Models | The Perfect Response

Organizations often talk about the value of finding employees with “soft skills,” meaning abilities to communicate and work well with others. This is not a given. In fact, current media use patterns have lessened the chances that younger Americans will need repair their initial instincts to be other-centered. Here are some questions that explore some of the dimensions of these attributes. The questions represent general patterns, with room for individual exceptions. How many did you correctly guess?

1. If I am with a work colleague and my phone rings, a reasonable course of action is to pause our conversation, offer a brief apology, and take the call.

A. Yes
B. No

2. Prior to a meeting of a work team you will lead, it’s a good idea to send around a brief agenda of items to be considered.

A. True
B. False

3. It’s ok to leave your phone on and in sight during a committee meeting, especially if it is in a silent mode.

A. True
B. False

4. Video meetings on Zoom or other services can be just about as good as meetings that happen in the same room.

A. True
B. False

5. In a meeting of colleagues it is probably better to call out someone’s mildly offensive comment immediately, rather than pointing it out to them later in private.

A. True
B. False

6. It is probably a waste of time to ask member in a new taskforce of 10 to introduce themselves before a meeting starts.

A. True
B. False

7. You have a meeting with your team. One member often contributes too much and pulls the group away from the subject at hand. Assuming everyone fits around a rectangular conference table, where is the ideal place to ask that person to sit?

A. Along the table length.
B. In a chair opposite the leader at the other end of the table.
C. It does not matter.

8. A problem-solving group will usually make better decisions if the boss is also in the room.

A. true
B. false

9. Generally, the human efficiency curve for most individuals increases throughout the workday.

A. True
B. False

10. The best way to prepare for remarks that you must give to a room of colleagues is to write out what you want to say so that they can be read back clearly in your presentation.

A. true
B. false

11. Being anxious before a presentation is normal and usually helpful.

A. True
B. False

12. In research on gender differences and communication

A. Women are more likely to favor asking for clarifications or raising questions.
B. Men are more likely to favor stating their opinions on a topic.
C. Neither are true.
D. Both are true.

13. Withholding making a final decision in a meeting because differences remain is most clearly associated with

A. Quakers
B. Catholics
C. Lutherans

14. Working in a group is likely to increase the chances that there will be dissenters who will oppose an emerging group consensus.

A. True
B. False

15. Job reviews and terminations are rarely easy for managers or employees. Even so, it is acceptable to deliver negative evaluations or separation to an employee without necessarily meeting them in the same space.

A. True
B. False

Answers:

1. B. No. Something in our nature leads us to imagine an urgent message waiting in an unanswered call. But rarely do calls deserve such priority. The person(s) in your presence should be considered first. They deserve your undivided attention.

2. True. With a few exceptions it is a courtesy to all of the meeting participants to indicate the focus of the meeting. They may want to prepare. Or they might appreciate the chance to look over materials that will be considered in the meeting. It borders on the rude to spring a significant surprise on group members, if the meeting is to gain their input.

3. False. Leaving your phone screen on and in sight of others is a distraction to you and communicates your view that you may soon have something better to do. Ditto for laptops, which have turned into common props used to fake meeting-related work. New messages and e-mails can wait. Since we do not multitask well, give your attention to those in the meeting. If you feel like you really don’t need to be there, simply excuse yourself.

4. False. Zoom and its counterparts are useful. But because they are mediated through limited images and often poor sound, they represent a degraded way to connect. The inconvenience of being in the same space is often offset by the added communication information received when you see a whole person.

5. False. A seriously egregious comment may need an instant response, but a comment made in innocence or ignorance rather than with malice can be better addressed privately. And forget the urge to do some virtue signaling. Criticism of another in public usually means a loss of face and defensiveness for the person that receives it. In private, the offending comment can be corrected without inflicting the deeper harm of a more public reprimand.

6. False. It is worth the time to ask members who may not know each other to introduce themselves, if their comments are brief. Our identity is affirmed in our name. It will also be possible for more of the business that transpires to be done on a first-name basis.

7. A. A rectangular table has power positions and weaker locations. On a corner side a constant contributor might be reined in by not having easy eye contact with all members of the group. That may ease their urge to dominate. The power positions are at the two ends of a table. Everyone can see people in these locations.

8. B. False. There can be extraordinary circumstances where the boss is needed to supply crucial information, but case studies suggest that participants in a meeting are more forthcoming with new ideas without concerns about pleasing the boss or guessing their preferences.

9. B. False. Count yourself lucky if this pattern cited in the question fits you. In fact most are less productive toward the end of a routine workday. A mid-afternoon “slump” is common.

10. B. False. A good rule of public speaking is to prepare notes for what you intend to say, but to stop short of preparing a manuscript to read to a group. Most of us are boring readers. We are usually more interesting when we amplify ideas we have prepared as talking points worded in what feels right in the moment. Most of us can be good at this type of extemporaneous speaking, which more closely duplicates natural conversation. But few of us have the skills of actors to breathe life into a prepared script.

11. A. True. What researchers call “communication apprehension” is common and can be useful. An extra shot of adrenaline can make you more motivated to succeed and perhaps even more animated. But repress the urge to remind your audience of your jitters. They will want to hear what you say more than they want to hear about your fears. Focus on the message, not yourself.

12. D. Both A and B are true. In settings where there may be some differences of opinion, some research indicates that men are most comfortable affirming what they believe. On the whole, women will seek ways to bridge differences in belief.

13. A. Quaker traditions value reaching a consensus before proceeding with an action. If doubts among a group exist, they would be less likely to force a vote that will end in a divided result. This is a worthy goal for any group, if not always possible.

14. B. False. With exceptions, groups tend to exert pressure on “dissident” members to accept the thinking of the majority. In some classic studies this is known as “groupthink.”

15. False. Of course it is possible to fire someone via some medium. But it is usually a cruel communication choice. When at all possible, life-altering decisions affecting an employee should be delivered face to face.

After decades on the planet, I’ve come to think of the idea of causality in human affairs as problematic.

The idea of causality is such a comfortable mental device. It frequently allows us to take the mystery out of an action by labeling a plausible cause. Early in my career I had a brazen certainty that Action X will produce Result Y. But especially in the realms of human conduct and attitudes, we are still a long way from claiming accurate causal chains. “Serendipity” is not a term one is likely to hear very much from social scientists who seek explanations for conduct in so many forms of human affairs. Too bad, because we need to allow uncertainty to have its place. We are maybe on slightly firmer ground to talk about one individual’s influences. But just when that road seems promising, we encounter persons with responses that have boomeranged far away from predicted linkages to parents, mentors, influencers and friends. None may work out as particularly good predictors.

There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, creating an incalculable number of neural pathways that might be activated to produce certain actions or attitudes. Some of those neural highways could be activated by heredity or the chemistry of the body. Others probably arise from the ineffable forces of individual experience accumulated over time. But many are far too obscure to be measured with the relatively crude tools of psychology, neural imaging, or the discovery of predictive antecedents. Even what seems like a simple and straightforward persuasive message may not produce attitudes we would expect.

One study trying to get teens to lower the volume coming into their earbuds thought another teen explaining the risks might be a good source. Not so. That particular study showed the boomerang of a slight increase in their post-message listening levels. Go figure.

All of us who teach and write about persuasion should be a bit embarrassed to be so clueless. After all, rhetorical strategies are predicated on the idea that if an individual takes a certain verbal approach to an audience, it should yield more or less predictable results. Like most realms of theory, there is the implicit promise of finding an “if-then” sequence. Call a person a “jerk” and they will not react well. Even so, I am constantly surprised by the unpredictability of audiences. Even in our text on the subject, for the sake of clarity we more or less settled disputes about causal factors that are–in truth–not quite so neatly resolved.

Every new case of a mass shooter or some other form of human depravity leaves me scratching my head and scoffing at the journalists who want to identify specific causes now. How could a new mother abandon her four-year old to die in an alley? What was mass murderer John Wayne Gacy thinking? What could explain how a professional clown who was hired out to do children’s parties could turn into such a monster?

It is possible to build causality claims using the laws of physics or chemistry, but human nature is far less predictable.

It’s the rare “expert” who says, “I don’t know.” We have a natural compulsion to sort out the motives of others. It is one of the narrative lines that must be filled in when we parse human behavior. Try out a few random movements around your friends and watch the wheels start to turn as they try to figure out what’s up with you. Wanting to know the causes of everything is natural instinct. And we clearly know a lot about the chemical and biological causes of many conditions and diseases. But assigning motives to a human can be a fool’s errand. What Hollywood usually wraps up by the time the credits roll remains largely unwrapped by the police professionals left to sort out real mayhem. In the study of crime, knowing who did some action is easier than knowing why.

After recent demonstrations at Columbia University, New York’s Deputy Police Commissioner Kaz Daughtry held up a book on terrorism at a press conference and said, “there’s somebody. . . [who is] radicalizing our students.” He surely had causes in mind. But that rhetorical flourish doesn’t stand up very well. What person would have that kind of power? And are the protesters so uniform as to be influenced by the same persons or groups? It is more likely that many students have absorbed news of Palestinians living in what some have called “the open-air prison of Gaza,” mustering youthful outrage for the status quo. And even that simple causality chain could be suspect.

Thankfully, not every case is so difficult. Apple recently ran an advertisement selling a new tablet. You may have seen the ad where a room full of creative tools–a piano, a guitar, paints, a record player, books, a trumpet–are slowly crushed in real time by a giant industrial press, leaving a tableau of shards and ruin. The tag line suggested that all of these wonderful tools are not needed if you have an Apple tablet. Only in advertising can a person be so cluelessly reductionist. Within hours media and arts creators of all sorts reacted with horror at the idea that this is what the company thought of their tools. Actor Hugh Grant called it “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley.” The revulsion was real, and clearly not what Apple’s marketing geniuses predicted.

The Perfect Response

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IN A DISTRACTED AGE

Category Archives: Models

How Good Are Your ‘Soft Skills?’