Is Your Team Hearing What You’re Saying? Four Ways to Use Behavior to Overcome Miscommunications

When you have a conversation with a team member on the manufacturing floor, you know what you’re saying . . . but do you know what your team member is hearing? Oftentimes, we think we’re being clear but others don’t hear exactly what we’re trying to say. When this happens, it leads to

Communications breakdowns.
Halted productivity.
Missed opportunities
Frustrating experiences for everyone involved!

To help manufacturing leaders and their teams overcome common miscommunications, I recently brought Dean Heffta onto the Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast. Dean is a speaker and trainer with Clarus Results, and has years of experience with helping organizations improve their impact and tackle common communications challenges. If you missed the podcast, check out these four great insights on how you can avoid common miscommunications on the manufacturing floor.

Insight #1: Consider Your Role

As a leader, you likely see yourself as holding a position of authority. But when it comes to avoiding miscommunications, it’s not always best to act like the boss! When talking to your team, consider taking less of an authoritative “boss” role. Instead, take a more collaborative approach. Act as a facilitator and guide your team members into productive conversations and new solutions, instead of automatically assuming you need to step in and tell them exactly what to do.

Insight #2: Don’t Assume

Speaking of assumptions . . . stop making them! You might think you know what your team members need to do and how they need to do it. However, you can never really know the true pulse of your organization unless you get involved. To create a healthier organization, talk to your team members. Practice skills like empathy and accountability to better understand their mindset, needs, and processes. Get involved by setting goals and expectations, but don’t be afraid to listen to new perspectives or change your own mindset to find creative, productive solutions.

Insight #3: Find the Cause of Miscommunications

When miscommunications happen, they’re often the result of “distress.” For example, imagine you see that a team member is very stressed. Is your instinct to go over and talk to them, or are you going to shy away and give them some space? You’ll likely avoid them, which can actually exacerbate the situation and lead to even more stress. To overcome miscommunications related to distress, take time to understand how your team members react to stressful or tense situations. Every person has their own behavior, but by understanding how they react, you can adjust your own behavior or work with them to find the best ways to communicate, even in the most challenging of times.

Insight #4: Change Your Own Behavior

Finally, take some time to understanding your own behavior. Like your team members, you also have your own unique ways of responding to everyday challenges. Before you turn to finding ways to fix your team’s behavior, take some time to reflect on your own behavior. Could you react differently in certain situations? Are you using the best language to communicate with your team? Are there ways you could better energize and motivate your team? By asking questions like these and reflecting on your behavior as a leader, you can take a strong first step to avoiding common miscommunications.

Learn More on the Podcast

To learn more about how you can change your behavior to improve your organization’s communications, listen to Dean Heffta’s appearance on the Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast here.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website