Little Thoughts…

Relationships and Communication

Chapter 9 in Making Things Happen is a very important chapter because it discusses how important effective communication is as well as how people must maintain relationships to keep that communicate afloat. Berkun says, “Today, communication is still important, but two things have changed. First, speed is no longer the primary problem (how can you get faster than instant messaging?). Instead, the problem has become the quality and effectiveness of communication. Second, communication isn’t enough for complex work: there need to be effective relationships between the people who are working together.” I really like this statement because he touches on the idea that there has to be effective relationships with people who are working together in order to have good communication.

I deal with communication everyday while working at Libbey in the New Product Development area. My job consists of screen printing on glassware and I am constantly keeping in touch with sales people who are in turn communicating with their clients who are the people who place the screen printing orders. Sometimes communication fails and problems can arise. I have noticed it is much harder to communicate through e-mail and a lot of the sales people like to e-mail. The problem with this type of communication is it can be very slow and with my job things can pop up quickly so you may need to get a hold of the sales person quickly. I like to call on the phone because it’s a bit more personal and you can discuss a lot of things at once, also not all of the sales people are in Toledo, they are scattered throughout the country so sometimes it’s easier to call them. But after reading Chapter 9 and experiencing it myself, I can relate with Berkun and talk about how important it is to have a good relationship with someone before you can communicate effectively with them.

Berkun goes on to talk about people who ask for others opinions while working and how he used to not ask any questions and do all of the work himself. I am the opposite, I love to ask questions and for help, especially if the person I am asking has a lot more experience than I do. I do this all the time at work. Berkun also talks about this two employees he knew that would talk to other team members all the time and he thought they were just socializing but in fact they were learning about their co-workers which in turn helped them to communication more effectively. There are five basic states of communication and they are: transmitted, received, understood, agreed, and converted to useful action. Berkun says, “Good communicators think about how deep into this five-step model they need to go to be effective, and they craft communication to make that possible.” He goes on to talk about common communication problems known as assumption, lack of clarity, not listening, dictation, problem mismatch, and personal attacks. I already talked about my most common communication at work, and that would fall under the lack of clarity because it’s not always clear if me and a sales person should e-mail each other or call.

Overall this chapter was very useful and I can relate to what the author is saying because I use communication and my relationship skills everyday at work. I think a lot of people forget that you have to have a good relationship with someone before you can communication well with them so it’s a great rule to live by.