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Improving communications between coworkers can sound like an impossible task.
After all you’ve got all these competing personalities and dynamics.
How do you corral all that energy and get people rowing in the same direction?
Thankfully, today’s guest, Jerome Myers has some solutions.
What You’ll Discover About Improving Communications between Coworkers:
* How to spot communication problems among coworkers
* The most common communication hiccups among coworkers
* Simple ways to address the issues needed for improving communications between coworkers
* How to overcome the fear of having challenging conversations
* And MUCH MORE.
Guest: Jerome Myers
Jerome Myers (a/k/a “J”) is a developer of people and places. He is the founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of two ventures. DreamCatchers is a boutique coaching firm that supports first and second generation wealth creators to self actualize and attain transcendence, and The Myers Development Group, where we help ordinary people invest in multifamily real estate in a way that creates generational wealth.
Through these entities he gets to live out his childhood dreams of helping people manifest the things they imagine and he is the evidence that dreams should be real.
Since leaving corporate America after building a 20MM division, J has become one of the most sought after thought leaders in the multifamily development space. His company, The Myers Development Group, built a multi-million-dollar portfolio following the principles of Myers Methods.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Communications episodes, including Simple Ways to Conquer the Elephant in the Room with Diane A. Ross.
Contact Jerome and connect with him on LinkedIn and Instagram.
And Jerome’s website.
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Best Ways of Improving Communications between Coworkers with Jerome Myers
Improving communications between coworkers can sound like an impossible task. After all, you’ve got these competing personalities and dynamics. How do you corral all that energy and get people rowing in the same direction?
Well, today’s guest has some tips. Stay tuned.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the weekly podcast for smart executives, managers, and entrepreneurs looking to improve their business performance and bottom line.
I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and today I’m delighted to welcome a very special guest. He’s Jerome Meyers. Jerome has an interesting background.
He’s the founder and chief inspiration officer of two different ventures, Dream Catchers and The Myers Development Group.
Recognizing that it’s lonely at the top, he left corporate America to help people in positions of leadership live a more centered life and also to create opportunities for these top performers to connect with each other so they can develop solutions to their toughest challenges.
What a treat to have him with us today. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Jerome.
It’s so good to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Well, it’s my privilege. It’s my pleasure. You know, communicating is just so, so critical for everything that happens, and we do it in so many ways, and improving communications between coworkers can really sound daunting.
But before we talk about how business leaders and owners can fix things; I’d like to begin by asking you how managers can spot communication problems and even know that there are hiccups between coworkers. What should they be looking for?
Yeah, I think the most important thing is when you see people who are not on the same page, and while people try to cover it up in meetings, I think it’s really easy to see it.
If you ever ask the question in a meeting and a direct report looks at the person that they report to and they wait for them to answer the question with a little smirk on their face, or the other way around where a manager is looking at a direct report, hoping that they have the answer to the question that the leader in the room asked.
And when that stuff starts happening people start sending CYA emails and there’s a number of other telltale signs that give you this idea, “Hey, Shanet. Hey, I need to dig a little bit deeper here to make sure that ideas are being communicated and expectations are clear.”
Well, that makes a lot of sense. What are the most common problems that you see in your experience when it comes to communication hiccups between coworkers that it may not necessarily be between a supervisor and their direct report, but it could even be between coworkers, between peers.
The one that confuses me more than anything is when people are scared to not be liked, and so they avoid conflict under the guise of keeping the peace, only to be disappointed or frustrated when the same issue that they were trying to avoid dealing with comes back up.
And so, what I encourage people to do is face the issues that are prevalent in the organization head on.
It’s kind of silly to avoid the elephant in the room and have those conversations, have them respectfully, but have the conversations and lean into the discomfort.
Because the quicker that you can have those tough conversations, the quicker you can move on to more pressing issues and ones that are not rooted in what I’ll call other people’s egos.
I like that, other people’s egos. Sometimes it makes you wonder that they can all fit in one room or [Laughter] – but I’m curious, though, could you give me an example?
Because I’m sure some people are nodding their heads going, “Yeah, yeah, Jerome makes a lot of sense, but how do I do that?”
Well, it’s funny you bring that up because I was on a call with the successful business owner this morning, and she has somebody on her team who’s pregnant and she’s working through these issues and reducing her schedule and having conversations with her.
And this particular employee went to her via text and explained that she felt like she was being targeted and she had this issue and that issue with the way things were being communicated.
And all the while, the business owner had been saying, “This is becoming a problem. I don’t know how long I can continue to deal with this. I need to make some adjustments.”
And because she delayed, now she’s in a place where she feels like her hands are tied. She’s worried about the person going and pressing charges against her for discrimination.
She’s worried about the potential of having to pay unemployment, and all she had to do early on was have a direct conversation with the person and make sure that they understood each other’s expectations. What are we talking about?
“Hey, if you need to reduce or adjust your work schedule, I need a note from your doctor so that we’re in compliance with their care orders.” “Hey, if you’re feeling like you can’t continue to work, then maybe you should take a leave of absence, and we’ll keep a position open for you so that after you have the baby, you can come back.”
But instead, we avoided it and just allow that to unravel into a situation where we feel like we’re backed into a corner. And that’s just an example from today.
There’s many more that I could bring up, but I just thought that one was really relevant in this situation.
Well, I can especially imagine it’s top of mind for you. It just happened. So, what are some other common problems that pop up?
I mean, not dealing with the elephant in the room is certainly one of them. But are there different types of elephants?
Oh, [Laughter] I think there are baby elephants and then there are mama and daddy elephant. Mama and daddy, they tend to only grow to that magnitude because leadership has turned a blind eye to them, and they imagine that they’re going to go away if they don’t do anything. And the only way that they ever go away is if the person that they have conflict chooses to leave.
And it seems like, at least over the last year with the business owners that I’ve been working with, that the only time that the people choose to leave is because they got a better opportunity, and it’s always at an advantageous time for the particular business owner.
So, you get this person who you have this conflict with, whatever it is, and a lot of times it’s just miscommunication or lack of communication and they decide that they don’t like them anymore, for whatever reason, right?
They continue to unravel. They make appeals to other people within the organization to the reasons why they don’t like their boss anymore.
And then, they either win an audience with them and they start to tie with them, and more people start saying the same thing and it creates a cancer, or it gets rejected and then this person feels even more isolated, which makes them do even more passive-aggressive things.
Well, each one of those instances is food for the elephant, and as long as you allow the elephant to be fed, the elephant stays and grows, and then eventually, the people in the organization begin to ask questions like, “Well, why don’t you do anything with that person?”
Or “Why should I do it if that person doesn’t have to do anything?” Because in the passive-aggressive situation, a lot of times folks will stop doing work that they’re being asked to do because they feel like there are no consequences to their decisions.
And I just pull people back and ask them if this is truly what they want and ask them how this is serving them to actually get them to a place where they’re willing to address the issue.
And if they choose not to address the issue, then we know what to expect. And for some people, they’re okay with it. They’re okay with just letting time pass and eventually getting to a place where the person leaves.
But the damage, the collateral damage that is done by allowing the elephant to spin around in your classroom, and bump into cases, and sit on a desk, and hit people with their trunks and tails, I just don’t know that most organizations are set up to be able to recover from that.
There’s a lot there. There’s a lot there. So, I mean, that explains how the elephant grows, [Laughter] why we’re sticking with the elephant. But what are some tips that you could give us for reducing the elephant?
I mean, you gave us the example before of the pregnancy. The employee that was pregnant and – that elephant in the room was not being addressed. So, she could feel continually isolated.
And now, it’s kind of reached almost a tipping point that you’re trying to pull the business owner, the leader back from.
Are there some things that leaders can do in the interim? I mean, what’s a good way to address the problem for improving communications between coworkers?
So, there’s a book that I really liked that we read in this program that I lead called The Leadership Bullpen. And it’s a 2×2 graph, and I guess every MBA thing is a 2×2, right?
And in these four quadrants, they labeled the communication styles that a lot of people have.
And in those communication styles, it has the natural form. And the name of the book is The Quadrant, where we want to have the most conversations as radical candor, right?
And so, with radical candor, you care deeply about the person and you’re willing to challenge them in the conversation. And so, that is the goal.
We have to care about the other human beings that we’re engaging with so much so that we won’t allow inappropriate things to be done by them within an organization that’s negatively impacting or hurting their peers, coworkers, or even the people who are up or down the line of them.
And so, the goal for me is to help as many people as possible move into the space of “Yes, I do care about this person, and I care about them so much that I’m willing to have conversations with them that most people aren’t willing to have.”
And if I believe if you can do that, then you can make magic.
I like magic. I think everybody does. Those are all pleasant surprises, and it can move things forward.
In your experience, is there a way management can pave the way for improving communications with coworkers from the start, something they could do in the onboarding process when a new hire comes on?
Or do they need to kind of wait until a problem pops up?
Oh, if you wait till the problem pops up, then you’re going to make it worse, right? Anything that you can do proactively is going to make life better. And some people are cringing. They’re pulling up their necktie.
If anybody on the [Laughter] – is actually still wearing those things – and they’re questioning whether or not they actually want to dive into that.
But I can assure you, if you can cut the thing off at the path instead of just letting it run its course, you will eliminate the collateral damage.
Get rid of the cancer before it becomes a tumor and just tank the business and get yourself in a position where you’re respected because you’re seen as somebody who’s willing to proactively lean into the pain, the proverbial pain.
I don’t know that there is real pain in having a conversation, but you’re willing to go into the pain, challenge it, and then come up with a solution so that everybody there, especially those who aren’t there for their negative theatrics, are protected.
Because I think that’s what our job is as leaders, is to protect people who are left in our care from folks who would do them harm. And there are people, if not tracked, that will do harm to our team.
Well, I think you’re right. That is a leader’s responsibility as part of their asset stewardship to not depreciate the value of their employees by letting them feel less than, and certainly, not having good communication skills is one way to do that.
But I have a feeling that some leaders, business owners are afraid to tackle some of these tough questions because they’re not sure of the emotional blowback they may be getting from employees. What advice do you have for them?
So, if you’re a leader, there’s going to be some people who aren’t happy with what you do. But everybody being happy with you is not leadership, at best it’s management, but I don’t think it’s management either because you’re not actually getting people to move to a new place.
And so, I think for those people who are worried about the blowback, scared about the blowback, insert whatever word and then the blowback, I encourage them to get out of leadership because this is not a game of likability.
This is a game of respect. This is a game of trust. And if your followers are not in a place where they trust or respect you, then your influence is dramatically diminished and you’re not effective in the space that you’re in.
Now, does that mean that you have to be a bull in a China shop? I don’t think so. Does that mean that you shouldn’t be kind and understanding? I don’t think so.
I think you can do those things, add in compassionate and challenge people directly and be able to communicate to folks what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and maybe you give them the liberty on how they get it done.
But as long as everybody understands what the plan is, then you can move as a unit, move as one, even though you are a group.
So, what you’re really talking about is getting them focused on the mutual goal for the organization, for the team, for the individual, for their contribution to making that happen. Does that sound right?
Absolutely right. That’s the magic. We talked about magic earlier and it’s back again. If you can get people aligned on a goal and get them moving in the direction of a goal, that, for me, is what real leadership is.
Do you think the size of an organization, or a department makes a difference when it comes to improving communications between coworkers? Or is it pretty much the same across the board? Are there special considerations to keep in mind?
I think mass communication changes based on the size of the group, but communication is always going to be one to one, even when you’re writing an email, right?
If you’re writing email to a specific person, it’s not going to change if you’re writing to the whole organization outside of maybe the salutation because you want each person who reads that message to feel like you wrote it specifically for them.
And depending on what level of the organization they’re in, the hope is you are writing it specifically for them.
And I think we struggle as we rise in the leadership ranks. I remember when I was in Corporate America, and I had about 185 people on my team and communicating to that many people at one time is scary.
And so, the ability to have supervisors in there understanding what communication is going to come out and be armed with the questions that they may have and to be there to stand in the gap to make sure that the message doesn’t get misconstrued or manipulated or twisted in a way that communicates something to the readers that wasn’t intended, I think that’s kind of the failsafe.
I think so many people are so scared to write anything that they won’t communicate with the formally titled parts of your leadership team. “Hey, here’s what’s coming. Here’s where it might go.”
“Here’s a response to that.” Maybe a Q&A or a fake human type situation. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but hopefully it did.
I think so. You know, having these safety nets for certain types of communications like email.
And it seems to me, though, that when people are using texts or some of these other short forms, the opportunity for misunderstanding, because it’s a shorthand or maybe an acronym, is actually magnified because different people can read different things into it.
The tone of the message, is it all caps? Is it does it have emojis? What does that particular supposed to mean? Can all be interpreted in different ways by different people.
So, I like your idea of having somebody else that can help interpret or waylay lay fears, because it’s really easy for employees to misunderstand if they feel, somehow, they’re personally at risk, their assignments, their status in the organization, their ability to get better assignments or be promoted.
So, it’s just amazing how much hangs [Laughter] in the balance when it comes to communications. Jerome, in your experience, what do you see the top mistakes managers make when trying to improve communications between coworkers?
It seems like sometimes they can actually step in it.
I mean, I know when I was in Corporate America, sometimes somebody would say, “Well, if Bob and Joe don’t get along or Amy and Becky sue over here, we’ll just put them in the same room and let them work it out.” What do you think of that strategy?
[Laughter] If they’re not getting along and they’re not getting it resolved, then they probably don’t know how, and a little bit of help is probably beneficial for both of them because there’s no reason to let people suffer, in my opinion.
You know, I do think leaders get in the middle. They step in it, as you mentioned. And that’s because, one, they either try to avoid it, which is letting the elephant continue to be fed, or they try to take it over as if it’s their problem.
And I don’t know that they need to take it over, but I do think they need to help them officiate or move through the process. Maybe mediate instead of officiate through this process so that they can actually come to an understanding right or wrong.
I believe that the majority of the issues that people are dealing with are misunderstandings. I think people are fighting through challenges only because there was a misread.
Either somebody read something through a lens that that was misguided, or the other end of that of the person wrote something, left some important words out, or made some type of an assumption that wasn’t valid.
And if we can take the time to extend some grace…
And this is a culture across the organization, right? Because a lot of our employees and staff, they do the same thing that we do, right?
And so, if you’re a supervisor, a leader who assumes the worst, every time when you read it, there’s this undertone or this message, well, then you’re going to breed a group of people who feel the exact same way.
So, let’s lead by example in that. And if there is a miscommunication, let’s not avoid having that conversation. Let’s actually dig in and find out what the person meant.
Let’s ask the clarifying question, and you probably should ask just one more question, perhaps the one where you think you get it to make sure that you understand, and I think the only thing that’s better than that is to come back and repeat.
“Okay. So, I understand that this is what you’re telling me.” And I’ll be honest, I have resolved more conflict by doing that, asking the extra question, and then repeating what I understand to be true or them to be communicating to me than I have in any other way.
That’s really good, because sometimes it’s just a nuance that hasn’t been expressed that can change your impression or interpretation of something.
And like you said, asking that question helps the other person say, “Oh yeah. Well, and this, this, this,” so they’re telling you more than you knew before, and that lets you interpret it better.
You know, it’s interesting, you talked about being able to give someone grace. I think that’s a really powerful idea.
It takes trust, though, and too often, trust is lost. And trust is really what allows people to believe when someone says, “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.” And so, how do we protect that?
By being honest, right? So, one of the most transformational books that I read in 2020 was Sizing People Up by Robin Dreeke. And the book taught me one of the most powerful lessons that I’ve ever learned.
And that’s just because you like somebody, it doesn’t mean you should trust them. Trust is solely based on your ability to predict what a person is going to do. And so, as leaders, we have to be predictable.
People need to know what to expect from us and when to expect that from us. And if they do that, they’re more likely to bring us things because they know that we’re not going to blow up.
Right? If there is a challenge and they bring it to us and they bring us a solution with the challenge, and we don’t yell and scream or threaten their job or whatever the other thing is, it gives us the opportunity to actually participate in the solution process or make sure that somebody is tasked with coming up with the solution.
And from my perspective, that is where you can take things to the next level, because now news is just news. It’s not good news, it’s not bad news. It just happened and we need to deal with it and – “Oh, I’m taking the lead on dealing with it.”
When you’re operating in that space, the organization can go fast, and the things that most people struggle with aren’t actually struggles anymore because you don’t have to posture a position and pretend.
Very good. Very good. It’s about joint problem solving. Like you said, it’s information. It just is what it is.
So, thank you so much, Jerome.
I really appreciate you and your thoughts on improving communications between coworkers because it’s so much easier to achieve business goals and implement strategy when there’s less friction between employees and more trust.
So, if you’re listening and you’d like more information about Jerome Myers and his opportunities for top performers to connect with each other so they can develop solutions to their tough challenges, his contact information and a transcript to this interview can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.
Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next Thursday with another episode of Business Confidential Now. Until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.
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