“And they lived happily together until the end of their lives”; this could be the finishing line for Shakespeare’s Romeu and Juliet if there hadn’t been a communication problem that obviously, a skilled PM would have avoided.
In Shakespeare’s story, Romeu should have been informed on the plan underneath the apparent Juliet’s death by his servant, Balthasar, but this didn’t happen due to a communication breakdown, leading to the story ending as we all know. This is a perfect example of the criticality of communication management within project management, one of the power skills identified by PMI.
On the topic of communication management, I would like to delve deeper into the concept of empathic listening.
We are all familiar with the concept of active listening, the ability of being fully present and concentrated when listening to a speaker. Probably some of us have been in situations where, despite active listening, the receivers (project team members) are perceiving different messages/signals. This is highly related with different backgrounds, attitude (often defensive) or not knowing enough about the speaker’s (client) background/goals.
From my experience this could be mitigated by an active intent of mutual connection and trust – empathic listening. More than listen to the message, the receivers need to question why this is being asked or told. This demands a relationship built based on continuous proof of loyalty and transparency.
To have a solid communication in project management, trust should be built, and this demands time and deep investment from the involved parties – there is no miraculous instantaneous recipe here, an investment is vital. For this we need to be empathic, to have the capacity to understand where each other’s ideas / questions are coming from, to better understand what the concerns are and to recognize the hidden sub-text of the message being passed.
In summary, when listening we need to be empathic, we need to be able to listen with the ears of the speaker.