The long-established view of management communication starts from the assumption that the meaning of a particular event, change or policy, etc. is determined by the relevant manager(s) and transmitted to staff through a variety of methods. This formal, structured view sits at the heart of most approaches to organizational communication, with its primary focus being on “getting the message across” to those involved. When done well, this can provide an important informational backcloth to what follows. But, of itself, it communicates nothing. In practice, it serves as an ‘invitation’ for people to communicate with each other about what they’ve heard or read, what they believe it means for them and how they might respond.
Communication is a relational process, and it is this joint sense-making that ultimately determines how people act and what happens overall. Every conversation is a co-creation forum. That is to say, organization is continuously (re-)emerging from the widespread interplay of people’s small-group and one-to-one interactions. Two other things that we can say about this are that most of these conversations take place informally, without the relevant manager being present; and that this practice is occurring throughout the organizational hierarchy, whatever form that might take.
With this in mind, the Leadership Communication Grid provides a simple sense-making framework that seeks to raise awareness of, and offer guidance on, the various ways in which managers can communicate with members of their teams. In particular, it highlights the power that informal and unstructured modes of communication have on what happens in practice.
In brief:
- Quadrant C1 is where most thinking about organizational communication begins – and often ends! As suggested above, its emphasis on message passing is about using formal, structured processes, tools and techniques aimed at getting the ‘right facts to the right people at the right time’. This is the realm of the conventional forums and practices of organizational life, such as formal meetings, presentations, briefings, instructions and the like.
- Quadrant C2 is about creating an enabling ‘space’ for the safe and open exchange of information, ideas, issues, and emotions, etc. This is still a structured approach to communication, but one that tries to encourage more openness and informality. There are many such techniques that reflect this approach, examples of which are most likely to be found in such events as team “away days”, dialogue sessions and what I call “issue-based workshops”.
- Quadrant C3 highlights the powerful impact that everyday conversations and interactions have on organizational capability and performance. This is perhaps the least understood aspect of managing and leading, with its emphasis both on informality and absence of structure. It is about stimulating, engaging in and tuning into, the everyday, self-organizing conversations through which people make sense of what’s going on and take action. The aim is to influence the dynamics of interaction, and the outcomes that emerge.
- Quadrant C4 underlines the fact that managers' everyday words and actions (as well as their silence and inaction!) have a critical effect on people's perception of what's going on. That is to say, managers cannot not communicate; everything that they say and do -- along with everything that they don't say and don't do -- 'sends messages' to people. It's just that it's not they who decide what these 'messages' mean It's those who see them, hear them and make sense of what they've experienced.. Whilst this is necessarily an unstructured form of communication – since it takes effect through other people’s perceptions of their behaviour – it is also formal, coming into play as soon as they are appointed into their formal role. As the Chairman of one of our clients told his senior managers, during a workshop that we were facilitating:
“If you’ve decided that you don’t want to be a role model, you’ve just decided to be a bad one.”
Effective communication here is about the manager becoming aware of, and taking responsibility for, the effects that their own actions and interactions are having on people's perspectives, practices and performance.
In summary, the Leadership Communication Grid calls for a new understanding of what organizational communication is really about, together with the foregrounding of communication practices that take seriously the complex social reality of organization. The aim is to encourage managers to review their patterns of communication regularly – ensuring both that they have ‘all the bases covered’ (C1-C4), and that, in particular, they are placing sufficient emphasis on the unstructured modes of communication, C3 and C4, which have the biggest impact on what emerges overall.
More on this can be found in the Reframing Communication chapter of Informal Coalitions - Mastering the hidden dynamics of organizational change. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), as well as via the Consultancy.
See also, The U'I at the heart of communication
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