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Misunderstandings frequently occur within project teams. The project leader to demonstrate and encourage effective listening and clear communication to minimize these. This lesson illustrates several best practices for avoiding misunderstandings

Quick reference

Overcoming Misunderstandings

Misunderstandings often occur on project teams.  The project leader needs to minimize misunderstandings and seek to correct them on their project. Misunderstandings often occur on project teams.  The project leader needs to minimize misunderstandings and seek to correct them on their project.

When to use

Misunderstandings occur frequently in today’s project environment due to the rapid pace of activity and frequent changes.  These tools should be applied continually with project team members throughout the life of the project.

Instructions

Misunderstandings can develop for many reasons.  The project leader should regularly communicate with team members to identify any misunderstandings.  There are several common causes of misunderstandings that are prevalent in today’s project teams

Listening Process

The listening process involves three phases hearing, understanding, and judging.  Problems can occur on all three projects.   Much of the communication today is digital and sometimes that communication is garbled or missed completely.  These are the equivalent of not hearing which will lead to misunderstanding.  In addition, many individuals are new in their roles and because teams are often international, some have problems with translation.  They may hear the messages, but not put the correct interpretation to the words.   This is heightened with the use of slang and shortcuts in many forms of digital communication. The third potential failure in listening is the judging of what is being said.  Many people discount much of what they are told, considering it to be “fake news.”  Others may hear and understand a message, but do not realize that the message was meant for them.  Therefore, they ignore it.  A breakdown in any of these three levels could be the equivalent of no message at all.  And without effective communication, misunderstandings will occur.

Communication Patterns

Robert Dilts provided a framework for assessing communication patterns.  Based upon the pattern of the communication, individuals will respond to the message in either an emotional or pragmatic manner.  The danger for misunderstanding is when the individual becomes emotional.  At that point, their judgment can become impaired and their ability to focus on the message being provided is difficult. 

Dilts patterns were:

  • Focus on the Who – this is identity-based communication.  The information targets an individual because of their race, ethnicity, tribe, religion, politics, family heritage, alma mater, or some other aspect of affiliation.  If the message is positive, it may be received.  If it is negative it will be perceived as a personal attack and insult.
  • Focus on the Why – this is basing the communication on the perceived motives or values of the individual.  Again, if positive, it can be considered complimentary.  However, if negative, it is again perceived as a personal attack and the individual quickly becomes emotional.
  • Focus on the How – this is basing the communication on a discussion of the strategy or methodology that is being used.  This is not nearly as personal as the first two and is the beginning of the pragmatic zone of communication. It often leads to a valuable discussion concerning the best methods to follow.
  • Focus on the What – this communication is based upon the specific activities that have been done and the way they were accomplished.  It is a task-focused discussion and normally does not lead to emotional responses.
  • Focus on the When and Where – this communication deals with the environment in which things are happening.  There is seldom anything personal in this level of communication.  It is just a set of facts describing the situation.

Language

The third source of misunderstandings is based upon the internationalization of many project teams.  Project teams often have individuals on the team who are natives of different countries and cultures.   The team must decide what language will be used for common project communication.  For those individuals whose fluency is somewhat limited, they must translate everything they are hearing into a native language and translate any comments they wish to make into the project language.  When that is happening in their mind, they are not listening to what is being communicated and misunderstandings will follow.

Hints & tips

  • Use pragmatic communication as much as possible in team meetings.
  • When a team member starts to use emotional patterns of communication, interject yourself into the conversation with pragmatic communication.  This will likely defuse any growing emotional responses and help to minimize misunderstanding.
  • Avoid the use of slang in team meetings.
  • When that has been a misunderstanding, test to see if it was a breakdown in hearing, understanding, or judging so that your corrective action focuses on the true problem.
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  • 00:04 Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 When managing a project especially in this very virtual world of today,
  • 00:10 there are often misunderstandings about project expectations and
  • 00:14 between project team members.
  • 00:17 Project leaders need to work to minimize this effect.
  • 00:20 Misunderstandings often start because of a breakdown in the listening process.
  • 00:25 And when I say listening, I include reading text messages and emails.
  • 00:29 Wherever communication is sent,
  • 00:30 there are three levels of challenges that can create a misunderstanding.
  • 00:34 The first problem involves hearing or seeing the message.
  • 00:37 This is a sensory issue.
  • 00:39 It is a physiological process of registering sound or recognizing images.
  • 00:44 This level of listening, it can be enhanced by eliminating noise and
  • 00:47 distraction.
  • 00:48 Because of the noise,
  • 00:50 we may not have heard that important word not, or with fewer distractions,
  • 00:54 we may have been able to finish the text all the way through to the end.
  • 00:58 The way to determine if this is the level of miscommunication is to ask the person
  • 01:03 to repeat back to you what was said.
  • 01:05 The second problem when the listening process is one of understanding.
  • 01:09 The listener heard or read the message, but there are parts of it that they
  • 01:13 don't understand, or at least they don't comprehend the correct meaning.
  • 01:17 Acronyms could stand for several different phrases,
  • 01:19 did they interpret that correctly?
  • 01:21 This can be a serious problem when working with multiple languages,
  • 01:25 especially when using slang.
  • 01:27 The person heard the word but then put the wrong meaning or no meaning to them.
  • 01:31 To check for this level of miscommunication,
  • 01:33 have the individual paraphrase the message back in their own words.
  • 01:37 The third level of communication that can create misunderstanding is that of
  • 01:41 judgment.
  • 01:42 This can take two forms, in one case we may analyze the understanding
  • 01:46 the message that we had and then determine if it is accurate and actionable.
  • 01:50 We apply our own filter for what is true when we make that judgment.
  • 01:54 The second form of judging is when we receive a portion of the message and
  • 01:58 decide that the rest does not apply to us.
  • 02:00 All of us are constantly bombarded by messages.
  • 02:03 We filter out those that we don't think are really relevant.
  • 02:06 I'm certain you do that with your email.
  • 02:08 There will be many messages,
  • 02:10 you don't even bother to open based upon the title or the sender.
  • 02:14 When there is important or relevant information in a message that we
  • 02:18 judged to be false or irrelevant, it's the same as if we never heard it.
  • 02:22 To test for this level of misunderstanding,
  • 02:25 check to see if the individual can explain what consequences or
  • 02:28 impacts will come from the message.
  • 02:31 Another problem leading to misunderstanding is when the message
  • 02:34 becomes emotional.
  • 02:36 The framework we will use for
  • 02:37 understanding this is one developed by Bob Dilts.
  • 02:40 In this framework,
  • 02:41 we consider what is the primary characteristic of the communication.
  • 02:45 On the level we'll start with, it could be focus or identity.
  • 02:48 The emphasis is on the who and their tribe or affiliation.
  • 02:52 The next level Dilts mentioned is the wide level.
  • 02:55 In this case, the communication is emphasizing the motives, values, and
  • 02:59 morals of the individuals being discussed in the message.
  • 03:02 This is often done with side comments and innuendo.
  • 03:06 The third level is the how level, it deals with individuals or group strategy.
  • 03:11 It is the process or
  • 03:13 path that was followed by others in order to create the result or impact.
  • 03:17 The fourth level listed by Dilts was called the what level.
  • 03:20 At this point, the communication is focused on what was specifically done.
  • 03:25 The skills and abilities of the individuals in the discussion
  • 03:28 are addressed by what they actually did.
  • 03:31 And the final level is the environment in which things happened.
  • 03:34 This is normally characterized by describing the when and
  • 03:38 where of the discussion topic.
  • 03:40 Recall that we said misunderstanding happens when people get emotional.
  • 03:44 The level of communication above this line often creates an emotional response.
  • 03:49 When complimenting someone in these terms, the emotion is often pride and
  • 03:53 thankfulness.
  • 03:54 But when describing a problem or criticizing performance by using
  • 03:59 the characteristics above the line will often create anger.
  • 04:02 The individual feels that they are being attacked personally.
  • 04:06 However, using communication patterns that are below the line will normally lead
  • 04:11 to a pragmatic response.
  • 04:13 Discussion on these topics are just fact finding.
  • 04:16 In fact, I've been able to defuse a hostile encounter by
  • 04:19 shifting the discussion from the emotional levels of communication,
  • 04:24 the name calling that was going on into a pragmatic communication of fact finding.
  • 04:29 It is no surprise that these patterns will affect decision making.
  • 04:32 It is well established that individual judgment is affected by anger.
  • 04:36 For this reason, do your best to ensure project communication occurs on
  • 04:41 the pragmatic level.
  • 04:42 Deal with data and facts, don't let your team members label each other or
  • 04:47 assign motives and values to other team members or stakeholders.
  • 04:51 I want to spend a few minutes on a cause of misunderstanding that has become
  • 04:54 prevalent in the business world in which we work today.
  • 04:57 And by that I mean the misunderstanding from multiple languages.
  • 05:01 Many project teams have people with different native tongues.
  • 05:04 One decision the team must make is what language will be used for
  • 05:07 team communication.
  • 05:09 The obvious implication here is when there are multiple spoken languages.
  • 05:12 When the project language is not the native language for a team member,
  • 05:16 they often need to translate what they heard into their native language and then
  • 05:20 they need to translate what they want to say back into the project language,
  • 05:24 which delays the communications.
  • 05:26 In addition, while trying to decide how to translate something,
  • 05:30 they are not listening to what is currently being said,
  • 05:33 add to that the difficulty of translating some words based upon context.
  • 05:37 An example is the English word cool.
  • 05:40 It could be either a verb or an adjective, and as an adjective,
  • 05:44 it can have several different meanings.
  • 05:46 Without context, it's hard to know what is meant.
  • 05:49 Another source of misunderstanding is based upon body language.
  • 05:53 When face to face with someone, you can read their body language and understand if
  • 05:57 a comment being made is meant to be humorous, sarcastic, or serious.
  • 06:01 Without these additional cues, a misunderstanding can quickly occur.
  • 06:06 That is one of the reasons that I do not try to be humorous when sending online
  • 06:10 messages.
  • 06:11 The receiver does not have other interaction cues to let them know
  • 06:16 that this was just a joke.
  • 06:18 Slang or acronyms can create a great deal of confusion.
  • 06:21 I was in China giving a talk and after the session, an attendee came up to me and
  • 06:26 asked why the project manager I had been discussing would do something as
  • 06:30 horrible as throwing someone under a bus.
  • 06:33 Apparently that American phrase was not a common use in China.
  • 06:37 Another example is acronyms.
  • 06:39 For instance, just consider the acronym PM.
  • 06:41 Do you mean the project manager or do you mean the Prime Minister?
  • 06:44 Or maybe it's neither of them,
  • 06:46 you're just referring to a time period that is between noon and midnight.
  • 06:51 A final point on language is that of the mental models that all of us have.
  • 06:55 Based upon an individual's worldview, or a term that's being used much more
  • 06:59 frequently in culture today is their tribe, they have a bias about how to
  • 07:03 interpret the facts and interactions that are occurring on the project.
  • 07:08 The only way to eliminate this problem is to eliminate all diversity on the project
  • 07:13 team which I don't recommend.
  • 07:15 Instead, be aware that two different people can see the same facts and
  • 07:19 draw very different conclusions.
  • 07:21 As a project leader, you need to regularly align the team and
  • 07:25 resolve these misunderstandings as soon as practical.
  • 07:29 Misunderstandings can derail your project, expect them, and therefore,
  • 07:34 expect that you will need to be dealing with them on a routine basis.
  • 07:38 Check with your team members to overcome these misunderstandings.

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