Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline is a classic management text. It’s full of gems any leader working to become a great communicator can immediately use.
For example, Senge talks a lot about mental models – a person’s pre-conceived, typically unconscious way of looking at the world. Let’s say you’re a CEO who wants to reach customers in a new and powerful way. You say to your CMO, “Let’s do this the right way.” Your CMO might hear “I’m the boss. It’s my way or the highway!” What you really meant was “I’ve never done this before, so let’s research to find the right way to proceed before we begin.”
If your CMO thinks you have a very specific expectation, he’ll keep trying to guess what it is and meet it. Meanwhile you’ll be wondering why he isn’t coming to you with lots of new ideas based on research. You’ll both be frustrated.
Senge says, “The problems with mental models arise when they become implicit – when they exist below the level of our awareness.” Exactly. It’s the things you can’t see that can do the most damage!
So what do you do? First, take a deep breath. Dealing with unconscious perceptions is necessary, and ultimately incredibly helpful. But it does take a ton of patience. You need to commit to creating and maintaining a culture of self-examination and communication:
- Self-examination is vital. First, you find out what your own unconscious mental models are. You encourage your senior leadership team to discover theirs. You talk about what you discover. The Fifth Discipline has great suggestions for how to do this.
- Once you know what your mental models are, communication is essential. You create shared perspective goals and shared goals by talking! Again, The Fifth Discipline is full of great methods for doing this on your teams. Read it! Start communicating!
Communication is both the simplest thing in the world to do and the most complex. When it’s done right, though, nothing has more power to transform your business. It’s worth all of the effort that it takes.
Communication is the essential last mile in finding and motivating the right teams, acquiring strong allies, powerfully bonding with customers, and capturing mindshare with compelling stories. Nothing will serve you and your vision better than developing exceptional communication skills.
