A Simple Solution to Fix Workplace Miscommunication | Melissa M. Mikus | TED

So I'm sure everyone here has been on the giving or receiving end of a workplace communication failure. Is that fair? Well I want to share a time when I sent a message to my team that created countless hours of wasted effort, a few sleepless nights, and maybe even some tears. That message was "Sure." Yep, that's it. One word, four letters, no punctuation, no emojis, just "sure." I bet you were expecting something a little bit more controversial or spicy. So here's what happened. My team was working on an important presentation for an upcoming board meeting. And right on deadline, the project manager, Charlie, sent me an email with a presentation and said, "Are we OK to send this to the board chair for feedback?" I reviewed the presentation that evening while simultaneously making dinner, but I was delighted -- it was spot on, key messages, graphics -- so much so that I didn’t even have any feedback. But as water is boiling over on the stove and my dog is trying to steal chicken off the counter, I just forgot to respond to the email.

The next day, Charlie sends me a quick Slack: "Are we OK to proceed?" I was on another call, but I didn't want to delay my response further, so I just said "Sure." Well the next morning, I checked my inbox and I have this detailed email from Charlie with a whole new presentation attached, and I was confused. I called him up on the phone and I said, "Hey Charlie, what's going on?" Defeated, he admitted that he interpreted my "sure" to mean "Meh, this is OK, I guess." That simple "sure" spun out my entire team. And that's just one small example of miscommunication. But think about the bigger ones. How many times have you or your team gone down the wrong path on a project, or felt frustrated by lack of progress, or maybe even spent hours or days in a disagreement that wasn't even a disagreement in the first place? So you're not alone because employees and executives, 86 percent of them, blame workplace failure on ineffective communication.

And US businesses alone lose $1.2 trillion -- trillion dollars -- a year as a result of miscommunication. So this isn't just about being nice and diplomatic. Miscommunication is expensive. It hurts employee morale, it stalls progress and it increases turnover. So I want to provide a simple solution to address this. It’s minimal effort -- we all like that. You can do it today. And it's low cost, maybe even free. Are you ready? The best way to enhance communication effectiveness is to tell people how you best communicate and how best to communicate with you. It's pretty simple. But how do we do this in real time and in a way that the information is accessible to those that we engage with? Most of us have an email signature, a social profile, an internal directory profile that typically includes name, title, contact information.

What if we normalize adding another highly visible piece of information: a communication style tag that covers two critical pieces of information? One, how we best communicate: email, phone call, text, Slack and any workplace norms you've set for yourself, like working hours or protected focus time. And two: how we show up as our best selves or avoid getting tripped up. For example, my communication style tag: "Thrives best in morning meetings. Provide detailed context in advance for fastest decision making." Now I want to share another story, [a] communication mishap if you will, that'll show how I brought this into play with my team. A few years ago, I joined a fintech startup, and my first task was to put together a strategic road map for the CEO. I didn't know much about the product yet, but lucky for me, [a] brilliant woman named Kate on my team had worked at the company since day one, and I thought I should talk to Kate.

Now I’m an extrovert -- I love a brainstorm. Get in a conference room with a whiteboard, throw ideas against the wall -- let’s see what sticks. So I throw a meeting on Kate's calendar, "road map discussion," very detailed, I know, and I wait for the meeting. I show up, I start excitedly spewing ideas left and right, and I am met with [a] total blank stare. I don't know if Kate is disinterested or totally terrified of me, but I awkwardly end this meeting and leave a bit frustrated. But later that day, Kate sends me an email that has five very well-thought-out brilliant ideas that she brought to the table. I realized that this spontaneous brainstorm was in my communication comfort zone. Not so much for Kate. This was a turning point for me. To be a leader of highly effective teams, you need to invest in understanding their communication styles and share your own as well. So I got them together at a team meeting and I asked them to create their communication style tags.

Now, we can't accommodate everybody's preferences 100 percent of the time, but the information is knowledge that gives us power to make better choices and to adapt if possible. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kate is an introvert. She prefers asynchronous communication so that she can thoughtfully process her ideas. Kate’s communication style tag is: "Email for fastest response during the day. Prefers written comms to enable thoughtful, clear responses." Then there's my colleague Mike. Mike would never respond to the messages I would send him on our internal messaging system. He would just ghost me. He wouldn't respond for days, hours, sometimes, just not at all. So I catastrophized the situation and I said, "What's wrong with me? Does Mike not like me? Does he think my questions are silly?" Like, what is going on here? Turns out Mike's an extrovert. He has to turn off messenger during the day -- otherwise he would just chit-chat with colleagues all day long.

It wasn't me. Mike's communication style tag is "Text for urgent matters, adaptive to communication styles, but prefers a live interaction." Most extroverts do. [Those are] just two examples. By now, I hope you’re starting to think: what is your communication style tag? Think about the two key ingredients and how they apply to you. How do you best communicate? Is it over email? Live phone calls, text, etc.? Do you do your best thinking in the morning like me, or do you protect Fridays for focus time? How do you show up as your best self? Do you need time for thoughtful, written responses like Kate, or do you respond better to visual cues and prefer live interaction or videos? I'll give you a few more rapid-fire examples, see what resonates. My colleague Kelly, she was ghosting meeting invites until I asked what was going on. She told me that an agendaless meeting gave her anxiety, so she just didn't show up.

Well we fixed that. Kelly's communication style tag is "Checks email twice daily. Agenda is required." An analyst, Matt, would balk at shorthand messages over Slack or Teams or other shorthand communication tools. He lived in detailed spreadsheets and 1,500-word emails. Matt's communication style tag: "Email deep diver. Full context only." My friend Liz loves a voice memo. You send her a text message, and she sends you back a voice memo. Her communication style tag is "Voice memo enthusiast. Send brief messages for quick updates, avoid long texts." And then a project manager I worked with, Louis, he would hold daily stand-ups with his team, but he refused late-afternoon meetings. He needed that time to think. His communication style tag is "Morning meeting maven. Books everything before lunch. Afternoons are for thinking." So if you're a team leader, a manager, or just somebody tired of workplace friction, go first.

Create your communication style tag, normalize it with your teams and do it in a highly visible way so that people have this information on a day-to-day basis. Share it with your clients, your colleagues, your friends. The more people that adopt this change, the more effective it will be. Think about how it could apply to your personal life. My partner Charles turned to me a couple of months ago "I got an email invite for us to go on a whitewater rafting trip. We have to RSVP tonight. Are you in?" Well I had about a million questions. Is this a glamping trip? Are there showers there? Who's actually going on this trip? Now he should probably know me better by now, that's a whole other TED talk. But maybe this subtle reminder that I need advanced context to make fast decisions would be better for our relationship, too. And this isn't just a nice idea. This information is data. Data helps you make better-informed decisions, which drives better outcomes.

And when we tell people how best to work with us, we not only increase communication effectiveness, we build trust, we move faster, we feel less strained and we build teams that actually work. So what's your communication style tag? Thank you. (Applause)