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Upending the old rules of communication

2013-11-15 10:32:25

Communication is a pillar of good management. It smoothes business

relationships and makes our workplace run smoothly.

But how and what we communicate is changing. New ways of reaching people, and

new rules of what is okay to say, are upending long-held beliefs. Several

LinkedIn Influencers weighed in on the evolving rules of communication, from

how to say no gracefully to how Twitter has added new wrinkles to the

back-and-forth.

Here s what some of them had to say.

Greg McKeown, management consultant and author

Saying no to a senior leader or customer seems almost unthinkable, even

laughable, for many people, wrote McKeown in his post How to Say No

Gracefully.

But, he wrote, if saying yes will compromise your ability to make the highest

contribution, it is also your obligation to say no. So why don t we do it more

often? Because for many of us, saying no can be incredibly awkward, wrote

McKeown, so much so that we say yes by default and then regret it afterwards.

So, how does one say no graciously? It s simple, wrote McKeown.

First, affirm the relationship by saying something like It really is good to

hear from you, he wrote. Next, thank the person sincerely for the

opportunity. And then, decline firmly and politely. That can be as simple as

saying For several reasons I need to pass on this at the moment, he wrote.

Saying no is like any other skill: it can be improved with practice, wrote

McKeown. Start practicing with a relatively trivial request, like a lunch

invitation you have received in email. Over time build up until saying no

becomes easy.

Adam Grant, management professor at The Wharton School, University of

Pennsylvania

What s your automatic response when someone says thank you ? Yes, it s you re

welcome . It s a basic rule of politeness but according to one leading

psychologist, this isn t the best choice of words, wrote Grant in his post Why

You Shouldn t Say You re Welcome .

Instead, those two words mark a missed opportunity to seize a moment of power

we are all afforded as soon as someone has said thank you . What should you

say instead? I know you d do the same for me, wrote Grant, referencing

researcher Robert Cialdini s suggested response.

There are at least three potential advantages of this response. First, it

conveys that we have the type of relationship where we can ask each other for

favours and help each other without keeping score, wrote Grant. Second, it

communicates confidence that you re the kind of person who s willing to help

others. Third, it activates the norm of reciprocity, making sure that you feel

obligated to pay the favour back in the future.

Still, this response might be uncomfortable since it connotes a subtle appeal

to reciprocity, wrote Grant, who added that he didn t want to leave people

feeling like they owed me .

So is there an even better alternative?

Maybe so, wrote Grant, if one presumes that every favour you do is an

opportunity to encourage others to act more generously. Instead of you re

welcome or I know you d do the same for me Grant suggests something more

novel: I know you ll do the same for someone else.

It affirms your character as a person who s happy to be helpful, Grant wrote.

It doesn t deliver the implicit message that you re indebted to me It s just

a sentence, but the underlying values have the potential to fundamentally

change the way people interact.

Tomasz Tunguz, Partner at Redpoint Ventures

Imagine a form of communication that allows us to correspond in an entirely

fresh way.

That s exactly what Twitter does, wrote Tunguz in his post The First Form of

Communication That Changes Depending on Who is Using It.

Like the telephone, the fax [and] email, Twitter enables all types of

communications: friendly banter, customer support requests, news syndication

and public service announcements to name a few, he wrote. But Twitter imposes

three new wrinkles that set it apart as a new form of communication.

For starters, Tunguz wrote, we will never really know who receives our tweets.

One could sift through a list of Twitter followers but never understand who

they are, if they pay attention to tweets, why they follow an account, or what

agenda they have, he wrote.

But more than that, a user's experience with Twitter changes based upon their

following. he wrote. Sending a tweet falls somewhere along the continuum of

yelling into the woods when no one else is around, practicing Shakespeare in a

crowded public park or stumping on stage in front of 100,000 people in the

audience with a microphone in hand. A Twitter user's follower count molds his

Twitter experience.

Above all, Twitter is the first form of communication that is moldable. It

enables users to bend and shape their experiences as they wish, Tunguz wrote.