Organizational Communication Strategy… make it simple…

Communication is always scored low in any organization. People have different perceptions about communication. Few companies are not open and transparent and less communicative. The culture is closed and everything is confidential and secret in the organization. Assistants, secretaries and cheerleaders are powerful without title. There is lot of scope for ambiguity. The gossiping is common and water cooler discussions are hot. There are another few organizations who are very communicative. They are open and transparent. Everything they do, they communicate. Their intranet is always updated. Top management takes interest in their people.

Dealing with Ambiguity

Are all jobs simple? May be few jobs. But majority of the jobs are not so simple though they seems to be simple. There are lot many things beyond the job descriptions. There are complex situations, you need to deal with.

“You may have to handle the ambiguity in the organization.”  I was told in my earlier organization while the interview. I knew that life is not always simple. There may be lot of confusion in the mind of people and  even I may have to deal with such confusion. I also may have to deal with this with right attitude. Off course, my learning happened while handling all this confusion and ambiguity. I got opportunities to develop long term systems.    

Attitude and human behaviour….

Lots of have been discussed on the attitude. People give examples of different attitude and tag others either with positive attitude or negative attitude. However have we realized how attitude is formed in the person? As a HR professional, I always first think about the attitude and assess the person based on the same. I may go wrong if I really don’t understand how the person in discussion formulates his attitude. We must have seen many examples where the person is fired for his attitude, however he is much successful in another organization. We may be wrong in assessing the person if we don’t understand what attitude really means and how it is formulated in the personality of the person.

Perceptions… opinions and unfairness …

He was disturbed and frustrated. “It is unfair…he is unfair to me” he told me.

“How? What he did?” he explained me his story. There are always two perspectives; there are always opinions and most of the time perceptions. 

“It is your story, there may be his story and reality may be totally different.” I counselled him. I know, I was philosophical. But I wonder to understand how viewpoints are made. Sometimes these opinions and perceptions create problems. In professional life, if you make such opinions on perceptions, specially about the person, then person gets affected. Leader’s job is to really dig into and be fair on the assessment. As rightly said by  Hippocrates, “There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.”

If you are ignorant and make opinions based on certain assumptions, you are really not fair to the person. There should be the spectrum of acceptable opinion. The discussion should be within that spectrum. This spectrum should be created based on the incidents and facts and not based on the assumptions.

People give feedback and receive feedback. Sometimes feedback is based on the perceptions, perceptions are based on some experiences and when we have certain experiences we tend to justify ourselves. When you argue on justifications, and other person does not have the right justification, believe that next person is unfair to you. However your justification should be right and with examples.

There are perceptual errors that create bias or lack of subjectivity in evaluations & while giving opinions. This is all about the personality. If your mind is tuned to do the perceptual errors, you will do that, but your brain may correct, if you have the right attitude.

You may make the mistake by ignoring his good traits over one bad trait or vice versa just because you focus more on specific trait.  Sometimes just the next person is comfortable and listens you well, you tend to make the right opinion about him. You just label somebody based on one incident or  just targeting the person rather his behavior. Such actions of yours give the wrong signals and then you are stamp unfair, yes you are unfair if you do so…

According to me and based on the experience, I can definitely say, “sometimes somebody will be unfair to you, just ignore and move ahead… Someday somebody will be unfair to him also…”