The Uncommon Communicator

E96 - UC Playbook: Exploring Respect and Visual communication

• James Gable • Season 2 • Episode 96

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Ever wondered why respect in communication is so pivotal? It's time to join us as we dissect the core principles of respect as shared by Adam Hoots, an author and expert on communication, on the Uncommon Communicator Podcast. This episode shines light on the intricacies of respect, its roots, and how it can be cultivated even in adulthood. We explore how this simple human concept can foster an environment studded with open dialogue, active listening, innovation, and meaningful engagement, and why it's integral to any workplace.

Building on Julie Pham's enlightening book, "The Seven Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work," we chart a course through respect's seven forms. From procedure and punctuality to information and candor, consideration, acknowledgment, and attention, we unpack how these elements manifest in respectful communication. Tune in as we journey through practical ways of implementing these facets into your daily interactions, both professionally and personally. We promise you, this is a transformative exploration of the art of respect in communication.
Check out more from Julie Pham here : https://formsofrespect.com/framework/

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The Uncommon Communicator :

. Welcome to the Uncommon Communicator Podcast, where we are here to bring enlightenment to the topic of communication. Today's playbook we're going to discuss last week's episode with Adam Hoots, and two of the main topics that really stood out were respect respect for people and also visual communications. Those are the two things we're going to gravitate to today and we're going to discuss a little bit deeper. First, we're going to start with respect.

The Uncommon Communicator :

Now, within this book that Adam wrote, there is this the principle of respect for people. He kind of jumped ahead what he called in the order of the book to make sure that that was the most important thing. Now let me read this excerpt from it. This principle, talking about respect, emphasizes creating an atmosphere that encourages open communication, active listening and meaningful engagement. Respect for people involves promoting teamwork, trust and empowerment, enabling workers to actively participate in decision-making processes and contribute their expertise to problem solving and innovation. So really bringing respect into your conversations really means involvement and improvement, innovation. There's so many things that lead to that, and I would say that leaders need to recognize and respect everybody on the project. It goes all the way down to the janitor and the laborers, all the way up to the project leads. Everyone needs to be given that respect to be able to bring about that innovation.

The Uncommon Communicator :

Now, when we dove a little bit deeper into trying to learn a little bit about respect, a lot of the studies that I found all had to do with teaching children how to show respect. There's a lot of it Children, junior hires. There's a lot of lessons that are taught to try to teach it at that age, which really brought out a question to me is is that where it all begins? When you see people that don't show respect, is it something that they might have missed at home? Possibly Is it something that has to happen in childhood? Now, of course, I don't just believe that. I think if you grew up in a home that didn't show respect, I do believe that it can be learned. So researching this has really led me to understand that there are ways that adults can apply it to their life.

The Uncommon Communicator :

Now, one thing I want to add in for today there's a book by Julie Pham she's a PhD called the Seven Forms of Respect a guide to transforming your communication and relationships at work, and we'll provide links in the show notes for this as well as a link to her book Now. In it she categorized the seven forms of respect. Now, one thing that even she points out is there's so many different ways to show respect, but let's break it down into these seven and if these seven fit within your workplace, these are things that you can do and maybe recognize that this is how you show respect, because, just like a lot of our workplace geniuses or a lot of our workplace habits, some things we're good at, other things we're not, and the things that we're not are always areas where we can improve on them. That her seven forms of respect are procedure, punctuality, information, candor, consideration, acknowledgement and attention. And I think, amongst those seven, it really does create quite the workflow for you to show and present respect in your job site.

The Uncommon Communicator :

Now, procedure what does that mean? Right, I'm big into systems. Let's have a system in place that allows for communication, that allows for respect, and really having a procedure in place really has to do with setting clear expectations. That's a procedure. Have that procedure in place, that you have expectations so that you, so people, know how to fulfill your requests. They need to have a foundation or some boundaries, set a procedure. I thought that was a great tip and a great way to start Punctuality.

The Uncommon Communicator :

That's a big one in sharing respect. One thing is to let people know beforehand if you're gonna be late, even or absent. That's a big one. Nothing worse than 10 minutes in you get a text and somebody says, oh, I'm not gonna make it. Or even five minutes before. But let people know. Oftentimes I'll let people know, hey, I'm running late, I'm in traffic or something. Voice to text. Certainly don't text while you're driving or make the phone call. Even if others know that you're gonna be late. They won't mind as much that at the end of it they can stay on schedule and they can end their appointments on time. These are things about punctuality that really show respect for people's time. That is one thing that I think kind of burns me a little bit is when you get to the end of a meeting and somebody's like well, looks like we're in an early, I gave you three minutes back, and then they pat themselves on the back for three minutes and you don't even get the three minutes back. Punctuality and people's time is one of the most important things that you can give them. The next one is information. Now, what they do is they invite people to their meetings so they can stay informed, or include them on emails, provide updates. These type of things show a respect. By doing this without being prompted, you're really showing that you are including them. There's a lot in respect. That includes inclusiveness.

The Uncommon Communicator :

Candor this can be a tough one for a lot of people, but it's really demonstrating respect by asking probing questions, offering constructive feedback, bringing in opposing viewpoints, but in a respectful way. It is pointing out mistakes and errors. There are things that really, when you express your displeasure for somebody, you do it to their face, to them, maybe alone and aside, but this type of candor can really bring about the change that an individual is really looking for. There's a book by Jill Scott called Radical Candor. Highly recommend reading it.

The Uncommon Communicator :

She talks about how to approach these type of situations because really, without candor, she could not have developed herself to the where she wanted to be, and specifically the point in candor for her that was the point is she had finished this great presentation, thought she did great. And her leader took her aside and said you know what? You would really do well to take some speech lessons. She's like, ah no, I got it. And she said that she had blew it off a couple of times and then finally they said look, when you speak and you um, and you are, and you have, and you haul through these, these things, you sound like you're stupid. Now, those were harsh words and she, she knew that those were harsh words, but she knew that she needed that and that that individual actually elevated it for her to the point where they use those harsh words for her to really register. But she changed the course of her life with that candor and her career.

The Uncommon Communicator :

So candor can bring about the change in people that really benefits them for their entire life. And they're hard conversations to have, but in doing that you're respecting that person, not letting it. It's very similar to that hey, your fly needs to be zipped up. You know things like that, those type of situations where you know they're tough to do but you tell somebody to help them out. Consideration it's really about anticipating what people want and need. That's a great sign of respect. You really avoid bringing up like conversation topics that they think they might find difficult or things you know that are hard to talk about. You know, knowing that person, that's showing that consideration for that individual and this is a big one Acknowledgement Thinking people for their work. It's as simple as that.

The Uncommon Communicator :

I had this conversation with one of our clients recently where just bringing in donuts or bagels for her people or even lunch once in a while they love that. And we talked about how even thinking for doing their job, giving that positive praise and recognition, really brings about and doing it verbally really brings about that attention, that respect. The next one is attention and what that does is really you demonstrate respect by listening attentively and on this show we've talked a lot about active listening and there's a lot to eye contact but also referring back to their comments to really listen and engage in that conversation. That is a sure sign of respect. And also, don't multitask while you're doing it. We talked a little bit about this one, adam, on the last show. Don't pull your phone up and start checking your emails when you're done talking. You really want to show all of your respect by giving that person the attention that they deserve and that's showing respect. So, with those seven things, really covers a lot of the ideas on how you can show better respect in the workplace, at home. These are all things that are really going to help you become a better listener, and we're going to add those to the UC Playbook because these are important.

The Uncommon Communicator :

The other topic that Adam really jumped into that I really was really jazzed about was visual communications. I love the idea of it. Now this is a clip from his book when you can actually visualize what you're thinking, you're more likely to understand it better and people will automatically gravitate to it and try to correct it. It's kind of something within human nature that when we see information that's not right, we tend to speak up, versus when we hear information that's not right, we don't really tend to speak up. If somebody says a word wrong, maybe they slipped, but if they go up on a whiteboard and then they write it out and you see it and you think that's not right, it engages that conversation.

The Uncommon Communicator :

Now, years ago when I was a superintendent a very new superintendent I had a foreman who was creating this rigging plan and it was fairly complicated. We were rigging these large kettle tops while we were working at Miller Coors, these copper kettle tops. They're kind of hidden behind the background. They're spare ones and we had to pick them up and move them to a different location. Move them to a different location right in that same area.

The Uncommon Communicator :

Now, as Joe starts telling me this story, I wasn't quite getting it. So I asked a few more questions, still not fully understanding it. And in rigging we create plans, we draw them out. We hadn't done that yet. I couldn't quite understand where he was headed with it. So I asked him to write it out and when he drew it up himself, questions started to pop up. Well, where's my center points when I'm picking this item up? Is it going to swing this way? Is it going to swing that way? Is it going to go in the right direction? What's the load capacity? Is it what I'm rigging to? All these questions came up and when he drew the picture up, he realized himself that it wasn't going to work. His own drawing gave him the visualization that this wasn't going to work and together we were able to get some real measurements of the points we were going to pick, and there's going to be a couple of chain falls that were going to be at some different locations, and we were able to do it safely and do it efficiently because we drew it out, because it had a visual plan that really told the story, and that's one of the things that's important in any type of visualization.

The Uncommon Communicator :

I'm a big fan of the whiteboard. You know I mentioned about story time, but sometimes just drawing stick figures on a board can really tell a story to somebody. Have it spelled out, have it written out, look at any way that you can communicate that and, as my friend Buddy said, get it out of that computer. Let's get it out of that computer and get it up on a board where people can really see it. Now Adam shared with me in the book about an exercise where they would give some verbal descriptions on how to build this paper airplane. Seems easy, we've all done paper airplanes, but they wanted to get a look on this airplane and they gave it to them verbally and he says one out of 50 might get it right on those verbal directions. And then the next task that they do is then they show some pictures on how to fold that paper airplane like they were describing it in the words, and just about everybody picks it up and that's really demonstrates in this presentation that he does, the power of visual communication. Everybody nails it when they can see pictures.

The Uncommon Communicator :

So those are really two key things that we learned and this is for our playbook for this week is first, respect. There's the seven ways of showing respect, you know. I want to thank first our author, julie Pham, for sharing these Again. I will share those links. The seven forms of respect are procedure, punctuality, information, candor, consideration, acknowledgement and attention. Apply those things and you're going to improve the respect on your job and your project or within your life, and you're going to get better engagement and you're going to communicate better. And then, finally, visual communications. Think about how you take words and put them into pictures and do both of them and your communications are going to go a whole lot farther. And I will end with a very key UC moment that Adam left for us, which is this you cannot not communicate. And that's all we got for today. See you, bye.