In this story, we have Edmund, a happily married man with 3 young children. He holds a managerial position in his company. Over the years, he had developed a good working relationship with his boss, Jamie, the director of the department. She was an approachable and understanding lady who treated her colleagues and subordinates like her family.
About half a year ago, there were some staff changes in the department and Edmund had a new boss, Sally. After working under her for a period of 6 months, he was starting to feel very stressed as Sally's working style was significantly different from Jamie's. Sally was a result-oriented person and had a more authoritarian leadership style as compared to Jamie's participative style. In addition, she was a workaholic. This was manifested in the numerous times Edmund was made to stay back to do overtime (OT) work in order to complete his work on the same day.
Initially, he took it in his stride. However, after an extended period of time, he realised that he had less time to spend with his family. By the time he reached home, he would only be able to spend an hour or two with his family before the children went to bed. Often, he would be so drained of his energy after a long day's work that all he wanted to do after reaching home was to sleep.
Additionally, he felt that his boss made unreasonable demands very frequently. An example would be calling up the managers in the department for a meeting just before he was about to get off work. Interestingly, the company has a flexible working hours system which allows the workers to choose their working hours. Edmund's working hours are officially from 8 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. while Sally's are from 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.
On many occasions, Sally would call for a meeting after 5 pm, just as Edmund was about to leave the office. There were times he tried to reflect his opinion that the meetings could be held eariler during the day, or postponed to the next day since not everyone officially ends work at the same time. However, Sally ignored his comments and left him with no choice but to comply. He felt that Sally was being too demanding and insensitive to his feelings. Also, he found it difficult to communicate with Sally as she always spoke in a condescending and curt manner. Overall, he became very unhappy at work and has even thought of resigning from his job.
What should Edmund do to get himself out of this situation and improve his working relationship with his boss?
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Why Effective Communication is Important to Me
Effective communication is important to me because it facilitates the sharing of ideas. Without it, the most invaluable idea loses its worth. Also, it allows for quality interaction between people. As a two way process, its is equally important to be understood as it is to send out the right message. In the future when I go out to work, it will be of utmost importance to be a good communicator in order to develop a good working relationship with my bosses and clients. When time is a constraint, effective communication can save precious minutes. In the working world, that translates to saving money as well.
Of course, there are many parts to verbal communication. Besides the content, the paralanguage and body language play important roles too. Without these, communication is just like a film without colour or sound, something that might be difficult to understand.
I must admit that I’m not a fast thinker, or a good speaker. So when I have to speak to somebody in person or over the telephone, I tend to get distracted easily by the events that are going on around me, or by the other party’s reaction. What I want to say usually comes out wrong, or gets phrased weirdly.
A good and simple example would be a few weeks back when I was watching an athletics event with my friends. We were all sitting at the main stand. They were talking about one of the competitors. Let’s call her B. One of my friends didn’t know who B was, and asked me. Clearly, B was standing to the left of the official. I was deciding between saying “B is to the right of the official from our view.” and “B is on the official’s left.” But in a hurry to express my thoughts, I bungled it up with “B is on the official’s... er... our... her... right side.” Of course, this was totally wrong and absurd sounding, and everyone laughed at me.
This is just one of the many examples I can find in my daily life. It can really get frustrating at times, because it’s not that I don’t know what to say, but my inability to communicate clearly prevents my intentions from getting across to the other party successfully.
Hence, whenever I say something that comes out just the way I had prepared it in my mind, I am secretly very happy with a huge “YES!” resounding in my head. I really treasure such moments, and this is why effective communication is important to me.
To end off, Here's a short comic strip depicting poor communication (in my opinion). Enjoy!
Of course, there are many parts to verbal communication. Besides the content, the paralanguage and body language play important roles too. Without these, communication is just like a film without colour or sound, something that might be difficult to understand.
I must admit that I’m not a fast thinker, or a good speaker. So when I have to speak to somebody in person or over the telephone, I tend to get distracted easily by the events that are going on around me, or by the other party’s reaction. What I want to say usually comes out wrong, or gets phrased weirdly.
A good and simple example would be a few weeks back when I was watching an athletics event with my friends. We were all sitting at the main stand. They were talking about one of the competitors. Let’s call her B. One of my friends didn’t know who B was, and asked me. Clearly, B was standing to the left of the official. I was deciding between saying “B is to the right of the official from our view.” and “B is on the official’s left.” But in a hurry to express my thoughts, I bungled it up with “B is on the official’s... er... our... her... right side.” Of course, this was totally wrong and absurd sounding, and everyone laughed at me.
This is just one of the many examples I can find in my daily life. It can really get frustrating at times, because it’s not that I don’t know what to say, but my inability to communicate clearly prevents my intentions from getting across to the other party successfully.
Hence, whenever I say something that comes out just the way I had prepared it in my mind, I am secretly very happy with a huge “YES!” resounding in my head. I really treasure such moments, and this is why effective communication is important to me.
To end off, Here's a short comic strip depicting poor communication (in my opinion). Enjoy!
Taken from http://www.explosm.net/comics/489/
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