Communication At Work

By Patti Lind

Communication at Work is a collection of short reflections written to help guide individuals through challenging situations at work and at home. Drawn from decades of experience coaching physicians, leaders and staff in the health care industry, P

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patti Lind
• Release date: Nov 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087927688

Patti Lind

Patti Lind was a founding partner of the Lind Consulting Group and taught at Marylhurst University for 30 years. Working as an independent consultant, she spent her career addressing communication and leadership issues within the health care industry and the unique challenges faced by its workforce.

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Dedication

To Anne, David, and Maren, with all my love

Preface

I feel like I am part of a community of people past, present, and future who spend their lives trying to find a way for people to live in harmony. Like the rock cairn, where hikers add their rock to rocks previously laid by others … this book is my attempt to add my work to the work which has preceded me, and to lay a foundation for the work of others who follow in my footsteps.

When I headed off to college, I wanted to be a journalist. Being a reporter seemed like the ideal way for me to move around in this world because I am curious by nature and enjoy hearing the inside stories behind events. But in the spring of my freshman year, I was required to take an Interpersonal Communication class as part of my major. I remember opening up a two-page spread on Crazymakers. On those two pages were behaviors that drive problems between people and compromise trust (e.g., pouting, gunnysacking, passive irritability). To my dismay, I saw myself written all over those two pages. At that moment I made a commitment to become a better person. My first step: no more pouting in silence. My second step: change my major to Interpersonal Communication.

That was forty years ago and I am still curious about finding ways to more effectively live and work with other people through communication. Not a day passes that I don’t think, read or converse around something that is communication related. And yet, despite all this curiosity and commitment, I am still just an average person who bobbles things and has to continuously learn from my mistakes.

One thing I have learned is that improving one’s maturity and communication skills is a lifelong challenge and something that takes frequent reflection. It takes more than reading a book and attending workshops. It takes practice and it takes remembering.

In an effort to help remind my clients and extend their learning, I started writing monthly communication tips to help them continue to think about their communication on a regular basis. It was my way of reminding them that communication matters. It takes thought. And, it takes trying something new and different than what you are used to.

Each month I choose topics that address a problem one of my clients is facing and are quite frequently the newest lesson I am learning for myself. What strikes a chord for me must strike a chord for others, because I am frequently approached by people who come up to me and express their appreciation for my work. Usually they tell me that they pass the newsletters around to their colleagues or forward them along to their friends and family members. It is a wonderful feeling to know that what I hoped to accomplish is being realized. This book is a compilation of newsletters I have written over the past five years. I hope you will find my ideas relevant, practical, and encouraging.

How to Gain the Most Benefit from This Book

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.

John C. Maxwell

I have always believed that communication is more of a doing thing than a knowing thing. A knowing thing is something that once you hear it, then you know it. A doing thing, on the other hand, takes practice to learn it. You can know how the game of golf is played, and not be able to play golf. And golfers know that you might be able to play the game but because you don’t practice, you will play it badly. The same thing goes for learning how to play a musical instrument. There is no shortcut to playing an instrument well … it takes doing it. In sports and in music, becoming skillful requires putting in time and energy. It also takes a willingness to try something new, an acceptance that there is a learning curve, forgiving yourself for the inevitable mistakes, and being willing to try again.

In my view, learning how to communicate effectively takes the same approach. A person can store a lot of information in his or her head about communication, conflict resolution, and listening and still be a very poor practitioner of it. Becoming skillful at communication requires doing things differently than you have done in the past, focusing on your own behavior rather than the behaviors of others, and persisting in your efforts when you don’t get the results you were hoping for. Quitters and whiners don’t become great communicators.

When you begin reading this book, you will find that after each chapter there is a practice page. I encourage you to take advantage of this page when a communication tip particularly hits home. At first you might see the tendency in others. My mother has this problem! This sounds exactly like my boss. That’s a fine place to start, but I encourage you to turn the lens back on yourself. How good are your skills? Do you struggle with this same problem? Do I have difficulty receiving feedback from someone in my life? Is there someone I am not forgiving? Recognition is an important step, but a more important step is to decide to do something differently. I am going to apologize for being so prickly about receiving feedback and ask my partner to tell me again why they don’t feel heard by me. Finally, once you have made a commitment to a specific action, decide on a plan for reminding yourself so that you will continue to practice this new skill until it begins to feel natural (and rewarding) to you.

Here are some examples of what I, and others, have done:

A client of mine wanted to remind herself to relax, remain calm, and ask questions because her tendency was to become defensive quite quickly. She made it a habit to write her communication goals at the top of her note pad when she went into meetings.

One time I had a piece of paper with some important goals written on it that I kept next to my bed. I read it each morning before my feet hit the