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Author: George Pitagorsky

George Pitagorsky, integrates core disciplines and applies people centric systems and process thinking to achieve sustainable optimal performance. He is a coach, teacher and consultant. George authored The Zen Approach to Project Management, Managing Conflict and Managing Expectations and IIL’s PM Fundamentals™. He taught meditation at NY Insight Meditation Center for twenty-plus years and created the Conscious Living/Conscious Working and Wisdom in Relationships courses. Until recently, he worked as a CIO at the NYC Department of Education.

What it Means to be a Good Leader

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on What it Means to be a Good Leader

What is a good leader?

A good leader balances intention, intelligence, vision, power, authority, desire to serve, ability to communicate, inspire and convince, a winning personality, empathy, compassion, resilience, adaptability, integrity/honesty, confidence, humility, passion, commitment, decisiveness, respect for followers, delegation, and more. The good leader is both practical and idealistic.

Wow! It’s a tall order to bring all those traits into play in the right balance.

Leadership Role Models

The array of leaders we have seen over the ages, whether in commerce, government, religion or community presents a mixed bag. There are self proclaimed “Great Leaders” like Kim Jong-un, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Attila, Genghis Khan, and so many more. These have oppressed and led their followers into war and famine. Yet, their skills, passion and power, coupled with the neediness and greed of the people who followed and perhaps still follow their lead gave them the power to influence the world around them.

Also in the array are servant leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. M L King, Nelson Dalai Lama, Mandela, Moses, Christ, Ram, Krishna, among others who, to many, are true heroes, who have led their followers towards peace, freedom and prosperity and have stood firmly in the face of injustice and hatred. These are the positive role models.

Leadership in Projects and Organizations

Leadership occurs locally in our projects, organizations and teams. Some of leaders are perceived as good leaders because they satisfy short term objectives, even though they perpetuate dysfunction in the long term.

Being a great or good leader is more than just getting things done in the short term. Truly great leaders achieve short term objectives while paving a future path that increasingly improves performance and makes life livable for the people working in and around the organization. The leader promotes three dimensions: getting work done, perfecting the process over time and cultivating an atmosphere in which people can thrive.

Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism and author of The Tao Te Ching said
“A leader is best when people barely know that he exists,
not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
worst when they despise him.
Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done,
his aims fulfilled, they will all say, “
We did this ourselves.”

A good leader talks little, listens much. A leader who honors people is a servant leader, valuing and empowering people, delegating, mentoring, coaching. He or she recognizes people’s value and their needs. Not expecting to be blindly obeyed, she is open to critical feed back, can grow from it and discover optimal solutions. When the leader gives up authority, listens and values people, they will not fear and despise him.

Mandela highlighted the power of open minded collaboration:

“A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger.
You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial and uninformed. “

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Leadership is Complex Skill

An approach that values getting the right things done right with minimal use of authority, collaboratively, with respect for people seems all good. Yet, little if anything is all one thing or another. Everything has its downside – the side that if it is ignored will overcome the good.

What is the downside of the kind of leadership that Lao Tzu and Mandela espouse? Mostly, it is the danger of interpreting their advice simplistically.

Leadership is a complex skill. While some seem to “get it” naturally, it must be learned. The learning begins with early role models and relationships, academics and theories but must ultimately come from experience. Experience teaches that people, projects and organizations are complex, that change is an inevitable and continuous fact of life, as are uncertainty and ambiguity. Adaptability based on open-mindedness is critical. The good leader adapts to the situation at hand.

It is easy for a naive leader to believe that all of the people – his or her subordinates, peers and superiors – are all highly effective, see the big picture, exhibit high-emotional, social and intellectual intelligence and that they will make the right decisions when empowered to do so.

Imagining this, the leader may not manage sufficiently. He or she may not exercise the authority to make binding decisions and institute checks and balances when they are needed, including ones that people dislike. Authority is a powerful tool to be used carefully.

When a project manager is faced with a critical decision recommended by her team that she thinks is sub-optimal, the good leader will assess the decision, question it and the criteria that it was based on. In this way, the staff may be able to see flaws in their solution and come up with a better one. If they do not, it is the leader’s job to make the decision he or she feels is right. That decision may be to accept the staff’s way or insist on his own.

Through questioning and assessment the leader may realize that the staff’s decision was well thought out and is a viable alternative to his/her own. When that happens the wise leader will go with the staff’s decision.

Case Example

For example, a team of B.A.s, programmers and business subject matter experts were ready to implement a process improvement to capture a request for service online at its source to replace a manual form.

New leadership stepped in and stopped the project. The executive, newly appointed to lead the overall organization, saw the change as being a patch to an inefficient business process. Instead of changing the responsibility for handling the request, thereby distributing the work to a much broader group close to the requester, the approach kept in place a small centralized group and their process.

The centralized group was a bottle neck in the process. The online form project sped things up but kept the old process intact. Recognizing the need to address the bottleneck, the leader directed the team to take a step back and examine the overall process.

When in doubt, stopping and stepping back is often the right thing to do. In this case it is the opportunity to assess whether incremental change while seeking more radical change is warranted. However, if the leader simply stops and changes direction without ample and transparent assessment of the alternatives, then there is damage to morale and possibly a shortsighted decision.

Managing Authority

How the leader handles a situation like this is key. He or she can explore the reasons the team decided to take the incremental approach. If a change is mandated from the top, the leader will explain the reasoning behind it. The good leader will pose questions rather than bark orders to lead the team to a more effective solution.

For example “Did you consider a fundamentally different approach to change the process by shifting responsibility to the department heads rather than the central group?” “What are the pros and cons of doing so?”

Questioning in this way can show the leader that the team already considered the more radical change alternative and postponed it in favor of the incremental change for good reason.

The good leader recognizes that her subordinates may not speak up or push back. Their respect for authority and fear may inhibit them, even when the leader requests candid feedback; and especially in the face of one who clearly dislikes candor.

As a leader one must recognize the differences between dealing with peers and superiors and working in hierarchies. Project managers and team leaders have bosses, sponsors and clients. With peers and superiors, the leader is highly motivated to take a collaborative approach. When working with subordinates there is less motivation for collaborative decision making and a need to restrain the use of authority.

Bottom Line

Good leadership is a critical success factor that both enables getting things done and promotes optimal performance with continuous improvement, in a healthy work environment .

The good leader cultivates and balances the many qualities of good leadership by opening mind and heart to learn from and adjust to the needs of the situation.

Managing Organization Change Programs: Clarity, Communication and Respect

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Managing Organization Change Programs: Clarity, Communication and Respect

All projects are change projects. They implement new or changed products, processes or services.

An organizational change project is a special case. It is a project to change the way an organization operates, including its structure, generally, to improve performance or to enable the organization to face external changes in its environment.

Organizational change projects may be perceived as sub-projects in other projects or programs. For example, the implementation of a new business application may trigger significant changes in the way an organization operates, the relationships among stakeholders and its culture. While the expressed focus of the project is the implementation of a new product or application, the real focus is on the improvement of the organization’s performance and that invariably involves organizational change.

People Centric Communication

Organizational change directly effects the people who make up the organization. While it is a critical factor in all projects, communication is particularly critical to success when an organizational change is involved.

Sometimes the very people who initiate and are responsible for facilitating the change forget this simple fact. They view the organization as if it were an entity unto itself, separate from the people who populate it and make it work. When employees, at all levels including managers and executives, consultants and vendors are regarded as “assets” or “resources” or “part of the problem” respect for them and regard for their welfare is diminished. This leads to a change process that is driven from the top or from outside of the organization, often with less than optimal results.

Yes, there are exceptions, if the change is one that will result in the dissolution of the organization, with its capital assets sold off, there is less damage when the staff is alienated. However, even in these situations, compassion and respect for the people who will lose their jobs goes a long way towards moderating the negative impact of the hostile takeover. On another level, there is often emotional and, in some cases, financial impact on those making such changes without regard for the human element.

However, when the change is to result in a well-functioning, optimally performing organization, project managers and professional change agents recognize the importance of cultivating good will, respecting the capacity of the staff to deal with the truth, reducing anxiety and engaging the staff to make them change agents as opposed to targets. Recognizing the importance of these factors, these change agents apply the basic principles of project management and do so with a servant leadership attitude.

Basic Principles of Organizational Change

Organizational change is a program. The basic principles are

  • Know and state values, goals, objectives and strategy
  • Identify and engage the stakeholders – the people who will impact and be impacted by the project
  • Manage expectations with effective/realistic estimates, schedules and plans, including risk assessments
  • Monitor and control and be open to the inevitable changes that will occur along the way
  • Realize that organizational change does not end when the initial change project is closed. The project sets the stage for managing continuous change.

Know and State Values, Goals, Objectives and Strategy

Clearly, knowing where you are going and, on at least a high level, how you will get there is a major success factor.

Yet, there is a potential danger in setting the goal in a way that presupposes a solution rather than the elimination of a problem or the achievement of an objective such as measurably improved performance.

For example, a goal stated as centralization rather than performance improvement may make taking a hybrid or federated approach to achieve the goal of improved performance and greater integration into a wider organization without fully centralizing.

Mistaking a solution approach like centralization or automation for a goal makes for a rigid approach that risks increasing dysfunction rather than improving performance.

Performance improvement would more likely be achieved if values like openness to an evolving approach, continuous improvement based on cause analysis and cause removal, and recognition of the successes of the target organization along with its failures drive the effort.

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Identify and Engage the Stakeholders

Stakeholders are anyone who may affect the project or be affected by it. Engage them, respect their needs and communicate with them according to their roles and the need for confidentiality. This principle is fundamental to effective human relations. People are often averse to change, uncertainty and ambiguity. With this in mind, be both practical, kind and clear. Practicality recognizes that anxiety, rumors and frustration result in sub-optimal performance. Kindness helps to avoid the anxiety and frustration. Clear communications, orally and in writing, helps to avoid ambiguity.

Bottom line: respect the needs of stakeholders and their capacity to accept and work to achieve positive change. Treating stakeholders like children who can’t face the truth or as pawns in a chess game is unproductive.

Manage Expectations

Realistic expectations go a long way towards promoting success. Expectations are managed with effective/realistic estimates, schedules, plans, and risk assessments.

Beware of arbitrarily set fixed deadlines. Even if those who set them are open to flexibility, those who manage and do the work will often plunge ahead as if they can meet the deadline rather than candidly push back with a reality based argument.

Monitor and control

Monitor and control while being open to the inevitable changes that will occur along the way. Managing expectations and steering the program as barriers and successes are experienced requires regular communication of the state of the project. Goals and plans set a direction and a benchmark against which to assess progress. Open to change, leadership will make the adjustments needed to keep the program moving forward to achieve its goal.

Continuous Change is a Fact of Life

Realize that organizational change is a program as opposed to a project. Programs are often open ended, with a series of projects and operational activities. Organizational change does not end when the initial change project is closed.

The initial project sets the stage for the continuous change that is an inevitable part of life. An objective of the change project is to leave a controlled continuous change process in place as an integral part of ongoing operations. That process will spawn multiple projects.

Success

With these principles in mind, change projects become far more likely to succeed. When goals are clearly stated and understood, expectations are realistic and the needs of the people involved are addressed, the threatening idea of change and the knee jerk reaction to resist or run away is avoided.

With the acceptance of the fact that organizational change is a program, all the facets of the process can be considered and woven together into a comprehensive plan focused on the goal of optimal performance.

Shaking Things Up is Easy

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Shaking Things Up is Easy

Shaking Things Up is Easy. Getting them to come down right is the challenge.

Recent events reminded me of the classic story, The Three Envelopes:

A large complex public facing program was not meeting expectations. The program was impacting client and senior executive lives because the organization was not meeting expected service levels, target dates, and budget. Issue were making it to the news. Public advocacy groups and internal and external auditors, each with its own agenda, were adding their input into the mix.
Executives at the most senior levels were compelled to do something. They fired the program manager.
The old program manager gave his successor, three sequentially numbered envelopes, saying, “When you need advice about how to handle a highly critical point in the program open the next envelope.”
The new program manager took command and immediately faced the question of what to do now. She opened the first envelope. The note inside said “Blame your predecessor.” “Wow!” she thought, “That will give me time to adjust things and get the program on track. It will also make me look smarter than him.”
Time passed. At first, things seemed like they were getting better. But, after awhile the same old issues began to reappear. Under pressure to do something, the new program manager thought this was the right time to open the second envelope. The second note said “Reorganize.”
“Great idea.” she thought. She went ahead and changed communication lines, roles and responsibilities. Again, things seemed to get better. There was lots more communication and activity in adjusting to new relationships. Tactical procedures were improved. Productivity went up.
A few months went by and, once again, the same old issues reappeared. With increasing anxiety, the PM reached for the third envelope. Its message was “Make three envelopes.”

The message here is that unless you do something to address the causes of problems the problems will not go away. Firing and reorganizing send up a smoke screen that obscures the real problems temporarily. The sacrificial lamb is given up, appeasing the gods or public. The reorganization addresses short term tactical issues.

This message applies to work efforts of all kinds, ranging from projects to programs to ongoing operational activities and organizations.

Something Has to Be Done

When things are not going as well as they should be going, when those in power perceive that there is dysfunction, the desire for change leads to action. “Something has to be done.” When the action is well thought out, particularly with regard to a systems perspective, cause removal and long term effects, we get improvement and approach optimal performance.

When the action is reactive and shortsighted the impulse to make things better often makes things worse. Replacing leadership and reorganizing can be effective means for making positive change. They shake things up. Or, they can be smoke screens to avoid having to look at serious systemic problems.

Sometimes the change makers are not aware of the systemic problems and sometimes, even though they are aware, they are unwilling to acknowledge and address them.

Systemic Problems – Organizations as Systems

Systemic problems are issues in the overall environment (the system) that effect performance. Organizations are complex systems made up of functional units that are woven together by communications and cross functional processes to achieve objectives that require the integration of the functions.

For example, performance relies on the work of procurement, human resource, IT and finance departments, executives and policy makers.

If the procurement process is dysfunctional, then vendor relations suffer. The symptoms of poor performance will appear as problems in programs, projects and operational activities.

If the hiring process is dysfunctional, the right resources will not be available at the right time, schedules and service levels will be disrupted, quality will suffer.

If policies and procedures create unnecessary bureaucracies the dysfunction will appear as performance shortfalls.

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Operational Activities and Enablers

Operational activities are where the rubber meets the road. They are the core business functions that meet the organization’s objectives by delivering products and services to clients. These are the functions that serve, manufacture and transport. Projects, programs and support activities are enablers. They enable the core activities to do their work optimally.

There is dysfunction when the enablers lose track of the fact that they are internal service providers whose clients are the core business functions and whose job is to make life as easy as possible for the people who are facing the organization’s public and providing the products and services that satisfy their needs. When there is little or no feedback regarding enabler performance and its impact on core functionality performance, the dysfunction persists and usually becomes worse.

Identifying, exploring and resolving systemic problems is threatening. It is complicated. it is costly. It is the way to make meaningful change.

One way to promote systemic change is to disrupt the current state – to shake things up.

Shaking Things Up the Right Way

Dysfunction calls out to be corrected, particularly when it is felt by clients and senior executives. Leadership changes and reorganizations shake things up. If they are part of a longer-term strategy to address the real issues they are powerful tactics. If, on the other hand, they are reactions and attempts at a quick fix – make three envelopes.

Shaking things up is often necessary in organizations or projects that have gotten bogged down into a habitual way of operating. By removing the structures and mindsets that have gotten in the way of progressive change, there can be an opening, an opportunity for thinking and acting out of the box, creatively. Where there is progressive change as part of normal operations, radical change will often be unnecessary.

The opening into an uncharted territory can be scary, particularly for those who do not do well with uncertainty and those who are invested in the old way. Those who hold on will be dragged down, those who direct and go with the flow will become more successful as things find a new stable and hopefully more effective state.

The change agents who use shake-ups as a tactic in a strategic change program recognize that communication to calm the anxieties of those who will be affected by the change is a critical factor. It is not necessary to know and tell everyone what the outcome will look like. That would be great, if you knew the nature of the future state. It is necessary to tell everyone what is going on and what to expect, even if it means informing them that the future plan is evolving. Rumors fly, and the imagination creates scenarios that get in the way of current performance and progress.

If you shake things up,

  • Make sure the shakeup addresses systemic issues
  • Engage the right people and make use of multiple perspectives
  • Formulate and communicate a strategic goal.
  • Acknowledge that while change can be directed its outcome is not always predictable. Be ready, willing and able to adapt over time
  • Be sensitive to the needs of the people involved. Manage uncertainty, expectations and complexity
  • Do not jeopardize the performance of the organization’s critical activities while the change is underway.

Self-Awareness and Healthy Relationships: Foundation for Success

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Self-Awareness and Healthy Relationships: Foundation for Success

Success in projects, organizations, and life, in general, relies on the ability to build and maintain healthy, effective relationships.

Healthy relationships satisfy the needs to be happy, acknowledged and effective. Healthy relationships rely on the emotional and social intelligence of the people involved. These rely on self-awareness.

Healthy relationships

Relationships are interactions among two or more people, ideas, concepts, or inanimate objects. We can expand that definition to include one’s relationship with oneself, for example knowing the difference between one’s internal feelings and one’s social face, and having the internal dialog that explores one’s values, etc.

Here we will focus on interpersonal work relationships, particularly in the context of projects and organizations.

What is a healthy relationship? It is one in which there is mutual respect, caring and trust based on truthfulness. In most cases, the parties are happy to be in a relationship with one another, though even when this is not the case, there is sufficient respect and openness to be able to effectively work together. Healthy relationships are open to diverse ideas as well as racial or ethnic diversity. There is candid communication.

In the project context, the relationship must be productive to be entirely healthy. In other words, the participants need to get work done. This implies that criticism based on values and quality criteria is a necessary part of healthy relationships. For example, when a project team member is not performing well or being disruptive, a healthy relationship would enable candidly addressing the issue. In the extreme, a healthy relationship might support the removal of a person from the team. in other words, healthy relationships are subject to ending when they turn incurably dysfunctional.

Healthy interpersonal relationships at work are important because projects are performed by groups of people. When relationships are healthy there is a synergy that transforms the individuals into an optimally performing team. Healthy relationships satisfy the need for belonging and esteem. They tend to eliminate unnecessary conflict and make the unavoidable conflict productive. People who are happy and have satisfying relationships with coworkers will generally work more effectively than those who experience abusive or otherwise dissatisfying relationships.

Building Healthy Relationships

Healthy relationships can naturally occur. Maybe you have experienced a team in which everyone gelled with everyone else. Communication was clear and open, people were accepting and caring, work seemed to get done effortlessly.

However, it is more likely that healthy relationships must be cultivated and maintained. This is particularly true given that in many cases the selection of stakeholders is not open to the team members’ or the project manager’s discretion. The project must make the best of the stakeholder mix, as it is.

It is highly effective for an organization or team to consciously and explicitly discuss and agree upon the definition and importance of healthy relationships. Depending on the environment, team meetings, training or consulting may be called for to avoid and address dysfunction.

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Emotional and Social Intelligence

Cultivating healthy relationships relies on the use of emotional and social intelligence. These reflect the ability to manage one’s feelings to ensure that behaviors are subject to choice rather than driven by emotions. They include the ability to appreciate the feelings of others and respond effectively to them.

Healthy relationships make sure that a controversy over some project related performance issue is handled candidly, amicably, and with an attempt at a win-win outcome that better informs the participants, rather than a yelling match or withdrawal and passive-aggressive behavior.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the foundation for the ability to regulate behavior, speech, thoughts and emotions. It is also the foundation for the empathy and compassion that underlie social intelligence. These are fundamental to the ability to communicate and collaborate with others in a way that promotes healthy relationships.

Psychologists Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund’s proposed that: “when we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves.” Daniel Goleman defined self-awareness as “knowing one’s internal states, preference, resources and intuitions”.

Self-awareness begins with the ability to listen to the body. “The body’s response lets us know how we feel.” . The bodily sensations like tightening muscles, queasy stomach, trembling, smiling, being choked-up are messages. Awareness of bodily sensations is important because these sensations signal emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear and anger before they reach the level of intensity that results in reactive behavior. Listening to the body enables self-regulation.

Self-awareness implies the ability to recognize when attention is focused internally or externally. For example, when you are in conflict or giving constructive criticism are you focused on your feelings to the degree that you are not paying attention to the subtle signals coming from the other person’s body language?

Are you making the relationship a ‘we’ or is it ‘you and me’?

Self-awareness also implies that a person is conscious of his/her preferences and values and the way those effect behavior. For example, the volatile boss who yells at subordinates may be well aware of his/her feelings while not valuing kind, respectful speech. Such a person may believe that verbal abuse is an acceptable way to motivate improved performance.

The degree to which people are self-aware varies from individual to individual. Self-awareness can be cultivated and increased using mindfulness meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy among other techniques. These techniques train the individual to pay attention to the thoughts, physical sensations, emotions, and concepts and the way they impact behavior. By paying attention to these, the individual can be more likely to be responsive rather than reactive.

Taking It Home

The bottom-line is to make use of the understanding that healthy relationships are critical to success and that they are enabled by self-awareness. As an individual, each of us can cultivate the self-awareness and values that support the ability to regulate one’s emotions and behavior and work well with others.

Even when there is recognition of their importance, there is often a degree of resistance to cultivating self-awareness and applying the communication and collaboration skills that are necessary for healthy relationships. To some, these “soft-skills” are not taken seriously and are found to be too subjective to be applied in a meaningful way. This attitude must be directly addressed. Leadership must promote the cultivation of healthy relationships.

From an organizational perspective, it is important that management and staff be educated regarding the importance of healthy relationships. They must value the degree to which healthy relationships contribute to effective performance and communicate those values. This valuing is evidenced in the form of programs to improve relationships, including long-term, regular follow-up embedded into the organizations normal operations. This includes some measurable way to assess the relationship skills and behaviors as part of performance evaluation.

Communicating Your Understanding

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Communicating Your Understanding

Communication is the process of exchanging information through verbal and non-verbal messaging.

It is the single most critical part of project initiation, planning and performance. In fact, it is the most important part of working with anyone on anything. Communication is the foundation for all relationship and healthy relationships are the foundation for successful performance.

We must be able to share our thoughts in a way that promotes mutual understanding. That is the first step in being able to plan, solve problems, avoid and resolve conflicts, define and deliver products and services, and more.

Seek to understand

Dr Stephen Covey’s fifth habit of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”. He said, 

“If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” 1

Listening is the key to understanding. Intend to listen and then reflect on what you have taken in, ask questions about it and reflect your understanding back to the other parties to make sure you understand in the same way they do. Then, you can seek to be understood by communicating your views while being open to feedback and questioning.

Covey thought that most people do not listen with the intention to understand. Instead they listen with the intention to respond. Often the intention to respond leads to missing part of the content of the message and bypasses reflection of what has been said and understood. That opens the door to misinterpretation and unnecessary conflict.

Listening is not just about hearing. Listening in the context of the communication model includes seeing, feeling and hearing. It goes beyond the receiver intending to understand. The sender who “listens” with eyes, ears, and other senses picks up on the receiver’s needs and is more likely to be understood. So, when Covey says “seek to understand” we can include in that the idea that as senders we seek to understand the receiver so that we can send our message in a way that is most likely to be understood.

How do you Know If there is Understanding?

Saying you understand does not communicate that you understand.

You must show that you understand by saying what you understand and determining whether the others agree that what you understand is what they understand. That common or mutual understanding assures that further dialogue, debate and action will be effective.

Note that an understanding of what another person has said or written does not imply agreement. You can understand what another person says and not agree with it. In fact, unless you really understand what the other person says and is thinking, you cannot know whether you agree or disagree.

For example, an IT project leader, in conversation with the people representing the client and the client’s end users, says “I understand” and in effect cuts off communication. To complete the circle of understanding, the IT Project Leader must show his/her understanding, orally at first, and then, if the information is to be used to initiate work or as a base for decision making, in some concrete form such as a document, email or prototype. The statement of understanding can be preceded by questions to clarify the understanding. Often, a dialog is needed to refine the understanding.

The Circle of Understanding

Communication is the transfer of information with the goal to establish a common understanding of the subject matter – the content of the message.

pitagorsky 08242018aFigure 1: The Transactional Model of Communication2

The transactional model of communication, as shown in Figure 1, represents the way information is exchanged as a series of messages among people in a particular environment. Communication is a process that is embedded in our social reality; influenced by personality, culture, language and media.

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Encoding and Decoding and the Field of Experience

One communicator, the sender, encodes and sends a message, the other receives it, “decodes it” and sends feedback, which is then decoded and used by the original sender to determine his/her next steps. The encoding sets up the message. It is influenced by the sender’s field of experience. The decoding is based on the receiver’s field of experience.

The field of experience is the cultural background, language, knowledge, attitude, relationship, etc. that have come together to influence understanding. The greater the differences in the fields of experience between the communicators, the greater the need for care and effort in making sure there is a common understanding of the message.

Channels

A message travels from sender to receiver via a channel. The channel represents the media – the means by which the message is sent. It might be email, oral face to face or via telephone, video, etc.

Here is an example of how the channel effects the communication: in a discussion about a requirement, the client says, “I want a hard copy report of all transactions for a day and to have a PDF copy of it stored for future use.” That is the initial message. It is encoded by the sender. The analyst, hearing this, rolls her eyes and makes a face. That is the second message (sent using body language). If the channel is voice via telephone, that message will not get through. If it does get through, in a media that allows for visual contact, it will trigger a response from the client.

Noise

Noise is part of the transactional model. Noise gets in the way of mutual understanding. In the communication model, noise is not limited to physical sound alone. Noise may be physical, physiological, psychological or semantic.

Physical noise is sound or disruption in the communication environment. It might be loud music, static, the buzz of machinery. Physical noise distorts the message or disrupts receiving the message.

Physiological noise is related to the speech and hearing of the communicators. For example, physiological noise includes hearing problems, speaking too slowly, too softly, too fast or too loudly. It also includes poor pacing and creating run on paragraphs by forgetting to pause.

Psychological noise includes distracting thoughts that take the mind away from the topic at hand and get in the way of listening, wandering from topic to topic in an unrelated sequence, biases, beliefs, sarcasm, irony and unrecognized attempts at humor.

Semantic noise relates to differences in meaning. This is not limited to differences in natural languages. It includes differences in meaning arising from the use of jargon and terms that require common understanding of technical, scientific or organizational content.

Put Knowledge into Action

With an understanding of the goal of communication and the nature of the communication process, it becomes possible to improve communication in the project setting. Be mindful of the environment, the needs and nature of the other parties and of one’s own tendencies and the need to minimize noise and accommodate the noise that will remain to achieve mutual understanding.

References
1 Covey, stephen, Seven Habits, https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/habit-5.html
2 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZP-uXF-LpM