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Analyzing Workplace Communication
Dr. Trent Keough
I: Communication as a Medium for Authority
In a non-reciprocal communication paradigm data is 'pipelined' through an
organization. Data gets picked-up as needed. Here information is considered to be
a commodity much like gasoline or potato chips. People partake of communication
when they need it, want it, or got to have it! Service driven intranets, newspapers,
inaugural speeches, leadership blogs, and company newsletters can function in this
way. Information is driven one way with little expectation that real-time
engagement will occur.
Communication as strategy for data delivery can work to incite pleasure,
anger, or have neutral emotional impact. It can celebrate a good news story or
facilitate the access of services directly to an employee/customer. Introducing
negative information via a data pipeline fails to draw on the layering of positional
authority that buffers and refines information to specified audiences. A classic
example of this failure is the utilization of a press release as the singular
communication on an abrupt change or response to crisis. Engagement
anticipation/expectation is a marker of truly effective communication. Effective
communication expects its cycle silences to be filled with polyphony offering
questions or commentary.
Engagement anticipation can be created. Creating opportunities for
dissonance can be effected by acting on the intention to literally watch and
observe. The premise of needing a communication observation is not made on the
expectation for inciting anger, but a recognition of the unintended consequences of
every expressed intention. This need to observe can be addressed by the creation of
communication ambassadors who literally observe communications and reflect and
reframe messages at specified junctures. The individuals acting as communication
ambassadors demonstrate keen listening skills and knowledge of what kind or
purposing the communication is given. For example, individuals inexperienced
with a „first dialogue and then decide‟ decision-making style will take the
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preliminary discussion for the actual decision unless periodically checked. It is
wise to assume that some will hear what they desire, not what was said, written, or
presented.
Recognition of „voicing‟ opportunities can provide the experience necessary
for developing group syncretism. The anticipated singularity is not so dissimilar to
the codifying „group-think‟ emerging from „storming, forming and norming‟
activities. There is a level of disengagement required to undertake this activity. The
intended outcome needs to be foregrounded and become a self-conscious part of
the process. It‟s only a matter of pausing to say, „We are undertaking this activity
to achieve x outcome.‟ When disengagement activities are not built into
communication strategies escalation into emotive exchange/response often occurs.
Successful negotiators and mediators are clearly utilizing disengagement strategies
when they identify opportunities for moving dissenting parties to common ground.
Most organizations have some measure of structural disengagement built
into them. Disengagement can also come in the form of „scope of practice‟
delineations. If reduced to its most rudimentary of forms disengagement is either
self-willed or superimposed by structural hierarchy. Let's consider a publically
funded, unionized college as an example. Management, faculty, excluded and staff
rights are segregated by differences in their employment contracts, position
profiles, collective agreements, and by legislation. So, too, are their
communication profiles. The broadest category of separation is typically found in
the distinction between employer/ employee rights and privileges. The rights to
interpret, challenge and apply collective agreements are known by all signatories.
Some access to information can be subjected to negotiations after contractual
bindings are in place. What does a unionized environment impart about the
language of a profession or workplace?
Within any organization communications culture is influenced by structure.
As a language is both the vehicle and means to definition of cultural
consciousness, communications culture is both the medium and the effect of
organizational structure. The organization‟s reporting and decision-making
structure defines the social infrastructure housing communications. The charter for
internal communications begins with the organizational chart. If that structure is
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hierarchical, then there is almost certainty of control-based decision-making and
delegation of limited authorities.
Through delegation each member of the organization, according to
individual rights and privileges defined by occupational scope of practice, makes
decisions in the workplace. In turn each has responsibility for communicating
about these decisions. These decisions are also influenced by policies, procedures,
guidelines. Who makes which decisions is normally clarified further in reporting
lines of accountability. Hierarchical organization structures have clearly articulated
communication zones and parameters for disclosure. These are also physical
disengagement zones based on segregation of duties.
Positions are intended to accurately and efficiently move information within
organizations. It is anticipated that individuals in these positions are capable of
mediating for emotional and cultural contexts. This assumption is too often
erroneous as most people are unaware of language as semantic and cultural
politics. Again and again we see evidence of the wrong people delivering crucial
messages to the wrong audiences. The person occupying a position may not have
the communication skills required to deliver the message or the mental aptitude or
stomach, depending on content. The person who delivers the message is as
important as knowledge of the content and the audience. Don‟t send a salesman to
inform a group of a sudden death. High energy extroverts can be perceived as
being inauthentic or unsympathetic if unconnected to the tragedy.
The relationship between the medium (form: video, print, audio) and the
message (the content‟s what) is complicated further by authorial intention (e.g. say
the management's expressed or desired results), 'reader' responsiveness (e.g. the
employees‟ identification of implicit messages in anticipated results) and the
predictive dialogism of collective reception (e.g. cultures of suspicion, trust,
negotiation, mediation, protest, acceptance). As little as 10% of „verbal‟
communication is unaffected by physical context, i.e. body language, timing of
message, place of delivery, immediate audience response, etc., and predicative
reception. It is not surprising that simultaneous and scripted communications do
not elicit identical responses or identical levels of factual awareness within or
across groupings. The element of dissonance in predictive reception is
compounded when organizations are stratified by geography and departments.
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Allegations of inadequate communication can reflect deficits and biases in
reception not inadequate volume or accuracy of communication. When a message
isn‟t liked, or is unwanted, the lack of communication banner often gets waived. In
such instances repeating the message with more volume does not eliminate
another‟s imagined hearing deficit or bridge semantic/ linguistic differences. The
relationship between volume, frequency and linguistic effectiveness invariably
brings us back to medium/message and intention/reception analysis.
In everyday circumstance this complexity is reduced to issues of mistrust
based on dissatisfaction with previous decisions and actions. Most people are ill-
equipped to engage in examination of communication as cognitive process, social
science, and semiotic theory. Least of all very few would welcome the suggestion
that allegation of communication failure is often nothing more than expression of
unhappiness with clearly articulated decisions changing work. Ownership of
communication invariably requires acknowledgement of personal or group deficit
in some areas of the loop.
Unhappy people consistently don't like much of what they see or hear within
or outside of work. We generally accept that there are skeptics, cynics, optimists,
and those in search of serendipity or „Serenity NOW!‟ Yet, there is reluctance to
use these labels for individuals and workplace groups. Why? We know that some
people seek the attention lacking in their personal lives at work. They bring that
need and the many frustrations of their lives to the desks and lunchrooms of co-
workers. The lonely accuser doesn't live exclusively at bus stations. How many
jaded people work with you? Why do people lose trust? What causes it?
Answering these questions is likely as difficult as explaining the phenomenon of
divorce. Loss of trust originates with acts disassociation, decreasing emotional
commitment and connection, suspicion of secrets, acts of bad faith, and increasing
silences between positive communications, etc.
When trust is broken it is easy to become cynical or jaded. How can an
employee trust when the employer openly withholds or limits or sanitizes or spins
information? Information access and data pipelines are not equally open to all
employees. There can be a disconnection between employees' desire to know, their
collective need to know, and the information gatekeeper's willingness for
disclosure. There is no exception to the fact that people are curious of all things
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and can have equally curious opinions on all things. Is it imperative to make full
disclosure in order to build organizational trust? Some would think so. The erosion
of privacy and the willful disclosure of personal information witnessed in social
media and television also impacts the workplace.
There is also no denial of the power that knowledge management affords to
those in control of it. Every workplace presents these facts. Employees normally
want to know what's going on even if the matter has little to with their individual
terms of employment. In contradiction, employment terms can delineate specified
roles for communicators. Some, however, do not feel constrained by a need to
know paradigm. We can attribute this need to comment on all things, particularly
on areas outside of professional experience or employment responsibility, to false
pluralism, a growing lack of privacy within and outside of the workplace, the
presumption of another‟s interest in my contrary opinion, or perhaps inadequate
workload.
Within any organization structure we can sometimes find ourselves
distanced from decision-making. The popular television series “Undercover Boss”
often reveals management‟s failure to listen to employee insights. Once the boss
bridges the physical gap and listens to employees things change for the employee‟s
good. Correspondingly the boss can be (not always) presented as a caring employer
kept ignorant by middle management. The series popularizes the failure to
communicate into urban legend and universal truth. Such entertainment celebrates
underdog employees being rewarded for devotion, diligence and competence.
Belief that good work gets unrecognized and goes unrewarded is a manifestation of
a sense of hopeless in the contemporary workplace. There is a deep yearning for
honesty, respect and authentic engagement in the workplace. Effective
communication creates moments or opportunities for connection on emotional and
personal levels of knowing the boss, the company, and the team. The cause for this
emotional need could be linked to disintegration of the traditional nuclear family,
limited opportunity for socialization outside of work, and lack of off-line, real-time
face-to-face networking.
Creating opportunities for making authentic personal connections in the
workplace isn‟t easy, possible or always likely. Distance from decision-making can
occur due to our differences in scopes of practice or physical locations. The
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executive rarely considers the receiving room employee's opinion on a corporate
merger or buy out. Unless, of course, the merger is between receiving rooms or the
employee is a major shareholder or one engaged in corporate espionage! We can
also find ourselves removed from decision-making by a lack of understanding. The
logic informing the decision might include facts or interpretation thereof that is
outside our knowledge base, experiential familiarity or functional specialization.
Accountants' interpretations of financial statements can befuddle others. Changes
in one section of an organization can be distorted/magnified in effect and
perception within another section. Knowing when we are getting out of scope is
sometimes impossible, especially when we‟ve been taught to use our voices.
Cognitive, political, social, physical and professional 'distance' from
decision-making increases the probability of both misinterpretation of actions and
dissatisfaction with outcomes. We can move to conclusions and become
emotionally invested by assumptions and biases within our own limiting
perspectives of what is occurring. Our individual interpretations of others'
decisions can be informed by our own expectations for entitlements, desire to
maintain status quo, or perceived conflict with a figured future state. Too often our
own coloring isn't as visible to us as to others. We can be driven to acknowledge
uncomfortable truths about ourselves when scrutinizing another's perceived lack of
communication--if we engage with honesty and positive intention.
Clearly there is room for self-deception, intentional misinterpretation, gossip
and fear mongering. We are not always honest in our self-assessments, let alone
accurate in our evaluations of others' intentions and motives. Shouts of
communication failure are not always factual indications to a lack of
communication or ineffective communication. Effective communication does not
uniformly bring forth positive responses in its targeted audiences. Circumstance,
what is being communicated, and culture are three factors influencing emotional
affect. Not all interpretations of fact are proffered with innocence or embellished
with hope for a better tomorrow. Character slander is an acceptable response tactic
in some cultures: „I don‟t like your opinion; therefore, you are an immoral person.”
Equally, attitudes to lying and unethical behavior can be legitimized by efforts to
achieve hidden agendas.
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Opinion without restraint is one of the major sources of conflict in the
workplace. We have encouraged and valorized the right to express opinion as part
of our self-esteem culture. There is only tenuous connection between one‟s degree
of self-esteem and another‟s prediction of our expertise or professional authority.
To indicate that others‟ opinion do not matter or is irrelevant or trivial is
considered tantamount to an attack upon their individual identities. Equality of
opinion is a self-serving myth. We live in an era that can assert the need for
equality in decision-making over the authority of workplace common sense. This
phenomenon can be linked to the sociological decline in respect for and trust in
authority. In contemporary society authority is to be suspected. We herald
transparency as an antidote to this fear. In a state of transparency all matters are
open to opinion and interpretation. When authority is rejected, every extraneous
opinion is to be elevated for formal consideration. The ridiculous extreme of this
phenomenon is referendum voting on singular issues driven by minority interests.
Once a referendum is in process what drives the majority to vote?
A desire to influence the decision-making governed by the authority of
another is part of the democratic process identifying our nation. The transfer of
republican principles to management as opposed to governance of our
organizations is neither desirable nor feasible. We have clearly segregated rights
and no assumption of equality. Why then is it feasible to expect wholesale
consultation? Management, faculty, excluded, and staff are not treated equally in
pay, privileges, or decision-making capacities. Within each of the individual
groups there are differentiated rights and unique expectations. We can present
dissatisfaction with the lack of equality but there are no non-legal means to change
these differences. They are systemic differences inherent to organizational culture.
The desire for equality of pay and benefits is most acute when others' decisions
impact us by changing benefits, hours of work, traditional working patterns,
elimination of services or reductions. When responding to others' decisions
impacting us we can present behavior where we claim to have better insight and
know-how than those persons with the authority to decide.
The tension between owned authority and the desire for the decision-making
power of another is the source of bad feelings and a sense of powerlessness in the
workplace. A desire to be in control of another's domain establishes the need for an
'otherness' comparable to the definition of an enemy. Perhaps this sense of
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alienation and threat is a variation on the theme of the famous statement: "I have
seen the enemy, and it is us!" The enemy of workplace satisfaction is the envy of
power seated in the desire to be in control within the workplace. The myth of
seeding power within hierarchical structures flows from the same source as the
faux egalitarianism propagated in social media. So much of our lives is directed by
external and extraneous forces that we seek to bring order by force of will. Faced
with the merciless shifts of resource-based economics, unable to cope with the
increasing erosion of privacy, we stake our ground zero in one of the most artificial
geographies of self-definition: the workplace.
Authentic workplace engagement recognizes power imbalances and the
desire for engagement on intellectual, spiritual, and/or emotional levels.
Communication of the possibility for this workplace connectivity must recognize a
shifting of the separation of place of work from personal living space. Workplaces
are increasingly more like places of leisure where people make friends and earn a
living while building relationships. Traditional work structures and current
expectations for engagement can be at odds and cause structural barriers for
effective communication.
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II: 11 Steps to Improving Workplace Communications*
1. Identify changes that have occurred to leadership, decision-making, and
desire fulfillment opportunities.
Some of these destabilizing influences are local and others are global. For
example we can trace organizational instability to some of the following:
Senior leadership once held long tenure and many staff have had
many years of familiarity with decision-making and processes.
Changes in leadership have been abrupt. There is confusion over how
decisions get made.
There is a budgetary reduction; increasing/declining student numbers
directly impact staffing level; radical changes in programming
clusters and delivery strategies; evolving changes to student
demographics, etc.
Globally there is a revolution taking place in the field of education.
New funding and accountability protocols are being developed
around graduation rates, not overall enrolments.
Instructors no longer have complete autonomy in their classrooms,
and students are demanding edutainment, etc.
Overall, there is a high degree of uncertainty in the field of post-
secondary education. We can describe sources of anxiety related to
concerns with: funding, delivery models, ownership of curriculum,
changing student demographics, effects of a super-heated economy,
fear of loss of control, erosion of trust in public leadership, fear for
and suspicion of what the future will bring, etc.
2. Name the resulting atmosphere of change.
Global and local destabilization within the field of postsecondary education
is creating an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and distrust in many
organizations..
Is there an inordinate degree of anxiety over future prospects? Why? What
are the levels of stress, worry, suspicion, distrust, or evidence of a lack of
confidence in strategic directions.
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3. Define the attributes and techniques for achieving effective workplace
communication. (The following suggestions are not presented in order of
importance.)
An effective communications policy clearly articulates decision-
making authorities as well as expectations for consultation,
information gathering and information sharing as appropriate to
circumstance.
Effective communication practices will honor decision-making
authorities as defined by position descriptions and the college
organizational chart.
Effective communication means that all employees are aware of
their own and others’ decision-making authorities and
responsibilities.
Effective communication presents a duty to consult and negotiate
as appropriate to context.
Effective communication recognizes others’ legitimate needs for
information beyond the general ‘right/like to know’ in order for
them to perform their individual duties.
Effective communication enables cross-departmental working
relationships, innovation and collaboration.
Effective communication tells the story of ‘why we have changed’
in relation to historical and contemporary business activities.
Effective communication responds to the unique barriers to
information sharing and information awareness within an
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organization and mediates according to individual and group
needs.
Effective communication demonstrates respect for the talents,
abilities and contributions of all employees.
Effective communication motivates employees to share in and
celebrate institutional accomplishments.
4. Acquire knowledge of existing communications theory and practice, and
answer this question: „How are theories of communication presently
being applied in your organization?‟
Define the organization’s communication practices, its baseline
assumptions about communications, and formalize its expectations for
communications in guidelines and policies. Define and agree upon what
effective communication is meant to accomplish.
5. Recognize and understand the perspectives of others relative to the
positions they hold in the organization. Occupation and job role can
influence individual contributions to harmony in the workplace and
resistance to change.
Effective communication requires relationship building. What evidence is
there of assessment of failed or failing relationships? What are the
sources of institutional conflict and disagreement? Where is there
evidence of ownership and responsibility?
Avoid the name- to- blame game here as the intention is to identify
positional authorities with competing or contradictory interests and to
see opportunity for mediation and achieving concurrence. Here there’s
opportunity to name some of the positional moose causing anxiety.
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6. Define existing communications culture in relation to knowledge
acquired of communications effectiveness.
The existing communication culture is weak and is being further
weakened by lack of solidarity, anxiety, and confidence in the future.
7. Specify how the organization presents communication change readiness.
What are the elements of this readiness?
The participation rate of surveys on communication effectiveness can
indicate a genuine willingness to identify the issues undermining effective
communication.
8. Identify the specific systems, relationships, processes and people creating
conflicts negatively impacting communications.
A. Goals of the institution are misaligned with that of individual
employees. Increase and improve opportunity for attaining personal
satisfaction in the workplace.
B. Disrespect for institutional history, institutional legacy.
C. Disagreement with the shift of focus from the college being a
Teaching centered institution to becoming a Learning centered
institution.
D. Instructional authority is being dissipated/eroded/diminished by
relegating instructors to Subject Matter Experts in a design and
delivery team where they are 1 of 5 decision-makers.
E. Disfavor with utilization of distributed learning model.
F. Historical labor/management relationship has been impacted by
frequent and lengthy contract negotiations in recent years.
G. Fear of Digital Immigrants in an organization given to wholesale use
of new learning technologies.
H. Dissatisfaction with decisions on program directions, service levels,
workflow expectations, etc.
I. Propensity for gossip and biased speculation on why decisions have
been made, etc.
9. Specify behavior and system changes required to improve
communications.
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Name the challenges and identify the existing deficits. Encourage individual
ownership of the need to improve communications and clearly articulate
institutional expectation for excellence in communication. Present a
strategic communication plan for college approval.
10.Clarify every employee‟s communication responsibilities relative to
achieving organizational success.
Write communications expectations and contributions into job descriptions,
goals and objectives, and include assessment in performance evaluations.
11.Provide opportunities for connection on the emotional and personal
levels.
Grow empathy and mutual understanding to engender trust and respect.
I wish to acknowledge the contributions of my Portage College colleagues in
the development of the ideas and the articulation of these 11 steps. The
following are members of the Internal Communication Committee of
Portage College: Leslie Johnson, Connie Olstad, David Paul, Cathy
MacGillivray, Richard Cloutier, Patricia O‟Connor, Doreen Leitch, Felicity
Bergman, Fatema Taha, Carrie Froehler, and Janice Bryks.
Copyright Trent Keough 2013
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