Two months later, the CEO heard about the plans and was apoplectic.

“Why the hell are we putting up a building in Brisbane?” he wanted to know.

“But you said we needed a facility in Brisbane!” the VP answered, stunned.

“What? I was just asking why don’t we have it. I didn’t tell you to start doing it!”

This is a chronic problem when dealing with an (E)ntrepreneur type: People can’t tell whether the (E) is thinking or deciding. Was that “yes” really yes, or was it actually a maybe? Or was the “yes” a “why not?”

Sometimes he’s just thinking, but his subordinates believe he’s deciding. They act on the “decision;” then when it’s too late, they discover that what they had taken to be a decision was just musing aloud, a frequent component of the (E)’s thinking process.

They’re called on the carpet for that mistake. And the result? The next time the (E) says something that although it sounds like a directive, they conclude, “That wasn’t really an order; he’s just thinking out loud again.” And they don’t act on it. But the (E) boss gets nevertheless angry again: It was not an idea. It was a decision and he’d expected them to deal with his concern right away so how come that nothing has been done.

Living in that twilight zone causes an (E)’s subordinates a lot of suffering. They begin to feel that they can never win: No matter what they do, it will be seen as wrong. And why? Because the word “yes,” when spoken by an (E)ntrepreneur, does not really mean yes.

For whom is “yes” yes and “no” no? That’s a (P)roducer type. For him, it’s all very clear. If he says “yes,” why, then, it’s yes he means. If he says “no,” it’s no. He cannot comprehend why the people around him seem to have trouble understanding and communicating with him; it’s all so simple and obvious. But in reality, in interpreting his colleagues’ words literally, he is going to misunderstand and make mistakes more often than not.

Now, for whom is “yes” maybe and “no” also maybe? For the (I)ntegrator. For this type of manager, a political animal, everything means maybe.

Agreement and Disagreement

Another source of misunderstanding is the way different styles express agreement and disagreement. If an (E)ntrepreneur disagrees with an idea, he will typically be very expressive about it. He’s expressive even when he agrees. He loves the back-and-forth of debate and habitually speaks in an argumentative, confrontational tone, very much as if he’s disagreeing. As a result, people have trouble discerning whether he dislikes an idea or actually approves of it.

(A)dministrators, on the other hand, express disagreement by being silent and apparently very calm. They just look at you, lower their chins, and freeze. That incongruity alone can easily cause miscommunication, because an (E) will interpret that silence as agreement with his idea, when in fact the (A) is dead set against it.

In practice, how might this misunderstanding play out? Let’s look at a hypothetical meeting between an (E)ntrepreneur and an (A)dministrator.

First of all, the (E) frequently won’t bother to set up an appointment; the moment he has an idea, he wants to discuss it. He just shows up, impromptu, in the (A)’s office.

But an (A) hates surprises. He has his day organized, his desk organized, his files organized, his life organized, his vacation organized, his year organized. When our unguided missile, the (E)ntrepreneur arrives, unannounced, he messes up the (A)’s carefully planned schedule.

Meanwhile, on his way to the meeting, the (E) has been busy formulating plans, discarding plans, and formulating more new plans. By the time he hits the (A)’s office, he’s moving at 150 miles an hour. He hits the (A) like a ton of bricks.

(A)s are slow – not because they are stupid, but because they are thinking about the repercussions of the (E)’s ideas. It takes them time to process each idea. For an (A), listening to an (E) free-associate ideas is like drinking from a fire hose. For any single (E) idea there are at least ten repercussions that matter to the (A): How is this plan going to work? What are the details? Who will do it?

The (E)ntrepreneur, however, never gets around to talking about such details; he really doesn’t care about the how, the when, or the who as much as he cares about the why not.

You can see that this is not going to turn out well. The (A)dministrator can’t handle the load or the speed. Very soon, he concludes that the (E) is full of hot air. He stops thinking, stops listening, and just lets the words float past him.

And the (E) will take the (A)’s silence for agreement.

If you ask the (E)ntrepreneur later, “How was the meeting?” he’ll probably say, “It was fantastic! It was great! I totally convinced him; he didn’t say one word against it.”

But if you ask the (A)dministrator he’ll tell you, “It was a complete waste of time. The guy’s totally crazy! He’s going to burn the company down! He came in here, dropped a hundred ideas, and left. I don’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he didn’t give me a chance to open my mouth and ask a question. Nothing got resolved.”

Is, Want, and Should

The three little words is, want, and should signify very different perspectives that create a tremendous amount of conflict and frustration in human life. Why? Because we often confuse is with want, is with should, want with should, etc.

Let’s define is, want and should. What is, is reality: What is going on right now. What you want is in your heart, while should is in your head: What your conscience or sense of obligation dictate. The three words, used precisely, correspond to Freud’s theory of the ego (is), id (want) and superego (should). And, like Freud’s ego, id and superego, is, want, and should are often in conflict: You want to eat this whole box of cookies, but you are overweight and you should be on a diet.

That these perceptions of reality will conflict, even within a single person, is normal and actually helps us to reach decisions based on more than one perspective. What creates a real problem is the confusion factor: Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, people often use one word when they really mean another.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” America’s founding fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence. Let’s look at that statement carefully. Are people, in fact, born equal, or should they be born equal, or do we just want them to be born equal? This country’s earliest leaders, brilliant as they were, confused is with want and should.

Here’s another example: For years, we’ve heard that “America is the leader of the free world.” Well, is it? Should it be? Do we still want it to be?” The answers to these questions would determine our foreign policy, yet we don’t often attempt to clarify and differentiate our reality from our desires, our desires from our obligations.

In organizations, if you sit in a meeting and listen to the way people talk, you’ll find they continually misuse the three words. Instead of saying, “I want this,” which sounds arrogant, they say, “We should do this.” But if you carefully analyze their position, you will see that what they really mean is that they want to do whatever it is they are saying should be done. What is being labeled as necessary does not have to be done; it is not a should situation.

I often hear in meetings: “We are the leaders of our industry.” Actually they aren’t; they just think they should be because they have invested enough money to become one.

The result can be costly to an organization. Sometimes change is necessary; what is must move toward what should be. But how can we move toward change when we are so busy pretending that what should be is what already is?