Communication 101: Get an Agreement Before Anything Else

I recently attended a business meeting that started off on the wrong foot, and (not surprisingly) ended pretty badly also.

The guy who called the meeting was some hotshot newcomer asked by the folks upstairs to jump into the middle of a project to help give some direction. Aside from knowing what his name was, my colleagues and I had never met the guy and were completely clueless as to what his deal was, what he was supposed to be doing, and let alone how he was going to do it.

He started off the meeting properly enough by introducing himself and allowing the others to introduce themselves to him. But it seemed only to do this as a token act of ritual. After that it was pure chaos. Without further ado he began belting off orders à la Donald Trump and did a great job of belittling the hard efforts and accomplishments that the team had earned so far. In short time he had managed to get everyone on edge, put onto the defensive.

As the meeting progressed, tempers flared and voices began to rise. The meeting ended with his abrupt departure from the room.

Afterwards vicious rumors began to propagate within the hallways and among the cubes of the company workspace. In time, almost none of the things this hotshot had asked for were done. What few things that were done were fulfilled merely with the minimum level of exertion so as to show some effort was made, but in effect the end product was useless.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Needless to say, it was clear no one was on this guy's side. It's not so much a question of what happened. Rather, it's a question of what did not happen. Mr. Hotshot had forgotten a most essential concept from Communication 101...

He did not get an agreement.

ESTABLISH A COMMON GROUND: THE AGREEMENT

A good friend of mine used to say: "Before you grow a tree, you've got to have soil for the roots." While this kind of advice may sound overly simplistic to some, one needs to recognize its elemental importance. While Mr. Hotshot may be commended for his skills in proper introductions, what he failed to do was to offer and ask for contribution to the soil - literally the common ground - in which the roots of his relationships with the others could take hold.

Before anything is to be started in any venture, one needs to initiate ground-level communication that would provide the background leading up to any project's first and most important milestone: an agreement among the parties involved.

Without such an agreement there is no springboard - no common frame of reference - from which a team can unify themselves, let alone with which to attempt doing anything.

WHAT TO AGREE ON?

One way to look upon people's communication and interaction with each other is to view it as the unfolding of an as yet incomplete story. As we know, many stories have a past, a present, and a future.

Mr. Hotshot would have done well to do the following:

Review the Past - No doubt Mr. Hotshot was brought into the scenario to help out because things may not have been going so well in the project during the recent past. In light of this, he should have identified those things which had gone wrong in the past and then asked the team if their perception was the same as his. Basically he is asking for an agreement on what had passed. By sealing this discussion with an agreement, he would be able to take his team into the present.

Assess the Present - The next step would be to obtain an agreement of the current perception of the way things are now. He would need to identify strengths and weaknesses in current processes, and obtain buy-in (once again, an agreement) from his teammates on this snapshot of the events at hand.

Discuss the Future - Fully armed with agreements on what had happened in the past as well as what is going on currently, the team would be able to proceed into intelligent discussion of the future. Team members could weigh in with propositions on how to handle things from here on out, discuss the relative benefits, and then once again come to an agreement as to what should be done.

AGREEMENT: DON'T LEAVE HOME (OR A MEETING) WITHOUT IT

While some people may look upon meeting in the same room as an explicit agreement to cooperate, one would be surprised at how often people disagree on even this simple act.

In my story above, some of the people who attended the first meeting took Mr. Hotshot's presence as a threat. Some did not even show up, while others very clearly did not even want to be at the meeting. From the start there was a lack of agreement to even be cooperative.

Given this fundamental lack of agreement, how could anyone expect anything to be done later on?

For this reason, it is essential to garner an agreement at every step - past, present, future - in order to unify perceptions and to rally team members to work together toward common goals.

- John

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