Articles
Management and Communication
Chris Ong
LIST ...
...all the things you've done this week that relate to management and you'll find that in most cases you're communicating. Everything to do with someone else ... communicating. All your emails, phone conversations, sermon prep, staff meetings, pastoral sessions ... you're communicating. The classic leadership books (1) talk about how we are to create a shared vision, build trust and communicate clearly, but if we're honest, it's getting harder to do. Here are my top three reasons why ...
Key Challenges for Managing and Communicating:
1. It's hard to get attention from competing agendas. There are too many messages out there (2)
2. We now are faced with a diverse range of backgrounds, frameworks and models (inter-generational, inter-cultural). There are too many contexts and subcultures for you to speak into.
3. What method of delivery will you use? There are too many channels (twitter, face to face, print, sunday service etc.) and we don't have resources to hit them all.
So for this article, I'm going to suggest an old classic (3) for whipping through the cloud of confusion that is out there. It cuts through the clutter, refines your management style towards the audience and delivers in a much more potent way that any Facebook status update could.
It's "LISTEN".
Communication is a two way street, however, most of the time we think ... "how do we get people to do what we want" - us to them. Let's talk for a moment about listening and paying attention as a management and communication priority.
Why is listening becoming such a powerful tool? I think it addresses the three challenges listed above:
1. Listening gets people's attention. How many people are really listening? Most people are talking, spamming, updating, twittering, speaking. Imagine you're sitting across from someone who is really listening to you, hearing your issues and understanding your life situation. In today's busy world, you won't have many people who do that. Suddenly, that person has differentiated himself/herself from the whole crowd. Your funky new website/facebook page/forum is not unique or rare ... not as rare as someone who invests time in listening.
2. Listening allows you understand the context you're managing in. People really only pay attention to things that are in their sphere of interest. I never noticed prams before, but once I became a dad, suddenly I'm seeing prams everywhere. Listening allows you manage ... using prams :)
3. I've found that once I increased my listening, I didn't have to worry about choosing an appropriate delivery channel. People were coming to me wanting to talk. Awesome. Once we're talking, I've already established a delivery channel that is both preferred and effective.
But! you ask ... are you doing any leading when you are listening? Is anyone being managed or communicated to?
Absolutely. Firstly, you are setting the tone for the environment. You are leading the culture that you want to have (if you have things to communicate and you want people to listen, then lead by example and listen first). Secondly, you are putting the person first before the agenda, and therefore making leadership of people a priority over leadership over an issue/agenda. That'll create a reciprocal response from your team.
I wrote my Capstone thesis last year on Marketing and the Church (4) and I'm an avid reader of all things management/leadership related ... and it never ceases to surprise me, how good listening can outperform so many other 'advanced' communication techniques/tools/platforms.
There's this beautiful psalm (Psalms 116) that is titled in my ESV bible, "I love the Lord". And it starts like this "I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live". God met me when I most needed Him. God listens and provides leadership not just as a one way street. His love for us leads us to pursue him and by doing so, we are changed.
How effective is this article going to be? I'm not sure .. it's my first time writing (and I'm really honoured to be asked) ... but I know there are a whole bunch of really good articles out there (in this website even!) so getting attention is going to be an issue. Honestly, I'd rather be listening than writing. So ... why not catch up for a chat with me when you're around Melbourne? We can practise listening. Maybe email me at chris.ong@fgam.org.au. Or leave comments below about how we can manage and communicate better. It's at the core of what we do.
I believe in it so much, I've wrapped my entire communication today between the word, as a metaphor of how we should be doing communication in a way that helps our relationships deep ...
... EN.
Footnotes:
I'd suggest picking up some pretty good books on communicating or leadership as part of your regular reading routine (Feel free to email me for my current reading list, or perhaps start a list here in this forum). You can also read some popular best sellers (non-leadership books) to analyse how the author communicates. I do a book or so a week, and with each book, I'm always looking for how the author communicates his message.
In a book called Buyology, by Martin Lindstrom (2010), that highlights studies being done in the relatively new field of neuromarketing (a field that takes neuroscience and applies it to marketing and consumer behaviour), they found that consumers were often missing the message of commercials. Martin writes that in 1965 the typical consumer could recall 34% of ads shown on TV, while in 2007 an ACNeilson phone survey respondents could only recall 2.21 commercials that they had seen. More in the book, and in my Capstone paper.
It's definitely not new, and I'm not going to pretend like I invented listening! Yet when I looked through my arsenal of management/communication channels in preparation for this article, I discovered that most were oriented to me putting content out eg. email feeds, podcasts, vlogs, blogs, newsletters, sermons, Facebook/twitter/tumblr, meetings ... Listening wasn't really what I'd consider as a premier communication tool in my belt.
NEW RULES FOR MARKETING AND THE CHURCH: A look at the current shift of churches towards Social Responsibility, Relational Social Networking and Multi-cultural Diversity in today's transformed marketing context to determine appropriate theological implications for the responsible proclamation of the Gospel
About Ps. Chris Ong
Chris is Executive Pastor at Full Gospel Assembly Melbourne. Chris spent the first 7 years of his career working as a Corporate Strategy Consultant with PwC Consulting before making a shift into full time ministry where he has been serving as a pastor for the last 8 years. Chris has a Masters of Arts (Christian Studies) from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago and an MBA from Melbourne Business School and is an avid reader. He is passionate about leadership and management in a Christian context. He is married to May and has three kids and he definitely needs to listen more.
