CHAPTER 17
Soft Skills for Effective Practice of Continual Improvement
By empowering others, a leader does not decrease his power, instead he may increase it—especially if the whole organisation performs better
– Rosabeth Moss Kanter
SYNOPSIS
Continual improvement is an exercise in communication, teamwork, meeting together to think and act. Hence, everyone involved in CIP has to have a (i) solid ground in communication, (ii) good understanding of being a team player and contribute through team effort and (iii) knowledge of conducting and participating in a meeting to make it effective.
Background
Continual improvement, as described in Chapter 16, has to be carried out with the involvement of people. People are grouped into teams and each team can handle one or two projects of 6–8 weeks duration and at least 6–8 projects per year. It is good to restrict the size of a team to 4–5 members. Thus, the success of a project depends on how the team is managed by the team leader and to gel the team into a single organic entity focused on the successful completion of a project well within the time frame of 6–8 weeks per project.
Communication is the means of bonding team members to think collectively and to arrive at consensus and act upon it in unison. This is very much shaped and influenced by the regular meetings of the team that take place to review the progress and plan of action. Thus, ‘communication’ and ‘meeting’ play an important role in the success of a project and are discussed in this chapter. In the present jargon-laden era, skills of communication and meeting are also referred to as facilitation skills.
The other useful soft skills, also referred to as life-skills and recognised by WHO are listed in Annexure 26A.
Communication
Purpose
The purpose of communication can be any or all shown in Figure 17.1.
Figure 17.1 Communication and its facets
Effectiveness
In a communication exercise, there can be more than two persons. Each one can take the interchangeable position as a communicator as well as a listener. If the listening quality is at level 4 and above (as shown in Table 17.1), the purpose of communication is said to be effective.
TABLE 17.1 Listening Quality
| Level | Description | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 2 3 4 5 |
Ignoring Pretend listening Selective listening Attentive listening Emphatic listening |
Worst Poor Bad Good Very good |
Emphatic listening is the task of getting into the frame of reference or viewpoint of another person without allowing your own views, value system, frame of reference to interfere during listening and bring forth judging tendencies even while listening.
Emphatic listening
- leads to trusting relationships,
- reduces tension,
- facilitates cooperation,
- weaves synergy in the group and
- gets the job done.
Code of practice
To accomplish effective communication, the communicator and the listener need to subscribe to a certain code of practice as set out in Table 17.2.
Communication gap
Serious lapses in communication are swept under the carpet with a simplistic term communication gap. Some of the common types are as under and these need to be avoided.
Feeling of no need for communication
Following examples illustrate the point.
TABLE 17.2 Guidelines for the Communicator and the Listener
Relevant to |
||
|---|---|---|
| Particulars | Communicator | Listeners |
| Home work | Think on the subject/issue read, pool your experience, evolve the product and (subject) structure it to be marketed | Read the subject in advance; discuss it or think it over to have your own point of view and then listen actively and energetically |
| Specific point(s)/message | Be clear; list out why it is important, relevant, how to handle/implement | What is being told? How can I use it? What is in it for me? How does it relate to what I already know? |
| Polish and categorise | Categorise as central ideas, examples, principles, facts, evidence and opinion | Sort out ideas from examples, principles from facts and evidence from opinion |
| Highlight | Note beforehand the ideas, words, phrases and quotations through which listeners are to be impacted | Make meaningful notes to review later to determine what can be put to use |
| Initiative | Face the listeners, look into their eyes, stimulate and get stimulated, react positively | Look at the communicator. Concentrate on what is being said. Help to make communication two way. Stimulate the talker with your attentiveness and expression of interest |
| Resist external distraction | Do not allow yourself to get rattled/upset | Concentrate on concentrating |
| Provoke without hurting | Stir up the audience. Enthuse them to raise rebuttals | Do not allow emotion to grow louder than words and throw you out from listening |
| Keep an open mind | Handle the questions with a sense of humour without getting sense of being cornered | Raise questions to elicit more information |
| Personal features | Give attention to attire, voice, body language and mannerisms. These are as important as what is being said | Be a tolerant listener focusing on what is said |
Example 1 A patient in a serious condition is brought to a nursing home. He is immediately admitted, put on treatment and taken care. Persons concerned in their judgement, find it unnecessary to keep the relatives of the patient informed of the details and leave the need to inform the relatives about the well-being of the patient only during the normal visiting hours. They are correct as per their logic—when we were taking care of the patient properly why waste time in speaking about it to others.
The relatives of the patient become restless, pass on their tension to the staff and create problems. At that point the problem is attended to. This could have been avoided when the need to communicate had been felt earlier. Hence, whenever one feels there is no need to communicate, change it as ‘why not communicate, what harm is there in communicating’. Thereby, unpleasant situations can be avoided.
Example 2 P and Q are heads of two divisions. Both are equally competent, value-driven and result-oriented. Each one has submitted a proposal on investment for a certain project in their respective division to the managing director and are following it up meticulously. P thinks that when there is no concrete outcome in spite of his follow-up, there is nothing worth communicating to his/her team. Q thinks otherwise and keeps his/her team informed every week, whatever follow-up he/she did. The result was a heightened and enthusiastic response to the demands of Q by his/her team.
Reason: The team perceived Q as a person who appreciated their anxiety and showed respect by regularly communicating the way he/she was following up the matter. Such a good application and understanding of Q by the team members was due to his habit of communicating with the team even when others may have thought of it to be unnecessary.
Example 3: Bee in the bonnet There can be a concealed bee in the bonnet creating communication gap. It is known as ego—‘I am the boss, not an assistant. I communicate at the reckoning of my choice in terms of its timing and content’. But a successful leader is one who is communicative and willing to communicate. It reflects his/her transparency and willingness to avoid barriers between him/her and the rest.
Example 4: Assumption, another cause of gap This is best illustrated through an example. A sends a message to C through B. A assumes that C would get the message and C would react to it; it does not happen, A misunderstands C only to regret later that his/her assumption was wrong. Without any assumption had A contacted C, there would have been no room for misunderstanding. In real-life such instances are many.
Violence in communication
Resentment, anger, protests, hatred, non-cooperation, withdrawal syndrome, etc., can all be caused by communication. The communication style that leads to these diverse types of adverse fallouts is termed as violent communication. Such violent style must be totally avoided. It is possible provided one consciously adopts, in his/her’s communication, the following features:
- In one’s communication, emphasise his/her needs, if any;
do not convert the need as a demand and use the demand as the basis of communication. - In one’s communication, emphasise his/her observations, if any;
do not convert the observation into evaluation/judgement and use them as the basis of communication. - In one’s communication, emphasise his/her feelings, if any;
do not convert the feeling as one’s thinking/thought and use it in the communication.
Demand, evaluation/judgement and thought can lead to violent communication. The examples in Table 17.3 illustrate the point.
TABLE 17.3 Violence and Non-violence in Communication
| Non-violent communication | Violent communication |
|---|---|
| When you do not greet me, I feel neglected (feeling as basis) | Your behaviour is insulting to me (thought as basis) |
| I saw you spending a lot of time with that woman at the party (observation as basis) |
I saw you flirting with that woman at the party (evaluation as basis) |
| Study well and bring joy to me (need as basis) |
Do not waste time and work hard (demand as basis) |
Meeting
Purpose
Meetings are costlier and therefore must be useful. Hence, the purpose of a meeting must be well-defined and intimated to all with backup information and data. The purpose of a meeting can be any or all of the following:
- pooling and sharing of information,
- providing equal partnership in decision-making,
- generating a large number of ideas,
- reaching decisions based on consensus,
- bringing about commitment to all for implementing decision and
- facilitating implementation at a faster pace.
Road map
Meetings are productive and serve as a useful purpose only when they help in realising the purpose(s) of meeting as stated above. To accomplish this, it is important to conduct the meeting in a planned and coordinated manner. This calls for a road map for conducting a meeting as given in Table 17.4.
TABLE 17.4 Road Map for Conducting Meetings
Effectiveness of the meeting
The chairman of the meeting has a key role in ensuring that the meeting is effective and acts as a catalyst to achieve progress in solving problems. The means through which the effectiveness of the meeting is to be achieved are
- Start and end on time.
- Get agreement on objectives/goals.
- Put everyone at ease.
- Enthuse and encourage everyone to participate and listen actively.
- Moderate and harmonise conflict of opinions/idea.
- Keep discussions on track and lively; adhere to agenda to avoid digression.
- Diffuse tension with fact and imagination.
- Have a sense of humour to diffuse heat or drive home a point.
- Seek consensus; seek data to support one’s opinion.
- Summarise the points.
- Evaluate meeting results.
Specimen types: behavioural and killer phrases
The chairman needs to know the following behavioural specimens and handle each of them appropriately without curbing participants enthusiasm or hurting their ego so as to bring best in them.
Behavioural
- Aggressive, eager to go in, one-upmanship: dominator, recognition seeker
- Opposes, puts up resistance to any change: blocker
- Talks continuously but often does not contribute.
- Enthusiast; competent, thorough, clever and well-informed.
- Shy to speak and does not use the opportunities available for him to speak.
- Not interested in listening to anyone; hence inflexible and cannot accept the ideas of others.
- Reluctant participant.
It is good to be aware of certain phrases/expressions which spell disaster. A few are in Table 17.5. Same or similar expressions need to be avoided and have to be treated like poison.
TABLE 17.5 Killer Phrases
| Example | Mode of killing |
|---|---|
| ‘Do you realise the paper work it will create?’ ‘What will people say?’ |
Catastrophising |
| ‘It is far too ahead of its time’ ‘I have a better idea’. |
Comparative thinking |
| ‘It will never work’ ‘People do not want change.’ |
Overgeneralisation |
| ‘NO’. ‘Do not be ridiculous’ |
Put down |
| ‘Great idea, but not for us’ ‘It is not in budget’. |
Selective editing |
| ‘Put it in writing’. ‘I will get back to you’. |
Stall |
Role of chairman of the meeting
Generally, the tasks involved in a meeting are to (a) obtain information, (b) provide information, (c) generate methods/suggestions to solve problems and (d) sell an idea for try-out/adoption. In all these key tasks, the chairman of the meeting has a major role as set out in Table 17.6.
TABLE 17.6 Role of the Chairman of the Meeting
Characteristics: good/bad meeting
It is necessary to have knowledge of the characteristics which make a meeting good or bad. The details are given in Table 17.7.
TABLE 17.7 Characteristics of a Good/bad Meeting
| Good | Bad |
|---|---|
| Atmosphere | |
| No (or few) tensions No boredom (although the degree of interest will vary from topic to topic) Interest and commitment |
Not conducive to achievement Tensions, boredom, indifference |
| Listening | |
| A fair hearing given to ideas presented Content, not the delivery of ideas is judged Open-mindedness is the order of the day Ideas are, therefore, in logical sequence | Listening is not a typical activity Not much to prove/worth listening to Ideas unstructured |
| Disagreement | |
| Healthy disagreement and exchange of views (not disputes) Differences are resolved, not left to fester |
Disagreement is hostile; sometimes manufactured for effect Alternatively, no disagreement arises because of apathy, or to avoid clashing with the powerful and aggressive clique No consensus is reached and a vote may result in an embittered minority |
| Participation | |
| Members fulfil their function by making their relevant contributions | Little participation by the majority, since contributions are largely made by the vocal minority who dominate |
| Awareness | |
| Members know the meeting’s objectives Briefing has been adequate | Members may well have their own individual and personal objectives |
| Criticism | |
| Criticism is healthy and not vindictive It is constructive, not intended to be destructive | Criticism is to destroy and is often personal |
Impact on individuals
The tool of the meeting and art of communication generally impact individuals by developing in them the characteristics of a team player. The characteristics are stated in Table 17.8, which are essential for the success of CIP as it operates only through a team.
TABLE 17.8 Characteristics of a Team Player
| Characteristics | Description |
|---|---|
| Initiator | Proposes new ideas, tasks or goals; suggests procedures or ideas for solving a problem or for organising the group |
| Information seeker | Asks for relevant facts related to the problem being discussed |
| Opinion seeker | Seeks clarification of values related to the problem or suggestion |
| Information giver | Provides useful information about the subject under discussion |
| Opinion giver | Offers his/her opinion of suggestions made. Emphasis is on values rather than facts |
| Elaborator | Gives examples |
| Relator | Shows relationship among suggestions; points out to issues and alternatives; points out the direction to focus on agreed upon goals |
| Seeker | Seeks logic behind ideas, usefulness of ideas, or suggestions |
| Energiser | Attempts to keep the group moving towards an action |
| Conciliator | Admits errors, modifies one's view/suggestions |
Conclusion
Every employee is compulsorily a member of the CIP project team. There is also the definite possibility of a number of them being project leaders. Thus, every employee must be fully aware of the importance of ‘communication’ and ‘meeting’. To facilitate this, compulsory provision has to be made for each employee to undergo a course of instruction on communication and meeting.
Information provided in this chapter can be used as inputs for conducting such programmes with suitable methodologies such as role-play, demonstration and games.