Cultivating communication skills to interact with any stakeholder
Why is strategy design and implementation often so challenging? One big impediment to maximizing expedient results is lack of clear communication across diverse stakeholders to reach shared clarity and understanding. Multi-fluency can be a highly valuable skill to counteract ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty that often stand in your way of success.
What is “Multi-Fluency”?
If you were charged with solving a problem by engaging a group of people from a broad representation of countries, each speaking a different language, interpretation would be critically important for getting anything done.
Healthcare is an analogous environment with multiple dialects, jargon, and “cultural” perspectives ranging from physicians and nurses (who have their own specialty sub-dialects) to administrators (including but not limited to operations, finance, and law) to insurers and other purchasers of healthcare and so on. In addition to using different words from one another, they deal with different aspects of healthcare that influence how they represent their thoughts and ideas.
Why Is Multi-fluency Valuable?
Conflicts often boil down to a fundamental breakdown in understanding what another party is trying to convey rather than true disagreement.
I have found that it is not unusual for people and teams to either:
- Believe they disagree when they actually agree or don’t recognize that they have compatible points of view because they are using different, conflicting language to mean the same thing.
- Believe they agree when they actually disagree or don’t recognize that they actually have incompatible points of view because they are using seemingly compatible language to mean different things.
In either instance, this breakdown in communication often contributes to additional meetings, unnecessary disagreements, avoidable conflict, unpleasant surprises, inevitable delays to project timelines, and suboptimal results.
So how can you avoid this and keep projects and implementation plans on track?
Developing Multi-Fluency
Multi-fluency takes time and intention to develop.
Being aware that words matter and will differ depending on the parties with whom you are working is half the battle. This insight places you on alert to listen carefully, pay close attention to context, and seek to clarify what you think you are hearing.You will also pick up the dialect of distinct parties to help translate for others. Here are some tips that may be helpful in enhancing your multi-fluency.
1. Be on alert for new words or concepts
It is easy to fall into the trap of feeling that by asking for clarification or saying “I don’t know” somehow translates to incompetence. But how can one person possibly know all there is to know about everything? Also, being busy and stressed out about everything you are juggling can prevent you from slowing down, being in the moment of a dialogue, and taking the time to ask clarifying questions that lead to enhancing your multi-fluency and effectiveness. For example, if you are an operations leader talking to a physician and you do not understand the point they are trying to make, call a time out and seek clarity.
2. Pay attention to context
The purpose and tone of a particular conversation can be very helpful in identifying opportunities to practice multi-fluency. For example, if an interaction is expected to be non-controversial but the outcome is disagreement and conflict, stop and determine if all parties are truly understanding one another and the core issue at stake. Dig in and ask probative questions to understand what is at the root of the disagreement and see if there are opportunities to use different language and concepts to explain respective points of view. Are you using similar language to mean different things or are you really in agreement but think you aren’t because of the language you are using?
3. Mirror what you’ve heard
Whether you are navigating a disagreement or think you have reached mutual agreement, it is important to summarize and make sure that the outcome is phrased (and sometimes re-phrased) using the dialects of each party represented. Ensuring that parties truly understand what they are agreeing to is just as important as resolving seemingly conflicting opinions when parties are actually in agreement. This also helps to avoid unexpected surprises or “gotcha” moments later when parties realize they may not truly be in agreement leading to damaged trust and push-back.
Conclusion
Multi-fluency is an under-appreciated but high yield skill for building mutual understanding and clarity to move teams and initiatives forward faster and more productively.
Next time you are in a meeting with someone from a different department or discipline and you either disagree with what they are saying or you think you agree, pause and practice your multi-fluency to mirror back what you have heard before you assume whether or not you are on the same page. Expand your network to include people in other disciplines and ask them for help in developing your fluency in their area of expertise. With time and intention, your multi-fluency will grow and enable you to influence teams faster to achieve results.
For questions or to find out how EverSparq can help, contact info@eversparq.com.
