Minimizing Barriers to Effective Communication ft. Sue Freas
00:00:00:15 - 00:00:22:22
Sue Freas
So good morning. Thank you for spending a few minutes of your very busy week. Thinking about how you can be better communicators. I started out thinking of really good subjects and I wanted to put. Messaging is hard, but usually if you lead off with something, it's hard. People don't want to hear about it too much because it's hard and it's early in the morning.
00:00:23:00 - 00:00:43:06
Sue Freas
But basically, there's a lot of things that we do every day that are impacted by how we communicate. And sometimes they're fun things. So imagine you have your dear, sweet grandma mom coming to town. You're so excited you've told everyone about it. You just can hardly wait. And then at some point, you send this note to your team.
00:00:43:08 - 00:01:06:01
Sue Freas
Let's all gather round. I'm hungry. Let's eat. Grandma. And you're like, this is so awesome. And as you're looking around the table and everyone's having a great time, you notice that there's a couple of chairs missing and you're like, well, where are those people? And you find they're doing research and you're like, where on earth did you come up with this idea?
00:01:06:02 - 00:01:26:09
Sue Freas
Just because I left out a comma. But the thing is, there are people all the time who are doing these random things that you're like, where did you come up with that idea? And a lot of the time, I think you can just center on what do they know? How do they know that? That they know that? How do you know that they know that.
00:01:26:11 - 00:01:55:02
Sue Freas
And really just get into better communication. At the end of the day, it is cheaper. And I'm not going to say it's cheap, but it is cheaper to communicate effectively because otherwise think about your you didn't spend time with grandma mom, you missed all the great conversations that were going on. And in the meantime, you had to tell the people who were working so hard on their great research they were so excited for no, no, no.
00:01:55:04 - 00:02:23:20
Sue Freas
But let the kitchen utensils away. Put down the Donner Party Cookbook, which is an actual thing. I found out. I don't think it actually has recipes. I stopped when I saw that. And then there's the people, those people who were trying to do that. Well, they disappointed you. They upset you. Now you have morale problems on top of everything that is expensive, and it's always more expensive to fix it after the fact.
00:02:23:22 - 00:02:44:15
Sue Freas
So there are some things that you cannot just work around. They are always there. They are some obstacles that you're just going to have to deal with. And the first one is that you are scary. Everyone has said, no, no, no, I'm really awesome. What do you mean people can't talk to me? We all think this about ourselves.
00:02:44:17 - 00:03:03:18
Sue Freas
But at the end of the day, you have the ability to fire anyone at any time. Now, practically speaking, we know our HR friends would say that's not really true, but anyone on your team doesn't believe that you have a bad day. They're gone. And so every time you do anything, it is through the lens of what if they hate me?
00:03:03:20 - 00:03:08:23
Sue Freas
What if this is the end of everything?
00:03:09:01 - 00:03:29:20
Sue Freas
With that in mind, every time you say anything to your team, they're going to think about it. They're going to think it over and over. They're going to talk to each other about it. They're going to analyze what they think you said. And the worst of all is they're going to paraphrase it and sometimes incredibly poorly, they will start saying what you said.
00:03:29:20 - 00:03:58:04
Sue Freas
And we've all played the telephone game when we were kids. And you hear how things get garbled and misconstrued. And before too long, what started out is, I like your shirt becomes a I'm going to Florida. And again, no idea how that happened, but this is what happens. You have these moments where you don't even always realize that you're in a funny spot for yourself, and how that translates to the rest of the team, or something that you think makes all the sense in the world.
00:03:58:06 - 00:04:23:16
Sue Freas
Think about our missing comma that people just gravitate towards they grasp on. It can be so minor, but it really resonates. So never forget. Above all, your team does see you as scary and that will always be the default lens. They're going to see you through the next one. Silence. I don't think we often deploy our silence. Well, think about a meeting you were in.
00:04:23:16 - 00:04:48:17
Sue Freas
I had one where, I had the fortunate experience to have a very small meeting with my grand boss, me and two other people. I was so excited. While we were in that meeting, he was on his phone on Amazon shopping for something for his wife called, and I'm trying to give him really good information and he would not and smile every so often.
00:04:48:18 - 00:05:13:09
Sue Freas
But in the end, he wasn't engaged with me and I felt it in volumes. Now, this was pre-pandemic, so all we had was in-person. Now think about when you're when you're on camera. Or maybe you choose to not be on camera. What are those moments that you're really leaning into? And again, everything you done you do is going to be taken, analyzed.
00:05:13:11 - 00:05:41:03
Sue Freas
Well, this was the part they didn't say anything. I saw them look away when and when all you have is shoulders and above. It gets worse because people don't even know what else is happening around. So think about silence as part of the conversation and how you can deploy that, because you may not even realize those moments that you're deploying it incredibly poorly.
00:05:41:05 - 00:06:15:17
Sue Freas
The last thing, and that is just table stakes and conversation. Paying attention is really hard. The average attention span eight seconds if you really want to transfer information 20 minutes. So that means if you have something big, you have an important meeting. You can change the topic every 20 minutes. It can be a longer meeting, but assume that they only have 20 minutes of give a darn before they just checked out, and they're moving on to something else every eight seconds.
00:06:15:17 - 00:06:39:12
Sue Freas
If you can arrange it to give a different sort of context, you can do something that's kind of interesting to grab their attention. It can be your slides, it can be your tone of voice. It can be giving a story. But do something that's kind of interesting every few seconds so that you can retrigger that eight seconds. I'm here with you, but it's not going to last more than 20 minutes.
00:06:39:14 - 00:07:01:03
Sue Freas
Now, I link to a little thing here and I'll tell you the guy, he has this video where he's trying to emphasize this point, and he does it by every eight seconds. The camera, it's here and it's here and zooming out and zooming in. And he's in this really barebones room. It is so weird. It's really disturbing.
00:07:01:03 - 00:07:20:07
Sue Freas
It drives the point home, but I would not want to watch that. I ended up not even finishing the video. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. But it does speak to I was aware how often those things happen, and those things do grab your attention. Case in point I know at some point, every single person in this room has checked out about something and that's okay.
00:07:20:07 - 00:07:42:08
Sue Freas
It's really normal. Assume your team is doing the same thing all the time. It's really normal. It's not you. It's not personal. It's just how they are. So there's some other snacks because you know that all wasn't enough. You can't say anything, right? You can't not say anything. Right? And they don't care anyhow. Great.
00:07:42:10 - 00:08:04:10
Sue Freas
So other things that get in the way jargon, we all have those words where like, I need to visualize my current weather like that may mean something very important to you, but if you are not speaking the language of the people on the other end, you might as well not say it. Use simple terms. Be willing to repeat those words.
00:08:04:12 - 00:08:28:12
Sue Freas
Acronyms are just as bad. So the term ethic as a system. I've worked in health care. I've worked in law enforcement. They are two drastically different systems. Every acronym you have can be probably used a lot of different ways. So just avoid them. Or if you say them, follow up with the words that go with it. Just to get everybody's heads where they're at.
00:08:28:14 - 00:08:47:11
Sue Freas
We also have different personal preferences. Think about there are some people who learn best by digesting the written word. There are some people who like giant paragraphs. They like bullet points. It's all over the place. Some people want to react very quickly in the moment. Some people are going to let me think on that, and I'm going to get back to you.
00:08:47:13 - 00:09:06:02
Sue Freas
You have all of that happening and that's on an individual level. And at the end of the day, it's still really hard to say to the big scary person, I don't know, no matter how many times you're like, they don't know, it's cool. You can tell me if you don't know, there's still not going to be the first one to say I don't know.
00:09:06:04 - 00:09:09:23
Sue Freas
Similarly, I messed up.
00:09:10:01 - 00:09:29:22
Sue Freas
So fortunately, there's some stuff you can do now. I said at the beginning, it's not that good communication is cheaper, but it's not cheap. The first thing you have to do is build trust and trust.
00:09:30:00 - 00:09:58:18
Sue Freas
My husband, when I put that out there, he was like, is that supposed to be funny? Oh. He started looking for other things. We decided we have a difference of opinion on this one. Regular conversations on a one on one level. Understand the people who are impacting your day to day the most. If you want somebody who understands what's coming down, you have to understand what they're going to hear in that moment with grandmamma.
00:09:58:20 - 00:10:19:16
Sue Freas
What was it that someone was hearing that made them go to the dinner party? What was it that they were like, no, no, no, I heard them talking about some really exotic trips they were planning on and some of the religious, whatever was behind that, and they went into a whole other space. How would you know that if you didn't talk to them?
00:10:19:18 - 00:10:40:21
Sue Freas
And this is an egregious example, of course. But we all know that there's that moment where you say just something and maybe you don't follow it up, or they don't have the right context or their heads at a whole other space, regular one on ones. It helps you understand where they're coming from, and it also helps you understand what their triggers will be.
00:10:40:23 - 00:10:56:20
Sue Freas
A second one admit your mistakes. You want your team to be able to come to you in a moment of weakness. Be loud and proud. You know what? I said that wrong. I messed up and it's hard for us to do it too. Because who wants to look dumb? At the end of the day, we're all dumb about something.
00:10:56:20 - 00:11:25:07
Sue Freas
At some point. Just admit it and it will follow through to your team, to one they will see. It's okay to acknowledge these moments. It's okay to have some vulnerability. But then, because what we all want to have happen, I messed up and here's what I'm doing with it. So demonstrate that, be part of that. Be the first one to show we are human, but we can get better follow through.
00:11:25:12 - 00:11:44:04
Sue Freas
If you tell your team you're going to do something, you're going to follow up on something you care about something, demonstrate it. Easy peasy. Right? Except how many times you've been like, I know the most important thing you can do is to show up to this meeting on Monday and you're half an hour late. It happens, and there's good reasons for it.
00:11:44:04 - 00:12:06:10
Sue Freas
Again, admit your mistakes, but have your team understand that when you say you're going to be there, when you say something's important, that you will back it up. Delegate. And this one is kind of funny to think about in terms of communication, but it is. Our actions count for a lot. How we talk to people is part of it.
00:12:06:12 - 00:12:30:00
Sue Freas
How we act with people is another thing. If you give someone a task except the first time, they may get it wrong or not to your standard. Because some things are arts, some things are science. Be willing to see their art and don't compromise on the science. So you give little check ins. You say what is going on with this?
00:12:30:03 - 00:12:59:22
Sue Freas
Here's the thing I would rather see differently. And in that moment you might be like, I totally want to rewrite this whole thing. But you know what? Then all you're ever going to do is totally rewrite the whole thing. And also you've lost trust and you've lost the team's willingness to engage. There's so many things, but if you find the right things to coach on, and you find the right things to give them the space for the reason that you delegated in the first place, they're going to be able to move into that space, and they will show you where their strengths are.
00:12:59:22 - 00:13:28:22
Sue Freas
That maybe will surpass your own. Will you repeat the line about be willing to see their art and know what? So there's art and science, so be willing to see their art. Don't compromise on their science. Science. They do a lot of thank you. Science or silence. Wield that strategically. Again, think about all the ways that you can be part of the conversation without speaking.
00:13:29:00 - 00:13:56:14
Sue Freas
When you are the leader, when you are one of the heavy voices in the room, if you don't speak, people do hear that. It's really interesting. When I was looking at like, who were some of the great leaders who are known for not speaking and it's yeah, Abraham Lincoln's a big one. Calvin Coolidge, Steve Jobs, and of course, the big finance guy that I can't think of right now.
00:13:56:16 - 00:14:24:03
Sue Freas
Yes. Warren Buffett, like, these people are known for showing up, being smart, but not being loud. It does matter. And the biggest problem if you speak up too quickly. So if you are the first hundred time, how many competing opinions are you going to hear next? Not many. And if you do, it's probably from that guy that always says anything anyhow, and you're not even sure if you care anymore.
00:14:24:05 - 00:14:43:14
Sue Freas
Be willing to be the last one to give an opinion. And if there are some people who aren't speaking up, it's okay to step in that space a little bit just to acknowledge, hey, we probably have heard you, but then step right back so you can lean into the moment. Lean into the silence. Lean into what you're giving them an opportunity to do.
00:14:43:16 - 00:15:05:01
Sue Freas
And that is also what I'm saying. Lean in. This is where you're showing up physically as well. This is where you know you're you're not on your phone buying something for your wife. You're actually listening to the poor soul who cared enough to put something together for you. How do you show up in these moments? The next thing you can do repetition.
00:15:05:02 - 00:15:33:18
Sue Freas
And I like this particular meme because it's not saying the exact same thing over and over and over, as we often think about it is saying the same thing in different ways, roughly expanding on the concept, driving at home so you can use stories so in this talk, I've given a few different stories that you can maybe resonate with.
00:15:33:20 - 00:15:53:19
Sue Freas
I use metaphors all the time. I talk about processes in terms of how I'm going to the grocery store, take it completely out of context, and just to create the moment that they can follow what you're saying. Also be willing like I was talking about with acronyms, you're not just using the acronym, you're using what it stands for.
00:15:53:19 - 00:16:15:12
Sue Freas
You're using the white hairs. One of my favorite things about agile, there was an article I read way, way back was talking about cargo called agile, and the idea was there was two guys in the government who really, really wanted to go to agile training, and their boss was like, nope, we've try this. It's a bad word. We're not doing it anymore.
00:16:15:14 - 00:16:33:15
Sue Freas
And they kept pushing, kept pushing, kept pushing. And so finally the guy's like, okay, you can go to training. But here's the thing you can't use those words when you come back. And so instead of asking for a stand up, they said, wouldn't it make sense if every day we got together just to talk about the progress we're making and where we need help?
00:16:33:17 - 00:17:03:23
Sue Freas
Yeah, totally makes sense. Wouldn't it be great if we were to timebox roughly what we can get done so we can come up with a commitment? Yeah, that totally makes sense. So again, it's driving home the point without necessarily leaning into the jargon, leaning into those words that people may have preconceived opinions about people maybe thinking other things and getting to that moment where they're connecting with it in the way you need them to.
00:17:04:01 - 00:17:31:04
Sue Freas
For me, the single best success indicator I can have for things that really, really matter is if I say it and my team can finish the sentence, like in that moment where you're like, okay, y'all, I've heard this a million times when our annual enrollment signups do next Wednesday. Thank you. That's it's an easy one. But it also shows that at that point, your message has gotten through.
00:17:31:08 - 00:18:03:13
Sue Freas
There's a lot of different messages we have in that way. I, I've worked at some places where they went, everybody to be able to recite the values of a company, and that's not necessarily bad, but it is leaning into what is it that matters most and creating that sense of. After a point, I will admit those places they felt a little funny because I didn't necessarily know why reciting the values affected my day to day, but understanding when my benefits are going to be different if I don't make an action that affects me personally.
00:18:03:15 - 00:18:33:05
Sue Freas
So be thinking about what are those moments. And prioritize your message. Everyone's heard about prioritization in terms of time. Think about it in terms of what it is you want folks to say. What is it you want them to take away from this? And just like time management, if you don't put the big rocks in first, if your key message isn't well understood, it doesn't matter about the rest of it.
00:18:33:07 - 00:18:57:06
Sue Freas
And I love this one because there's always room for coffee with a friend. It's okay to just be a person like always. Just think about it, but think about what it is you want them to take away from it. Then think about what are the the minor details that will fill in the sand would kind of be like, is there any surrounding things we need to be thinking about, but always make it abundantly clear?
00:18:57:08 - 00:19:25:17
Sue Freas
What are the key messages? What are the most important things that are coming out of what it is you have to share? And when you're dealing with the team and you've built your trust and you have a problem, because a problem is probably the hardest times to communicate, the hardest times to message, think about the unique approach. So first and foremost, if you have been brought in to a problem, something is painful.
00:19:25:19 - 00:19:42:00
Sue Freas
That means there has been a lot that's gone on behind it. There's a lot of scar tissue. The team may not have even wanted to come with you about it, or you may have had to pull them into it because of something, but still acknowledge what has been done. Create that space where we can even talk about what's going on.
00:19:42:00 - 00:20:05:14
Sue Freas
So acknowledge, hey, this this wasn't intentional. No one was malicious. You did great. And even coming here with me talk about we we own the problem. So this is where it's not one person who's going to be stuck with all this. It's not them who is at fault. It's not them who's going to carry the load. It's us.
00:20:05:18 - 00:20:26:17
Sue Freas
We are all in this together. Help that sense. And then me. It would be better if it was I. I'll give you that. But it flows better this way. So me. What am I going to do as part of this? Maybe it's a follow up. Maybe it's I'm going to talk to this person and kind of help them calm down.
00:20:26:19 - 00:20:54:16
Sue Freas
Maybe it's, you know what? I have an idea. Any of these things are possible, but be thinking about how you personally are going to be involved. So I look at as you are awesome, we have a problem and I will help. Whatever you're doing, be sure you're speaking their language and be specific. You can't just say great job and move on because great job doing what?
00:20:54:18 - 00:21:12:22
Sue Freas
What is the the effort you want them to you want them to repeat in the future? What is that thing that you're hoping you see more of? What is like? Be specific, but also don't be too jargony or too dismissive.
