Why Workplace Communication Is BROKEN, and How It Makes Work Suck

[: 00:00

The greatest enemy of communication is the illusion of it, where you think you've communicated, but you really haven't.

[: 00:07

Boomers, not everything needs to be a phone call. For a Gen Xer, Slack is not gonna kill you. Thanks. Millennials, stop apologizing and just get to the point. Gen Z, like, professionalism matters.

You can't LOL your way through a promotion. I've had people try. That's actually kind of funny. Hey, I would like to have a performance review. I think I killed it last month.

LOL.

[: 00:30

How did that work out? I replied with, they had a policy that you had to turn emails around in twenty four hours, and people got in trouble for not responding to emails.

[: 00:41

One person uses text message. Another person uses Slack. Another person is putting notes in Jira. Another person is you know it's a document that you've been tagged in and then there's email or you get my favorite. You know I get a text message that says hey I sent you an a Slack message about an email.

Yeah. Like, you literally tell me a text message to text Slack to check an email. Why? When the Gen Xer talks about how they want to glow up the document inside of, you know, Slack and you're like, what the hell is a glow up? You wanna blow the document up?

Like, what what what's going on here?

[: 01:13

I'll share a couple of my horror stories. I was emailing with my boss and I copied the manager that I was stealing people from in the email. So she saw me telling my boss, we're gonna steal all of her people,

[: 01:27

which was bad. Whoops. Whoops. Every generation thinks their way is the best. The truth?

[: 01:35

Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

[: 01:39

Ryan, today, I wanna talk about communication. Communication is one of those things that's really popular. Lots of people talk about it. Many people think they are communicating when they are in fact not communicating. And I think that disconnect is part of what makes work suck for so many people.

And so in today's conversation, I'd love to just kind of dig in on this idea of workplace communication, the do's, the don'ts, the best, the worst, maybe even some of the generational differences, harking back to the our last conversation about how different generations communicate differently. Just see if we can give some practical tips for how to communicate better so that work doesn't suck.

[: 02:20

I just have to ask, did my wife text you? Did she put you into this?

[: 02:24

She did not. I have not talked to her to your wife in a while.

[: 02:28

Okay. Because it's very oddly time that you wanna talk about communication after after, past few days with my wife. So you're very timely.

[: 02:37

Mm-mm. That that is pure coincidence. But I'm sure my wife would appreciate you sharing some of your wisdom with me because I don't think I'm doing a great job

[: 02:46

of it either. According to this side of the fence, your wife doesn't want to listen to doesn't want me and you talking because I'll just give you the bad advice.

[: 02:54

Yeah. Maybe. Alright. Well, let's we can do a lot about communication in our personal life. That's probably a different episode.

Let's talk corporately. What's one of the worst communication mistakes that you've made in your career? A lot of communication is not about talking. It's about listening. I know for me when I'm like, oh, okay.

We're gonna talk about communication today. My brain goes straight to, how do I talk better? And I probably need to start with, how do I listen better? I'll share a couple of my horror stories. The first one that comes to my mind, I was texting with my boss or not texting.

I was emailing with my boss about some people in another part of the company that we were trying to bring on to our team. They had agreed to loan us one of these people, but I was trying to build a full team. And so I texted my boss, and I was like, yeah. We'll start with this one guy. He'll be helpful, and then we'll just gradually take the rest of her people because she doesn't really have enough good work for them to do, and we're got way too much to do.

So we'll just gradually steal all her people. And I copied the manager that I was stealing people from in the email. So she saw me telling my boss, we're gonna steal all of her people, which was which was bad. Whoops. Whoops.

The best the best part was I left that company. I don't know, a year or two later, started working for a startup. She left the company after I did, and then she came and started working for the same startup. So we ended up being peers again. I mean, she was much higher than me before, and then we both had the same boss.

And we had to kinda go back and smooth some of that over because I had put my foot in my mouth, and now I had to work with her. So, thankfully, she was gracious and forgave me, but not the only time I've, put my foot in my mouth.

[: 05:01

Yeah. I think I think there's also a couple of things of, like, even as a leader, you have to be very careful what you say because you're on stage. And it can be misconstrued or twisted or taken the wrong way. And, I mean, it's just it's just hard.

[: 05:17

Yeah. It's it's very hard. Different people prefer to communicate in different ways and through different mediums.

[: 05:26

Oh, when you think about some of these remote companies, I mean, I I get stuck with this every day where it's like one person uses text message, another person uses Slack, another person is, you know, putting notes in Jira, Another person is, you know, it's a document that you've been tagged in, and then there's email. Forget even some of the generational stuff. There's just even the the channels of communication. And then you get the communication styles, like when the when the Gen Xer talks about how they wanna glow up the document inside of, you know, Slack, and you're like, what the hell is a glow up? And you're like, you wanna blow the document up?

Like, what what what's going on here? So it's just it's like, I'm struggling with communication. I'm struggling.

[: 06:13

Yes. Clearly.

[: 06:14

I'm struggling.

[: 06:15

What is your preferred communication style? How do you find you best communicate with other people?

[: 06:21

Oh, well, definitely not email. Suck at email. Definitely not phone calls. Don't try to call me. My phone is just gonna go to voice mail, and I'll never check it.

I I think I'm basically, if you're not in a Slack community, text message is probably the best. Some some sort of, like, SMS or quick messaging. But I'm definitely the millennial. So, like, throw me in Slack all day long. I love Slack.

Yeah. I love I love that collaborative quick communication component. But then again, at the same time, depending on how you use it, like, people that write, like, novels inside of Slack and then it's just, like, it's overwhelming. Maybe that's it. Is there's long forms of communication and short forms of communication?

[: 07:03

Mhmm.

[: 07:04

I I like a very kind of, short form instantaneous back and forth kinda collaborative conversation. Yep. What I can't stand is the walls of text inside either text messages or emails or Slack, and it's like, I don't know what the solution is. But, I mean, maybe that's just because I'm dyslexic and you're gonna you're making me work too hard by reading.

[: 07:25

Yeah. I think that that's a the pages and pages of text is gonna be a handicap for somebody with dyslexia. That's not gonna be that's not putting them in a situation to succeed. So let's talk for a second about how the different generations communicate, like their styles and their preferred channels. You said you're a millennial and you prefer text, Slack, probably because it's instantaneous, collaborative, maybe it's the technology you grew up with.

[: 07:51

I grew up with AOL Instant Messenger. So that's why I, like, more or less Slack. You know, it MXN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, like, that was the thing. Because, you know, text messages were, you know, like, 20¢ a message. So you only you you you could only text, you know, your closest friends, like, maybe once a month before your parents would kill you because you Mhmm.

Sent the cell phone bill through the roof. Right. AOL Instant Messenger, man, you could have message all day long with everybody. Yes.

[: 08:17

Lots of emojis. Yep. Lots of emojis, which can help give a little bit more color to the conversation. I find millennials tend to be more informal in their communication. There's not a lot of hierarchy.

Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. No, sir. No, ma'am. Maybe that's just a Southern thing, but that kind of titles and positions don't tend to be as respected, I think, in the millennials, and I think probably the Gen z as well.

[: 08:50

Yeah. I definitely in a more informal Slack, but I think I do think there's a lot of people that just and and I get good communication, but there's this they may be less formal in, like, yes, sir or no, sir or ma'am or whatever. But they're, like, very formal in their informal communication channels. You know, like, to whom it may concern that is reading this message that this thing of, so therefore, and it's like, okay. Just be like, hey, man.

Can you look at a thing?

[: 09:23

Right. Get to the point. Right. I mean, these are some of the complaints in both directions. Right?

That for millennials, I think they can feel and you tell me if this is true. They can feel like those professional emails are cold and impersonal. Right? And I wonder if the other generations feel the same way. It's like, hey, man, this is work.

We're not best friends. Why are you texting me like we are?

[: 09:51

You know what's what's interesting is is I wonder is it so much that versus, okay, I know I'm a little bit on the older millennial side than the younger millennial side. I also know my career path is a little different than everybody else. Else. So I think it's almost one of those, like, just when you're in the the your twenties, you know, spit mid to late twenties, maybe even early thirties and, you know, I think if by time you hit, like, 32, you start aging out of it. But I think there's just, like, there's this desire to be the smartest person in the room or, you know, advance your career.

And so I don't know if it's so much, like, millennials versus x versus Gen z. I just think there's also this this this desire to prove yourself in your twenties. And so I think it was previously, you know, you think back to the the, Gen x. Gen x was the, you know, the outcast and the rebels and, you know, really trying to prove themselves, you know, back two decades ago. Right.

And then it was the millennials. And then now you're seeing the the Gen Zers. And and though the communication styles have evolved with them, and morphed I think as technology has morphed, I think the the technology norms that they follow are. But I actually think it's less about millennials versus z z is I I think it's the cycle of the younger professionals trying to prove they're smart or they're capable or they're, you know, they're trying to climb that corporate ladder, proverbial ladder, lattice, whatever you wanna call it. And so I definitely think it's not so much about sticking it to a label of a generation and more just what happens when that group of people hit that age range than what typically happens.

[: 11:28

It's a season of life, not a generational thing.

[: 11:31

Right. It just happens that, you know, millennials are kinda in this current phase of life and x is in this phase of life and and so forth.

[: 11:39

Alright. Let's talk about Gen Xers. Let's say Gen Xers certainly love emails more than phone calls. Phone calls, I think, is, is more of a boomer thing. But email, I would still go email over text.

My preference would be. And generally, more direct and to the point. There's not a lot of emojis, not a lot of frills, just, you know, a little bit more on the business side. That might be, to your point, that might be more of a stage of career thing than a generational thing. But I do think that emails is kind of the wheelhouse for the Gen Xer.

[: 12:19

Yeah. I would I would I would definitely say so. Email was the the predominant communication. But I think that that goes back to where the technology was. Sure.

You know, I mean, email I mean, heck, I remember when we had, what was it, Skype well, it's not Skype for Business Link. Well, then it went to Skype for business, but that like, having that messenger in our company was huge or business communicator before then. Whereas email was the instant communication, method. Up until I mean, that was I mean, up until, like, the the late twenty teens, I guess Slack came in somewhere in there. But I think it just goes back to that was the predominant communication method, and that's just what stuck.

[: 12:59

Yeah. I I think it like, I like Slack. I like Slack more than Teams. I don't think I use it well. I've gotten my hand slapped from different people about how I use Slack.

So clearly, I'm the the one who's not doing it right.

[: 13:13

I'm gonna say that's you, Daniel, because my VP of VP of production that is a, a Gen Xer at another company, She is like the absolute, like, Slack queen. And you think you think you get your hands slapped in Slack by Maria, you would not be alive anymore. You'd just be death by a thousand slapped, Slack demands. So I don't think it's exactly I think that's a you thing, not so much a a generational thing.

[: 13:40

Slack does not quite fit the way my brain works. I've learned to to work with it, but I think I would be more comfortable with emails as a as a Gen Xer. Boomers love the phone calls.

[: 13:51

You know what? Throw something that's funny out there is I have a I have a Gen z person that is, like, demanding we have an in person meetup over the Gen Xer that wants to do it virtual. Interesting. Now, not a boomer demanding it. So you got the Gen Xer component in there.

But I do have a Gen Xer that is demanding the in person and saying all of our problems are because we are not meeting face to face. So maybe he's got a little boomer in him. Well, so here's the

[: 14:19

thing is is that I don't think any of these generations is entirely right and any of them are entirely wrong. I think that there is there's a complex web here that I'm more oriented towards the virtual. I'm very comfortable in virtual. But there are a lot of problems that I have seen just vanish when you put people in a room. Virtual is harder to develop relationships and trust.

It's Not that it can't be done, but it's harder. Right. And so if you can actually put physical bodies in the same place, your ability to build trust and relationship accelerates. And I think the boomers got that right because that's what they grew up with and they appreciate it more and they see the value of it. I think they undervalue what you can accomplish virtually, but I wouldn't say that a Gen Xer is out of alignment just because they wanna see people face to face.

It could be a problem that needs to be solved that way.

[: 15:13

Oh, agree. Because it's a breakdown in communication. Ultimately, because of all the breakdown in communications, they're they're trying to get to the most simplest form of communication. Everybody Right. Well, I've heard somebody say this once,

[: 15:24

and maybe this is a kind of a tip is for communication, is that the the higher the possibility of an emotional interaction and the higher the stakes in the conversation, the more you want to move towards face to face. Oh, I agree. So yeah. So if it's an if it's a potentially emotional thing, like you're giving feedback, you're having to have a hard conversation, texting emojis is not the right way to do that. Get face to face if possible, if not on a video call, if not on a phone call, but that is not the thing that should be done via text.

And that's been helpful for me just as a rule of thumb of, okay, how is this gonna be received? Because the heart of the conversation, the closer to in person you need to be to do it well.

[: 16:11

One person trying to communicate all this data in email, and another person doing it in text message, and another person doing it in Slack, or you get my favorite, you know, I get a text message that says, hey. I sent you an e a Slack message about an email. Yeah. Like, you literally sent me a text message to text Slack to check an email. Why?

[: 16:30

What about Gen Z? What I have seen from the emerging workforce is overuse of, you know, memes, GIFs, emojis. Memes are funny and all, but you better have a pretty good relationship with somebody at the workplace to to be sending memes back and forth. I think there's some level of hierarchy that a lot of younger generations don't respect. Right?

And I said this earlier, but I think it's in most companies, it's not appropriate to text the CEO and ask him a question. Right? There is probably somebody else who you should be talking to if you have a question. Unless there's only like three of you in the whole company, there's probably somebody else who's a better person to direct that question towards. And and that lack of formality, that lack of hierarchy, I think, can get the younger generation in trouble sometimes.

[: 17:21

Well and you know what? That's an interesting one because you know what? I I see sometimes, and and I'm seeing this in, like, smaller organizations where they where the the younger generation is like, oh, that's the CEO. And they they they put them almost on a pedestal, and I'm looking at it like, it's just Bob. Like, I don't know.

Right. It's just Bob. Maybe that's a shame on me. But when you see the CEO doing casual speak with the employees and they're down with the in the trenches, sometimes that's a good thing. But sometimes that opens up the communication to have that very casual conversation.

And I think that is a very dangerous path because if you become, you know, buddy buddy, then the second you you snap into owner mode or, you know, manager mode or you circumvent the manager, you're actually gonna create more miscommunications and create more problems. And so I I think it's I think it's two way. I do think there are the Gen z's that, you know, just, you know, sup, bro. But I also think it goes the other way around where the managers, owners, and CEOs, potentially spur smaller organizations, get too low in the trenches.

[: 18:26

Yeah. They can be too too casual, too approachable, and that becomes actually a little bit harder as the company grows.

[: 18:32

And you know what's crazy? Is let's be honest. Like, Gen z didn't invent the meme. It was actually the millennial. And Okay.

And well, some Gen xers will say, well, no. Actually, we did. But, we'll we'll we'll we'll figure out there a little bit.

[: 18:46

We'll bend a little bit. Agree to disagree.

[: 18:48

But I think what's interesting is the amount of memes and messaging and those components that I just see across generations now. I actually think what what you see more from the Gen z is more of the language, the wording. They've almost created their own dictionary of words. Right. Whereas I still think the more Gen X and millennials are using the emojis and, you know, we we were the king of the text emojis, you know, back when it was like semicolon and and parenthesis.

Mhmm.

[: 19:19

And

[: 19:19

so, like, if you do that, you're totally dated now. Sure. And, you know, your iPhone auto corrects it for you anyway because technology has sped up, if you will.

[: 19:28

Those changes are coming faster.

[: 19:30

They're faster and faster. But we still have all these legacy systems like email Right. For example. And to some degree, you know, how many times has email been reinvented? You know, now you've got what is it, like, superhuman or, you know, the Yep.

The SaneBox and, you know, these tools that all they've done is optimized the email box to make you even more efficient.

[: 19:50

But one of the things that they've done is put is basically merge chat with email so I can have a chat with you about an email. And you're like, okay. So is this another channel I've gotta keep my eyes on? Right.

[: 20:03

So I think I think it just ultimately gets down to, like, all we've done is just screwed ourselves up on what we need to do, which ultimately comes down to inside of an organization, you've gotta set the rules. Yeah. That's that is super important to define. Where have you seen an organization do that well? Because I've got

[: 20:22

a couple of ideas, but I'd love to hear what you've seen.

[: 20:24

So there's one digital marketing company I work with, and they I would actually say, well, love hate relationship with their Slack usage. Okay. They're actually pretty decent at structuring Slack when it comes to, like, why you create a channel, naming conventions of channels, using threads. The problem where they suck at Slack is they've over engineered it so much. Mhmm.

They don't have actual systems. Like, the way they manage work is so chaotic and they because they've super structured Slack, it creates this, like, natural systematic bottleneck. And it somehow works, but it's not scalable beyond, you know, about 50 to 60 people. Like, as soon as soon as they grow to a hundred people in the organization, it's gonna be a complete disaster.

[: 21:13

You've worked with a lot of companies who has done communication well, and I'm talking about well holistically, because just because you use Slack well doesn't mean there aren't people sitting for hours and hours in worthless meetings where they're contributing nothing. I think you gotta think about it holistically.

[: 21:31

So there's this is probably going the complete opposite direction. There was this Australian company I worked with, a few years back, multibillion dollars, ten, twelve thousand employees. And they had an entire, like, communications department built around streamlining communication throughout the organization very efficiently, effectively. And, I mean, it was the most rigorous process that I went through to get this communication out, but it was very it was very fluid too. But we kind of valued, like, hey.

We you know, we're getting in you know, we've trained all of our team members to be in front of you know, to read this this communication, and therefore, we've gotta take. We have to be we can't just put junk in it and expect them. So everything was very thoroughly vetted. Everything had precision to it because they had done a lot of work to make sure that everybody reads this one communication because it contained a lot of important information. Now inside corporate office, man, it was absolute insane.

It was complete chaos. You'd had people running around the building all day long, but when it came to communicating to 10,000 people in the in the field across the entire country,

[: 22:38

Mhmm.

[: 22:39

Nailed it.

[: 22:40

How best to communicate with me. And so for me, I broke this down in kind of an urgent versus simple urgent versus not urgent, simple versus complex. If this is urgent and it is simple, text me. I will get back to you within the hour. If this is urgent and complicated, give me a phone call.

I will get back to you in twenty four hours unless I hear otherwise that it's gotta happen faster. If it's not urgent but simple, send me an email. I'll give you a twenty four hour turnaround on emails. If it's not urgent and complex, send me an email, and I'll get it back

[: 23:11

to you in a week. I love that. I mean, I think that's one of those. That's that's great. But if everybody does that and everybody's is different, then it creates that level of complexity whereas Yes.

Well, in in in my terms, it's, if you need something urgent, don't text me. Don't Slack me. Don't email me. Don't send a pigeon. Don't come to my house.

Don't do anything. If you if you want to talk to me, period, talk to Chelsea.

[: 23:39

Right. Well well, for an organization, right, that if if you're an independent consultant like I am, I can tell people that this is how I work and and people can work with me. As an organization though, you could set those kinds of expectations that says, look, here's how we're going to communicate on timelines versus complexity. You know, this is the expectation. Like I knew somebody who had an organization, Funny enough, it was a church.

They had a policy that you had to turn emails around in twenty four hours, and people got in trouble for not responding to emails. And they're like, Yeah, I read it. It's like, Yeah, but you've got respond to that person and acknowledge that you've read their email. There were people who did not last in that culture because the expectation was you've got to at least acknowledge the email within twenty four hours or you're not doing your job. Not the policy I would make, but it was effective.

[: 24:32

I mean, the one thing that drives me insane is when you get 50 people cc'd on an email, and then you get the, you know, the owner, the executive, or somebody, you know, it it's typically if it's not the customer, you know, that's a different one. But then you get the owner like, well, you know, why did anybody do something with my email? It's like, well, you've cc'd 50 people. Like, what were you expecting anybody to do? Was it informative or was it action?

And then, of course, if it's a customer that emails in and cc's 50 people on it, you know, everybody knows the rule as you jump for the that's never the problem. But it's that internal email that's again, what what what do you can we establish some rules here? What's the rules of the game?

[: 25:10

Yeah. Just rules of engagement, I think, are very important and I would say very much overlooked. Like, I think most organizations fail to communicate and clarify that, and they they pay for it in the long run. As you think about boomers, gen x, millennials, gen z, what are some recommendations or tips that you would have for them to communicate more effectively to the other generations?

[: 25:36

Oh, well, I'd say for boomers, not everything needs to be a phone call. For, for Gen Xer. Slack is not gonna kill you.

[: 25:46

Thanks. That's

[: 25:47

the whole

[: 25:48

bit. But

[: 25:49

Millennials, stop apologizing and just get to the point. Just you don't need a wall of text in the email. Just get to the point. And Gen z, like, professionalism matters. You can't LOL your way through a promotion.

[: 26:03

I like that. You can't LOL your way to a promotion.

[: 26:06

I've had people try. That's actually kind of funny. Hey, I would like to have a performance unsaved. I think I killed it last month. LOL.

[: 26:14

How did that work out?

[: 26:15

I replied with, you did kill it. LOL.

[: 26:21

What are some other communication tips that you would have? Maybe not generational. Here's one that I've got. I had a manager once who took the other chairs out of his office. So the only chair in his office was his chair.

So if you came in, there was no place for you to sit. And it was very intentional. His philosophy was, if you have to sit down to have this conversation, you've clearly not thought enough about what you need to be talking to me about. Go back and think about what you really need to talk with me about. Do you need a decision?

Are you just letting me know something? Like, what's the point? And what do you need out of this conversation? Because if you can't tell me those things and you can't get to the point and your feet get tired from standing there, then you haven't thought about it enough. You need to go do your homework first.

A little bit of a jerk move, but I think it's kinda awesome.

[: 27:14

I I like that. I love the intention of If you've

[: 27:18

gotta sit down right. If you've gotta sit down, you clearly haven't thought this through well enough.

[: 27:23

You know, that actually reminds me one of my offices that I had when this is, like, back in, like, 2018. I did. I had two offices on offices of the building. And one of them, I did have, like, the desk and chairs, and it was meant kind of more conference style. And then the one I had on the other side of the building was more just like a war room type setup.

And that's predominantly where I was. And there was no chairs in in that side, so people would have to come up and stand. And it actually worked very well because people couldn't sit there. They had to come up. They'd stand there for a few minutes, get whatever they wanted.

They'd walk away because there was nowhere to sit. So there's nowhere to sit. I always always wondered why I liked working there more so than my other desk, and it was exactly that. People would sit in my other office.

[: 28:04

The physical implementation of that might not work for everybody, certainly not for everyone. I do think there's an underlying principle there, which is many times people who are communicating have not spent enough time thinking about what they are really trying to accomplish.

[: 28:21

Oh. Yes. Yes. And I'll give you another one. Right.

This one drives me unsaved, and this was part of my, like, turning of the year. Is when people one, it drives me insane when people do it to me. And two, I hate it when people have it as their principle. If I have a spot open on my calendar, stick something on my calendar and we'll meet. That is the most inefficient way to get work done because it means, one, you don't value your time, and you're just letting people disrupt on it.

And I can't stand when people like, this it's an emergency. I need to meet. And I stuck this thing on your calendar. I'm like, why? Delete.

Yep. If you have to meet, it goes back to, like, the whole standing thing. If you have to put a meeting on the calendar, there's gotta be a reason why and not because you hadn't thought through it. And I think there's too much misery loves company. Yes.

And and it's like, well, I don't have the answer, and I've gotta talk to six people. So let's get a meeting of six people. And I think this is more I think this is worse with more high level executives and founders and, you know, red liners is this thing happened, get everybody on the phone or get everybody in the same room or get everybody on the Zoom. And you're like, what what are half the people doing here? And then if someone tries to hop off, well, then that looks like they're being rude because they're jumping from the beginning.

[: 29:30

Or they're or they're not really committed to the organization. They're not committed

[: 29:33

to success. And so I actually think that's where it's it goes back to, like, not everything needs to be a meeting. And I think that's where good again, just defining communication norms. I don't think it's even just defining what your Slack rules or your email rules. It's what is your Zoom rules or your virtual meeting rules?

Like Yeah. When when when can you put stuff because you think about it. You put 40 meetings on somebody's calendar over the span of a week, like, how ineffective are they going to be? Unless their job is, like, those 40 meetings or sales calls talking to prospects, like, okay, that just load up load their calendar up. But if this is, like, an internal doer or a person that's, you know, the developer or a graphics designer, what do you think they're not doing?

[: 30:18

It's shocking to me how many emergencies are not really emergencies. They're just somebody who hasn't spent enough time thinking about the problem. That isn't always the case, but I have found it is more the case. It is the case more than I want to believe. Having some way, particularly for executives and for leaders, creates some kind of a friction point there to force people to do a little bit more thinking before they come to you.

Because I think that will actually improve the quality of the communication that gets to you. Right? You've sat down and thought about, alright, if I'm gonna go talk to this person, am I asking for a decision? And if so, what are the options? Am I asking for their advice?

That's fine. But what are you gonna do with that advice? Is it one piece out of many? Does this person have the authority to tell you what to do? Do they think if they give you advice, it's what you're going to do?

Like, all of those things need to be thought through by the communicator so that when I come to you with a meeting or an email, I've already thought through what it is I need from you and how I can clearly communicate that to you so that I'm got the highest probability of getting what I need.

[: 31:32

Oh, well, that's that's the good old, like, bring a solution, don't bring a problem. You know? Right. Leader leader or, you know, leading up the chain of command. And I think I think technology has made this worse because it's it's it's like the whole, like, stream of conscious, you know.

And I don't get on Facebook much anymore. But do you remember on Facebook, it was like, I had a piece of toast and now I'm walking a dog. And now it's like people would just, like, stream of conscious whatever they're doing. And I think in the business world, that's almost what would happen is, like, I got a problem. We need to discuss it and people just want a stream of conscious.

And it's like, no. No. Come up with a solution. Facebook wall your problems to me.

[: 32:10

No. No. I've heard about somebody who said that they never they read. Oh, here's what they do. They read the paper on purpose.

They don't get their news from the Internet. They only get their news from the paper because he said most of the time, news cycles that are instantaneous haven't had time to digest anything. And so by putting it in physical print, you are reading what has at least got a twelve to eighteen hour cycle on it. So at least there's been that much thinking before it gets published.

[: 32:45

So can I make a bad statement here? If you're reading if you're reading the newspaper, you're probably been filtered by a boomer because that's the only person that'll still write the newspaper article and, you know, owners of newspapers that'll still put out a newspaper and you you you might You're joking.

[: 33:05

No, no, you're not. You're not. And and it's fine. But here's what the point that I would agree with is how much of the stuff that has to happen today? How much of the news do I really act on in less than twenty four hours?

[: 33:20

Well, exactly. Not much. Exactly. I mean, you think about it when you have to run a paper, you know, you have to pick what is gonna go on that head headline. Right, to your point.

It's gotta be baked. It's gotta be good. It's gotta be worthy. It's gotta be well written. It's the front page news and it only goes out, you know, once a day.

And I think when you have, you know, these instant, you know, articles and instant news, yeah, it does. It just creates so much noise. And so it actually is a very smart move to say, like, I'm only gonna read the things that are front page worthy from a physical media because that's how that I mean, you think about it before before the Internet and, you know, these instant news outlets, that was your only way to consume. And, you know, everybody would say, oh, there's more crime today. There's actually less crime today than there were generations or decades ago.

ing of crime is up, you know,: 10000

[: 34:17

Yeah. So I think instant communication is overused. I think just because we can communicate instantly, we do, and it creates more problems than it solves. So I would say move away from instant communication unless it's absolutely necessary. Work sucks when you work inside of an organization that doesn't have clearly defined communication norms.

So if you work there in one of those kinds of companies, work sucks, the answer to that problem is you need to get some leadership involved to define the communication norms for your organization. How do we use what channel for what kinds of communication? That is a very undervalued way to make work not suck.

[: 35:08

When you think about it, communication, there's three steps. Right? There's I send a message to you, you listen to it, you you send something back confirming, and then either correct clarify or confirm that what you received was correct. Right. And when that starts changing mediums, you get context switching or when, you know, those back and forths are expected to be in different mediums for a same topic.

Again, all you're doing is creating inefficiencies. Right.

[: 35:36

There's this great, quote. I think it is from George Bernard Shaw that says the greatest enemy of communication is the illusion of it, where you think you've communicated, but you really haven't. I think that in a work context, even when you can see the bubbles that someone's looked at an email, or you see the bubbles in Slack that say they're, you know, they've seen their message and they're responding. I think spending just a little bit of time making sure that your communication is going to be received in the right way and thinking about what that receipt is going to feel like radically improves the quality of your conversation. Because if you're a millennial and you're sending Slack messages to a Boomer CEO, you think that's communication, and it's probably just the illusion of communication.

[: 36:28

Yeah. I love this phrase right here. Good communication is about adapting, not about sticking to what you know.

[: 36:34

Oh, yeah. That's good. That's good. Work sucks when people don't communicate well in organizations. And having a clear vision, journey, culture, result for your communication, that'd be a really good framework to think about anytime you need to communicate something important.

What am I trying to accomplish? Why am I doing this? How do I do it? What's the right medium? What's the right steps?

Who am I communicating to? What do they want to expect? And result, outcome, what do I want from this? How will I know if this has been successful? Spending a little time thinking through those four steps is going to make you a radically better communicator.

[: 37:13

A %. And I think one one thing where people might mess up is, like, this doesn't mean this is, this, you know, going through the wheel, you know, vision journey culture results. Like, it doesn't mean you have to spend, you know, three minutes every message you send. It's you'll one, you'll develop patterns. Two, if you're a leader or a manager, you can set these norms with your group with your team or your organization, and then it makes going through this this, framework, like, almost instantaneous.

The more

[: 37:42

I go through that framework, the faster I get at it. And that's been a very helpful way of thinking about these kinds of problems.

[: 37:49

Every generation thinks their way is the best. The truth, good communication is about adapting.

[: 37:54

Yes. And whether that's adapting your style or adapting your medium, I think it's important for each of us to be willing and able to adjust to the person we're trying to communicate to in a way that enables them to be successful and through that enables us to be successful too.

[: 38:11

Make Work Not Suck. Our podcast that talks about exactly that, our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck, hosted by Ryan Hodges, co host Daniel Steer. Join us each episode and make work not suck.