Communication woes? Try therapy
Communication woes? Try therapy
Even with the endless tools to keep teams connected, it’s our inner thoughts that have the most significant effect on how a message is delivered and received.
Our brains are wired to connect thoughts, ideas, actions, and consequences – whether they are genuinely connected or not. And it’s this tendency to make connections where no real relationship exists that is at the root of communication issues and workplace negativity. It is all too easy for our brains to interpret a coincidence or complicated relationship and make false assumptions. In social science, these mistakes are referred to as “cognitive distortions.”
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques help us “out-think” these distortions so that they don’t result in unwanted behaviours. Over time, negative thought patterns can leave us in a tense, anxious, panicking, or low mood.
We often think of CBT as a treatment for depression and anxiety, but applying these same principles within the workplace can have a range of positive effects on teams and inter-office relationships. CBT offers an outlet for negativity – and improving and maintaining everyone’s wellbeing – and ultimately efficiency, collaboration and morale.
Here are a few CBT strategies to try and improve your team’s working relationships:
Strategy 1. Assume the best, not the worst
Too often, we get an email or message and instantly infer intent, tone, and attitude without any evidence. (The Key & Peele sketch Text Confusion demonstrates this phenom brilliantly.)
The subsequent mind-reading and emotional reasoning lead us down a negative spiral – and it is particularly exacerbated when we’re working remotely and have limited face-to-face interactions.
Emotional reasoning is when we accept our emotions as facts: I feel it; therefore, it must be true. For instance, we may think our boss likes a colleague better, but that doesn’t make it a fact. Of course, it’s always possible to have an idea of what other people are thinking. But it’s the negative conclusions that we jump to that can be disruptive to communication and workflow.
Recognizing emotional reasoning when it’s happening and helping the person bring their focus back to whether there’s actual evidence to support their feelings can help reduce conflict and improve morale. One CBT technique is to practice assuming the most positive interpretation of a message.
Try reading emails out loud in the happiest, most cheerful tone possible. Make a game of it and see how it makes you laugh and also avoid the painful guesswork of what the sender is thinking.
Merely changing the perspective to the positive helps the recipient of the message relax. And funnily enough, the more charitable interpretation is usually the correct one. But even when it isn’t, focusing on that positive assumption forces the person who sent the message to re-state more clearly the issues they do have. And that promotes more honest and forthright conversations.
Strategy 2. Always assume 100% responsibility
One of the most significant impediments to teamwork is the good old pass-the-buck game. You know you’re in the middle of it when you hear statements like:
"She didn't tell me that, so I didn't know.”
“You should have done this, so it's not my fault.”
“He was rude, so I couldn't get through to him.”
“I need to tell her something, but she's impossible to talk to."
The expectation that others to change for us to be successful can be a significant issue within teams. Because as we know, no amount of pressure or force can guarantee that someone will act the way you want them to.
A fundamental CBT technique is to focus on always taking 100% responsibility for your behaviours and emotions. That means eliminating the desire to bring anyone else into your rationale for why a situation didn’t turn out as expected.
Essentially, this is what a self-managed business looks like – each person doing everything they can to make things work and not relying on one another to make them successful. And this can feel odd when we’re conditioned to think that an organization needs teamwork to thrive.
But assuming 100% responsibility is key to not letting the team get in the way of teamwork by empowering individuals to see their success as being in their control and to keep conflict in perspective. So when a team member struggles because they feel like they couldn’t succeed at a task because other members of the team didn’t perform, encourage them to ask themselves the following question:
"Even if it feels like I've already done 98% of the heavy lifting, what haven't I tried to solve this problem without needing anything from the other party?”
As the leader, it’s essential to help employees navigate and resolve these issues before either a) berating them for not getting a job done or b) stepping in and doing the job for them.
Of course, if there’s a person on the team who can not give anything on a consistent basis, then this person is clearly not the right fit for the role or the company. Creating a culture of 100% accountability highlights competency issues from personality conflicts, so it can make this kind of HR decision quicker and easier.
Strategy 3. Lower the stakes
Most of the bad decisions we make can be traced back to anxiety.
CBT is a common approach to dealing with anxiety in general, but in particular, the anxious mind’s tendency to catastrophize the meaning, importance or likelihood of things. Examples of this range from assuming everyone is going think your Zoom presentation is stupid – or fearing that speaking at a conference is going to result in one losing their job.
The problem with this type of thinking is that ideas can go unrecognized due to the poor delivery from the presenter. By encouraging each member of your team to lower the stakes and realize that each meeting (virtual or in-person) is not a life-or-death test, but instead a safe and supportive space for ideas to flourish, you’re setting the stage (or webcam) for success.
As your team’s lead, lowering the stakes applies to you as well. (Even though for you, the stakes always seem high.) Next time you need to address your team or put out a video of yourself as content online, try reducing the pressure. Ironically, you’ll find that it leads to better performance.
Subhead: Out-think the negative thoughts
As technology continues to enhance our ability to work remotely, we need to realize that inaccurate thoughts are going to be increasingly common. And their effects on individual performance and team productivity should not be underestimated.
The sooner you catch a cognitive distortion – whether it’s your own or someone on your team – the better chance you have to transform it into a positive. Give these techniques a try and let me know what you think!