One of the areas of ongoing self-development and challenge for any profession, especially the health and safety profession, is communication. Whenever I ask a group what they believe are the essential skills of an effective leader, communication is generally on the top of the list.
There are many facets to communication. One key area which allows for clarity of communication is the art of asking exceptional questions. Often when a person is providing information they will miss parts of a story, delete aspects of what occurred, generalise and use words that mean something to them but may not make sense to the listener. Here is where great questions can fill in the blanks. If a person is really listening it is easy to listen for what is not said and what is missing. Take the following for example which is word for word a statement someone made in a workshop I was facilitating – “Management just don’t care. They are just interested in covering their own butts.” When I asked the group if they understood what this person was talking about they said YES. Well, I was confused. There was a lot missing;
• Who were they referring to when they said ‘management’?
• Did they mean all managers? In the whole organisation? World?
• How did they know managers don’t care?
• If managers did care, what would this look like?
• How did they know what interested their manager?
It can be seen by just this one example that as a listener it is possible to miss a lot of information. As H&S professionals one of our major activities is problem solving. This is made far easier and effective if we can develop the art of great questions.
We are working with a number of organisations who have an intention to move toward excellence in communication.
If you would like to talk about our Excellence in Communication workshops please give us a call.