If you’re not communicating, you’re not managing. In 2003, the American Management Association asked its members what skills go to make an effective leader. Number one skill – way ahead of the others – was communication (84 per cent). Interestingly, numbers two and three – motivating others (56 per cent) and team-building (46 per cent) – also rely on effective communication. What’s more, 60 per cent of executives who responded listed lack of collaboration as their top leadership challenge.
Management is no longer a matter of command and control. Managers must now work with matrix management and networking, with outsourcing and partnerships. We must influence people to act, often without being able to wield power over them. Our success depends, more than ever before, on other people.
The new technologies have been a mixed blessing. IT helps us keep in touch but can reduce our opportunities to talk to each other. Many of us have become ‘cubicle workers’, spending most of our day interfacing with a computer screen. Corporate communication can, of course, still be remarkably effective. The MD’s efforts to communicate his latest corporate change programme may fall at the first hurdle; but rumours of imminent job losses can spread like wildfire. If only formal communication could achieve half the success of gossip!
Our organisations are networks of conversations. The unit of management work is the conversation; and the quality of our work depends directly on the quality of our conversations. How can we communicate more effectively? How can we begin to improve the quality of our conversations at work? This book seeks to answer those questions.
