Communication, it's the thing we do constantly. We are continually transmitting information to people around us, both synchronously and asynchronously. We do so by talking, writing and signalling using body language. Our bodies are designed to constantly convey information to those around us, letting them know how we feel and think. Communication helps us form the foundation of our society, our social connections. So why then, if our bodies are designed to communicate and we do it all the time, does it feel so hard to communicate some days? And why, with ever more ways to communicate, does it seem harder than ever to communicate in the workplace?
In this post I want to explore the complexity of communication, breaking it down to understand how we successfully convey concepts and ideas to another person. In part two, I will build on this and discuss why conveying concepts or ideas in the modern hybrid or fully remote workplaces can be so difficult.
Breaking down communication
When we communicate, we are attempting to convey a concept or idea to another person. Successful communication occurs when the receiver understands the concept or idea in the same way that we understand it. Very rarely do we have the time or ability to communicate a concept or idea completely.
We have learnt to get by on communicating just the relevant new pieces, harnessing and building upon the existing knowledge shared by the participants. This has greatly benefited us, by enabling the discussion of more complex concepts and ideas.
At its core, concepts and ideas are forms of information. For simplicity, the rest of this post I will use the term, information, to collectively group concepts and ideas.
This sharing of just the relevant pieces is fundamental to the way we share information. But how do we know if that piece of information was successfully communicated? Let's take a look at 3 requirements of successful communication:
- Technicality
- Criticality
- Quantity
Technicality
Our concepts and ideas are built upon other concepts and ideas. When we attempt to convey information to others, there will be a requirement for the other person to already know the concepts and ideas the new information is built upon.
It is relatively easy for humans to share information with each other on common topics. A person can relatively easily tell another person they want a haircut without even needing to speak the same language. Pointing to or pulling on our hair and motioning a cutting action, is enough to relay the idea.
It is much more difficult to share information about the latest advances in machine learning algorithms. Not only is a shared language essential, a high degree of pre-existing shared knowledge in the field of machine learning is required.
When the gap in shared knowledge is small, additional information can be shared in order to fill the gap before providing the primary information. However this can only go so far before the requirement to share additional information outweighs the benefits of sharing the primary information.
Criticality
The importance or criticality of information can greatly impact how accurately the information has to be received for us to count it as successfully communicated. The more important the shared information is, the more we will also do to ensure it is accurately received.
Certain information has very low criticality and we don't really care if it was not perfectly received. Greeting someone with "Hello, is it raining outside?" and receiving "I'm good thanks" shows that the receiver partially misunderstood what was being attempted, both a greeting and seeking information. The greeting was successful, but finding out if it is raining was not. However it is of no great loss as you can simply look out the window and get the answer in another way.
In contrast, during a surgery, a doctor and his staff must continuously relay accurate information without mistakes. Failure to do so could result in disastrous outcomes for the patient. Bad handwriting, misheard statements and confusing diagrams/visuals are unfortunately far too common of a reason for patient complications in hospitals.
This is why critical function teams often ensure that they speak with a clear set of rules on communication, ensuring shared information is replayed back to the sender for confirmation.
Quantity
How much communication is needed to successfully convey information can be a big blocker to success. The higher the criticality or technicality, the more we are willing to accept larger quantities of information.
Providing too much or too little information will heavily impact the success of communication. Provide too much, and you risk overloading the person or drowning out the core message in a sea of other information. Provide too little and you risk having the person misunderstand or misinterpret the information.
Recipe websites are a great example of both too much and too little quantity, leading to unsuccessful communication. We typically do not care about the 500 word life story that got the writer to the stage in life where they wrote the recipe. (high quantity, low criticality). But we do care for clear and detailed instructions in the recipe. Nothing is worse than getting half way through a recipe and scratching your head, trying to decipher what to do next. (high criticality, low quantity).
It sounds complicated, but we are really good at it
Every communication we attempt has elements of each requirement, and without successfully navigating all three a communication isn't able to be successful. These apply not only to direct interactions between two people, but anything attempting to convey information around us from Wikipedia pages to dinner menus and street signs.
While this may all sound quite complicated, whenever we attempt to communicate our brains are making split second, subconscious decisions about these requirements. Luckily, we are really good at making those decisions and have learnt when to dial up or down the needs of each requirement as we communicate. Sometimes we do get it wrong, and we can be left wondering just what went wrong.
As our world (especially our workplaces) continues to get more complicated, our methods of communication are getting more complex too. In the next part, I will dive into the mediums we use to communicate and how we can use them to successfully share information.
Final note
In this blog I spoke specifically about technicality, criticality and quantity. These are the 3 requirements to any communication. However, different forms of communication may have additional requirements. Emotional and bodily expression are two requirements for successful verbal communication between two face-to-face people. Not all communication requires or can provide these, for instance a street sign is unable to convey an emotion (even if it does elicit one to the reader).
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