I personally do not like Donald Trump at all, but a lot of people do like him, and when I ask them why, they tell me it’s because he speaks his mind. Although I have my doubts about whether he means what he says or just says things for effect, when everyone else is carefully choosing their words to avoid offense or to appeal to the greatest possible number of potential voters, someone who speaks plainly and directly can command attention.
As management professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says, “We secretly like the confident, overbearing people because they provide us with confidence—emotions are contagious—and also present themselves like winners. We all want to associate with success and pick those who seemingly know what they are doing.”
So, does that mean we’ll all be more effective communicators if we emulate Trump and speak as directly as possible?
Lean communication is generally direct communication, taking the shortest distance between two points. Directness is lean because it strips out waste. Directness is persuasive because it shows and inspires confidence.
Early in my sales training career I learned how important it is to be direct. I was coaching to a salesperson who had just completed an awful role play, and I tried to soft-pedal my feedback to spare his feelings. After I finished, another participant spoke up and told me I was not doing my job. Very directly, he told me in front of everyone that his colleague had done a poor job on the role play and needed to hear very clearly from me what he had to improve, or the entire session was a waste of money and time.
Directness is especially helpful when you’re asking for something, which is just about every time you’re making a presentation. For example, putting your request right up front in your presentation makes it easier for the other person to organize the incoming information and makes you appear much more confident. Many people think that direct requests are pushy, but when you need help from someone, research has shown that direct requests are about twice as effective as you might predict.
Directness can even save lives—airlines have developed a training regimen called crew resource management because numerous crashes have occurred as a result of co-pilots’ reluctance to speak directly to alert the captain to a problem.
But being too direct can be just as bad, as I learned in tenth grade, when a classmate was standing in front of my locker. I was a lean communicator even then, and I simply said “move”. The punch in the mouth I got was useful feedback, and I’ve since learned to be more tactful. In fact, most of us have learned that a little bit of indirection can make communication more effective, when it makes it likelier that the message will be well received. “Would you mind if I just squeeze by for a second to open my locker, please?” is sixteen times as long as “move”, but infinitely more effective.
From a lean perspective, excessive directness can reduce or even negate the intended value of the communication, so the indirect path may actually be shorter than the straight. The reason that being too direct is not lean is that communication between two parties requires both transmission and reception. Directness is all about transmitting what is in your mind as faithfully and as efficiently as possible, but if reception is impaired because the other person takes offense or refuses to listen, no value has been transmitted.
Effective communication is not a matter simply of transmitting ideas—it’s also about negotiating relationships. According to Deborah Tannen, in any exchange, both parties are exquisitely attuned to signals regarding relative status and rapport, and the degree of directness or indirectness is one of the strongest of those signals. People expect to be treated right, as has been demonstrated in many studies involving an ultimatum game have shown where participants will reject offers that will leave them better off if they perceive them as unfair.
Tannen goes on to say that “indirectness is a fundamental and pervasive element in human communication,” so you ignore it at your own risk.
So right now you’re probably thinking: “You want me to be direct but not too direct. How do I do that?” There is no formula, because it depends on the culture, situation, the listener, and the relationship between the speaker and the listener. You have to know what the culture—whether it’s national or corporate culture—expects, what the situation calls for, the listener’s own preferences, and the relative status and rapport between you and the listener.
It’s a complicated calculus that’s simplified through two tools: intention and attention. Intention refers to the value you are delivering in your communication: your purpose stated in terms of what’s in it for your listener. People will accept a lot of direct communication, even bluntness, when the intentions of the speaker are clearly benign. It’s the difference between being assertive and being aggressive: assertion is standing up for yourself while taking the other into consideration, while aggression ignores the interests of the other or even actively intends harm. Attention is what you pay to your listener to gauge their response to your message, so that you can adjust your level of directness upward or downward as necessary. In effect, it’s about taking responsibility for reception as well as transmission.
Besides these tools, here are some helpful ideas based on circumstances:
- Know what’s acceptable in the culture. National cultures vary, with Asian cultures tending to be more “high-context”, paying more attention to implicit than explicit meaning. I’ve also found that corporate cultures can be even stronger than national cultures, and an internal coach can guide you as to what’s expected.
- Know your listener. Drivers and expressives are more comfortable with direct communication, but you might want to scale it back with amiables and analytics, for example.
- Gauge the balance between task and people orientations. When there is a lot at stake and there is imminent risk from miscommunication, be as clear and direct as you can possibly be.
In summary, be as direct as you can be, but never let efficiency get in the way of effectiveness.
