Meeting Will Be With the Same Small

¶ … meeting will be with the same small group of organizational leaders with whom I have been dealing. While I have a principle point of contact, when I am reporting suggestions or presenting other feedback, I feel that it is most appropriate to do this with the entire group. That way, everybody hears the same message, rather than engaging in a telephone game. Further, I feel that if there is feedback from the group about anything that I have presented, it is best to address it all at once.

I would not have to answer the same question multiple times, and everybody would hear the same answers. Communication is just a lot easier when you gather a small group of people to discuss matters. I am mostly apprehensive, to be honest, about speaking in front of a group. I feel that there are high expectations placed on me.

I know that this is just one round of the action research process, and that there will be many more of these to come, but I worry that the organization expects an instant stroke of genius. At this point, I do not feel that I am delivering bad news to any individual, and I presume that all individuals will recognize that.

But it is always a wild card when you are dealing with people and so that is another reason to have a group meeting -- so that even if someone has a problem with some of the ideas, that a calm and rational discussion will ensue and that nobody will take anything too personally. The biggest thing with respect to mitigating problems is to have a couple of strategies at the ready.

So the first thing is that I want to ensure that people recognize that the entire process, this action research, is about issues and not individuals. That is one of the basics of resolving conflict. If there are questions, those will be answered to the best of my ability. Beyond that, I can only reiterate the way that the process works, and what the expectations should be for each step of the process, as well as providing progress measures and explain how well the organization is progressing.

Phase 4 Individual Project There are a lot of different techniques that you can learn in communications studies that help illuminate the whole communication thing. The Johari Window is one of those. According to MindTools (2015), the window is a box with four compartments. They are things known by others, unknown by others, known by you and unknown by you. When neither knows anything, that is a blind area. There's going to be a lot of those in the world.

I don't think anybody in this project knows too much about quantum mechanics -- so the key to this blind area is that you've done enough work that there is nothing particularly relevant in the blind area. The open area consists of things known by everybody. The hidden area consists of things that you know, but others do not; the unknown area is things that others know that you don't.

One of the underlying themes of the Johari Window is that more effective communication occurs when more things are in the open area, where everybody knows it. To be fair, filling in a box of everything I know that I presume others do not is sort of impossible. First, that's a lot of things, and second it would need to be filtered for relevance.

It is better to think in terms of "anything I haven't yet told them goes in that concealed window." So they might know 10-20% of what I know in terms of management theory and the like, and I have to recognize that this is an area where my knowledge in much higher than theirs. By definition I cannot fill in the blind box as that consists of things unknown by self. If I don't know it, I don't know it.

There are definitely things that the client knows -- they've been in operations a long time and have a lot of institutional knowledge -- that I do not. It would take weeks for them to fill me in, and that's when filtering for relevance. As for revealing more of my concealed self, that is generally good. They should know more. But the point where it becomes a con is when I am walking them through my thought processes and giving them far too much background and preamble.

They need to know specific plans, objectives and how things affect them, and what the expectations for them are. My knowledge is embedded in all this; they don't need a crash course on my prior studies. Phase 4, Discussion Board 2 I provide feedback constantly. I don't like it structured. Stiff, formal communication creates barriers. You have time constraints on the meeting; people get their backs up knowing I'm going to blitz them with feedback; too much information comes in all at once. I see action research as a dialogue.

I'm consulting, so the dialogue has to be open and I have to keep the feedback flowing as it is ready, so the feedback loops is continuous. That is the approach I have taken. This approach has generally been successful. The reason I say this is that thus far everything is going well in the project, and I do not believe that there have been any major roadblocks.

That is not to say that there have not been any disagreements, just that those disagreements are not an impediment to communication or the pushing the project forward. My experience thus far is that continuous flow of communication works best with this organization. I definitely built in the appreciative approach. I noted in an earlier submission a few weeks ago that I had originally discounted the value of the appreciative approach, but have completely changed my mind about that.

The appreciative approach has worked brilliantly for building currency with the organization and engaging all of the key internal stakeholders into this change process. I am a fan of the appreciative approach now. Phase 4, Discussion Board 3. I have asked for.