Top 3 Learnings about Communication from Investigating 300+ Company Cultures
In my previous life as a discrimination investigator and mediator, and my current work as a communication consultant, I’ve gained insight into hundreds of companies, their talent makeup, and their business models.
Because of this experience, I amassed an inordinate amount of knowledge and experience about nearly every industry — from fisheries to global hotel chains to tech startups— and the people who lead them, work within them, and their products. Over the years, this work has offered insight into thousands of different roles and responsibilities, missions, values, organizational structures, hiring and termination criteria, benefits, employee engagement strategies, internal policies and practices, and a deep understanding of communication debts and surpluses.
Here are my top three takeaways about human communication from analyzing every company I’ve ever met:
1. Company cultures might be unique, but communication problems aren’t
For me and other linguists, culture is language, and language defines culture. And the meaning behind the words people exchange and share depends a lot on how they send and receive certain signals.
Whether it’s a global hotel chain, a nonprofit, or a startup, people problems look similar because human communication drives them. Yes, each business had a defined and shared set of values and was working toward a company north star. But when it came to culture issues that required resolving within the organization — with humans at the helm and at varying depths of personal self-development and self-awareness discovery —underdeveloped communication skills and lower empathy maturity often leads to the challenges that can erode workplace relationships, and ultimately, culture.
2. Fail or fly culture always comes down to one thing — trust
Trust — or lack thereof — is the difference between a company failing and flying.
Ultimately, being respected is a fundamental human need. Being trustworthy and demonstrating trustworthiness is the fast track to earning the respect and goodwill of others. But, it’s not easy. Misperception, others’ biases, and underdeveloped self-awareness can impede the ability to demonstrate trust, be trusted, and be regarded as trusting.
The most important driver of business success is trust.
Companies often miss a big opportunity to 10x their team — and their bottom line — by not investing in language and communication development opportunities among their team members and managers. It builds the muscle needed for someone to freely acknowledge strengths in others, work together with collaborative mindset, challenge and test their self-awareness development, have each others’ backs in times of adversity, and believe that others are bringing their best selves to the table and working toward the greater goal.
We often hear that people should be able to bring their authentic or best selves to work, or that the company supports that ideal. While this should be true everywhere, this focuses on the wrong issue.
In my experience, the real issue isn’t whether someone is welcome to bring their authentic self, it’s whether their peers and managers can respect them as their authentic and best self. And that comes down to mature communication, an evolved state of self-awareness and awareness of others that enables everyone to trust one another despite their differences, because of a shared belief that everyone is working together to do the right thing, not just for themselves but for the overall team and organization.
3. Building a winning culture means investing in a communication awareness strategy
Acknowledging that your organization is at risk of a culture problem is not easy. Why?
Because workplace inclusion, equity, and diversity are fundamentally buttressed by employment laws at the federal, state, and (sometimes) local levels, not communication development strategies. This makes surfacing culture or communication problems a tricky landscape of liability landmines, which Human Resources becomes charged with resolving; or in some companies, avoiding. In truth, making strategic efforts to invite respectful communication across all levels makes teams perform better and be more inclusive.
Company culture is the measure of the least mature communicator.
To deliver a best-in-class workplace culture, companies should examine their principles, people, and processes and apply a cohesive and communication awareness and performance strategy that focuses on developing and maturing communication to cement trust in people, their skills, and their ideas.
People perform best when they believe they are valued and that value is demonstrated and communicated. When effective communication is lacking, misalignment and disempowerment can happen, which if left unaddressed can lead to the erosion of a healthy culture and peak performance.
Interested in performance coaching to 10x your communication and collaboration skills? Connect with me.
Alex de Aranzeta (she/her) is a communication coach and speaker, working to scale strategy, storytelling, and culture for the most innovative companies and execs. https://www.alexde.com
