Avoiding miscommunication

Teams are a basic way of organizing to accomplish tasks in work environments. It’s human nature to misunderstand teammates when working together in a group setting.  As a result, these misunderstandings can lead to hurt feelings and poor performance.  A common source of misunderstanding is how we interpret words and ideas.  

One area where misunderstanding occurs is in our use of common terms.  Terms such as “soon,” “right away,” “probably,” “usually,” and “ASAP” can contribute to misunderstanding.  For instance, one person may state that she needs the document “soon,” and by “soon” she means within the next 4 hours.  However, her colleague may interpret “soon” to be within a couple of days.  It is easy to see how frustrations and inefficiencies can quickly develop.  This is true for many terms.  Being specific in requests can help alleviate these issues.  Instead of “soon,” say “I will need that document by 10:00 am tomorrow morning,” etc.  

The following discussion outlines an easy activity to try with your own teams.

Practice Clarity

Here is an easy activity that you can use with your own teams to give impact to the importance of clarity.  It can help make your team aware of the extent of different interpretations and encourage more specifics and clarifications in requests for information. 

1. List common terms that may be misunderstood.  It is helpful to use both time and probability terms.  For example, your list might include:

Always
Never
Probably
Usually
Often
ASAP
Soon
Today
Today
Tomorrow
Right away

2. Read each term aloud and display it.  (If you can’t do this in real time, you could send the terms to team members and have individuals send the results to you.  Then you could collate them and share the results with everyone.) 
3. For the probability terms, team members should be prompted to record each term and then their own interpretation of the probability it represents.  For instance, the leader might say, “Please write each term and then a probability representing what it means to you.  For the first term, write “always” on your paper and then a number beside it that represents what percentage it means to you.  If someone says they ‘always’ do something in a certain way, or you use the word ‘always’ when speaking to someone, what probability does it mean?”
4. Once the probability terms have been completed, the leader can move onto some other terms.  A similar procedure is followed.  For instance, the leader might say, “OK, now let’s move on to some other terms.  This time, you’ll be recording the amount of time each word or phrase means.  The amount of time can be measured in whatever unit you believe is appropriate, from seconds to hours to days to weeks, and so on.”  

Example: Answer for these words in terms of probability (i.e., between 0% and 100%).
Always
Never
Probably
Usually
Often

Answer for these words in terms of time (i.e., no. of minutes, hours, days, etc.).
ASAP
Soon
Today
Tomorrow
Right away

5. After identifying the low and high responses for all the terms (for instance the lowest percentage for “usually” could be 50 and the highest 95), focus on some of the larger ranges for a particular term and discuss possible scenarios of miscommunication based on such differences of interpretation.  It should be clear that there are some basic procedures that can help the team avoid unnecessary misunderstanding when using common terms:

• Use actual numbers to say what you mean.
• Ask questions to clarify when you hear the terms from this exercise (or similar terms) being used.
• Know that the terms are used purposefully at times (such as when the user is unsure about something and wants to buy some time.

References

Brewer, E. C. and Holmes, T. L. (2016) Better Communication = Better Teams: A Communication Exercise to Improve Team Performance. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 59(3), 288- 298.

Brewer, E. C., and Holmes, T. L. (2009). Obfuscating the Obvious: Miscommunication Issues in the Interpretation of Common Terms. Journal of Business Communication 46, 480-496