The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.
George Bernard Shaw
1856 – 1950

In the book 6 Secrets to Startup Success, author John Bradberry discusses his consulting role with new ventures. Part of his job is to assess the management team’s ability to solve problems and make decisions. One technique he uses is to determine their communication styles.

He does his assessment by observing each person’s conversational style and classifying it into one of two categories: advocacy or inquiry. When a person converses with an advocacy mindset, they assert, claim or push their point of view. When a person converses from an inquiry point of view, they seek to understand another person’s opinion.

Bradberry observed that in a business environment, 80 to 90 percent of the conversation is advocacy: the speaker is defending his opinion, staking out his position or pushing his point of view.

If you’ve spent much time in a business environment, you know that getting things done can be very difficult. Making decisions and solving problems isn’t easy; generally, a lot of time is wasted because everyone is defending their own turf rather than looking out for the general good of the business.

I’m not sure these communication issues are limited to the business world. Every day, I see relationships that suffer because of faulty communication. Often, there’s very little balance in our communication. Much like business people, individuals tend to converse in advocacy style more often than inquiry.

Think back to the last time you had a disagreement in a personal relationship. How much time did you spend defending or pushing your position? How much (or how little) time did you spend trying to understand the other person’s point of view?

Even when you’re not disagreeing, simply carrying on a conversation from an advocacy position tends to limit the exchange of ideas and information. Worse, it tends to limit trust. We become afraid to share our ideas.

Our inability to have open, honest communication is at the heart of most business and personal relationship failures. Our tendency to communicate from an advocacy position is one of the primary reasons for our inability to successfully communicate.

Take some time to examine the way you communicate with others. We all communicate from an advocacy position more often than we’d like to admit. If you want better business and personal relationships, bring more balance to your communication.

It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all.
Democritus
c. 460 B.C. – 370 B.C.

Copyright © 2011 John Chancellor