Leadership Academy Topics - Communication

[CBarrett]

Let's talk about how this translates to common situations in our daily business! How do we improve, where do we need improvement, what are good examples to follow?

1. COMMUNICATION:
Communication skills refer to the abilities and techniques involved in effectively exchanging information, ideas, and thoughts through speaking, writing, or nonverbal means. Some key aspects of strong communication skills include:

a. Active Listening: Paying attention to the speaker and fully understanding their message.
b. Clarity: Expressing thoughts and ideas clearly and concisely.
c. Empathy: Understanding and being sensitive to the feelings and perspectives of others.
d. Nonverbal Communication: Using body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice to reinforce or complement verbal communication.
e. Adaptability: Adjusting communication style to different situations and audiences.
f. Confidence: Expressing oneself assertively and effectively.
g. Conflict Resolution: Managing and resolving conflicts through effective communication.
h. Questioning: Asking questions to clarify information and gain a deeper understanding of a topic.
i. Presentation: Giving clear, well-organized, and confident presentations to an audience.

Written Communication: Writing clearly, concisely, and effectively in various formats, such as emails, reports, and more.

[jamesh1467]

There are entire courses taught on this and entire academic degrees devoted to it. It is a massive subject. Beyond the skills you described, there is a whole underlying theory about encoding and decoding communications. Every word we say, and every nonverbal cue is essentially a cryptographic code that only certain people can read or understand based on their understanding of our English language and their cultural upbringing. Effectively, everything we do is a code we are transmitting to everyone else that we have no idea whether or not they have been given or know the correct cipher to decode it. Probably half the words in the English language have different meanings for different types of people. Different phases lead to different emotional reactions in different people. Different moods when are speaking, all that. Its all a code to communicate our true intentions. Those skills you listed are just methods of encoding and decoding the original message for different people. Every message and every word we speak and write should change based on how we think it will be received. If you are at least playing the game of trying to decode and encode what others are really trying to say to you or what they really think you are saying, you are leaps and bounds ahead of others. Because at least you are trying. Even if you are decoding and encoding things blatantly incorrectly. You are trying.

If you think about it, at the end of the day, our entire job is about communication. Literally, almost every job we do is just communicating or doing the underlying work to figure out what to communicate to others on maps, plans, where points are in the world so people can build things, etc. Whether it's communication on a map for another surveyor to read in 100 years, communication on where to place a stake so that a contractor can build something on the ground, communicating an encroachment on an ALTA so people know there are potential unwritten rights in play when they buy a property; it’s all communication. For sure, every deliverable at every level of our work is just communication with others.

I have noticed that the hardest part for surveyors is that they are the true interfaces between the professional and construction worlds. We pretty much, by definition, live and operate every day in both worlds, which have vastly different communication methods and vastly different ways of communicating what needs to be done.

Typically speaking, every surveyor I know comes from one side or the other. They either come from the field side or the professional side originally. Then they learn the other side to get the license. But whatever side they originally came from is the side that they can communicate with, and they seem to always have trouble communicating with the other side.

This is no real secret; we even separate field and office experience on the PLS application, but most of the successful businesses I have seen have two managing surveyors, one that manages the field side and one that manages the professional (office) side. Even if one answers to the other functionally speaking, they team up, and each one stays in their own lane, and it's pretty effective. Sometimes, the professional side is even run by a civil that the LS on the field side trusts to do the professional communication in the LS's name. Or an experienced LSIT does one or the other, etc. The surveyors themselves talk to each other to bridge the gaps and then each side communicates externally where they are better at it then the other side.

I think most communication issues arise in our field when a field surveyor jumps into a professional role or an office surveyor jumps into a field management role. Or in one-man shops or short-staffed companies where they have to do both roles. It's like throwing the world they know upside down and trying to learn a new one. It's not that every LS can't do it and make those switches regarding the technical aspects. That's what we test on to make sure they are ready to join the profession at the initial licensure. Still, without a lot of experience with the other side of the communication spectrum, people can struggle with the communication aspects of switching roles. Which can appear to others like they are struggling in the role even though they have the technical competency to be in that role. They just aren't using their technical competency effectively because they don't know how to communicate their technical competency in the new role. They don't have the communication experience necessary to communicate their technical competency. Hence, continuing education and seeking out the resources/mentors you need to be successful if you have to switch roles or if you have to cover both roles. The communication methods will be different based on different roles and job descriptions, even if the technical work is not.

If you are looking for resources, Talking to Strangers is a great book by Malcolm Gladwell that was a big eye-opener for me on this subject about how much of our world is framed by our communication methods and upbringing. Even with all kinds of formal classes I have had on this. I thought it was all BS until I read that book and saw the actual examples of how it works day to day. How people can even be killed (Sandra Bland), or wars can be started (Cortez vs the Aztecs) just by a simple miscommunication. Without going to dozens of courses about communication methods, its probably the simplest way to get a lot of knowledge really fast in communicating with people you don’t know or you aren't 100% sure how the communication is going to be received. There is a phrase some of the old farmers used to call me, "An educated idiot," and sometimes that phrase is very much true until you get that "ah ha" moment where you can put the pieces together and start using what you learned. I'm not saying that book will be the "ah ha" moment for all of you that it was for me, but it was my "ah ha" moment that connected the dots about how complex communication is nowadays.

For writing skills.....just buy Grammarly. Once you use it for a few years, you get pretty decent at writing because it teaches you as you go. You are learning how to write better as it fixes your work. You are getting direct feedback on how to write better in your day to day writing. Which is the best way to learn and then it happens again and again to make you a better writer. The compound effect. (another good book by Darren Hardy if you are interested)

[Mike Mueller]

A communication guide that I found fun to read was The Gervais Principle. For giving a talk or a presentation it might be a nifty resource since the book is filled with tons of examples from the show. Not sure about copyrights, but its all free online here:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/t ... he-office/


Mikey Mueller, PLS 9076
Sonoma County

[hellsangle]

LMAO, Mikey!

[falcon]

@mikey the peter principle and the dilbert principle are both good reads as well.

I have noticed that some big corps and public agencies get extremely top heavy, as executives need staff to do their bidding. So then all of those executives, deputies, and assistants spend all of their time in meetings vacuuming up all of the budget. And no money is left for actual staff level hires.

Sorry @connie B not your topic. But Mikey's post got me thinking. Good comms are key to what we do. My biggest challenge is to not cut to the chase and write in strictly black or white terms, as that CAN come off as rude. I tend to not beat around the bush but have been told that I was "Mean"... Not my intention. Just giving my thought on the topic. So a little bit of fluff or kindness goes a long way.

[CBarrett]

James, that is an excellent dissection.

The aim of the leadership Academy is to do a summary white paper and a presentation that can be shown at various conferences or webinars, to spread the the knowledge to our boots on the ground surveyors, that these skills are necessary for development of their careers and for the development of the profession. There is significant lack of awareness in our profession that these skills are necessary. Other than awareness, There's another segment of our profession that may have some interest but not a lot of time to research and access the learning materials. If we had a continued education requirement in the state, something like this would become part of recommended continued education material, as a springboard for further self study.


Personally I have a number of outlines and a good amount of material alog with a good chunk of the knowledge. The work ahead is assembling it into presentable materials that's the CLSA can endorse and present.