As a native of Queens, NY, I used to have only two communications gears: speaking loudly and yelling. Due in part to our geographic location and also due to our family's ethnic and cultural paradigm.
Subsequently, I have spent my entire adult life in the Albany, New York area. Even at this writing, most Albany natives rarely use their horns to defensively drive. It's considered rude. In other words, when you honk your horn around here, it's a form of automotive yelling. Yes, it's one of my few remaining vices.
At the beginning of my HR career, I was not only lucky enough to receive extensive formal and on-the-job training, but I was also taught and repeatedly trained to develop other communications gears besides downshifting into Queens. The success profile of my organization at the time was reserved and analytical. I am anything but reserved, but also analytical. The coaching, for the most part, was therefore successful. After every meeting together, my boss Bill would take me aside. "You did very well in the meeting," Bill would say. "However, I have one piece of coaching for you: speak less and more softly." Bill was a wonderful mentor and I think of him often, all these years later. Even at those coaching moments when I sighed and wanted a coaching rain-check, I treasure his perseverance and interest in molding me for success and subsequent promotion.
One of my first HR client managers there was the Purchasing Manager; he was a great guy who drove a Harley to work every day, rain or shine, and relished beating the stuffing out of our vendors, as was our organization's performance norm for the Purchasing function. He and I were two very loud peas in a padded pod, and very much the organizational culture's exception. We had a rambunctious debate on an employee relations issue in front of one of my more experienced and very reserved HR colleagues. "Wow," my HR colleague said, "that's the loudest conversation I've ever witnessed at work." (Wow, I thought -- really?) "Why did you two have to yell at each other?" He was genuinely upset. Both the Purchasing Manager and I were surprised. "We just had a great conversation and resolved the issue, we weren't yelling at each other," the Purchasing Manager reassured my HR colleague. "No worries. I need my HR person to be direct and to the point."
Bill's coaching sank in nonetheless: I consciously and for the most part consistently modulated my tone of voice and developed my HR poker face, and learned to listen first and talk later. Completely out of my comfort zone, but part of the Zen practice to achieve my goal to do human resources and organization effectiveness work.
At my next organization, yelling was the communications norm. However, something wonderful clicked early in my tenure there. Because I listened first -- or as Covey would say, I sought first to understand, rather than to be understood -- that's where I first started to hear the needs underneath the yelling.
We were in the process of acquiring another company, and we were making relocation employment offers to several of the other company's employees located out of town. Since the acquisition had triggered a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) Act scenario, these employees had 30 days to consider the relocation employment offers.
My boss at time, one of the organization's executives and not an HR professional by background, was, to put it mildly, livid. In the privacy of his office, he yelled for 20 minutes straight about the absurdity of the WARN Act and how it was preventing him (and us) from conducting our business. I immediately understood that he was mad at the WARN Act and not at me. "I know, it's very frustrating," I murmured periodically. At one point, when he paused to catch his breath, I gently observed: "You know, I find the IRS Tax Code completely frustrating and illogical. But like the WARN Act, we're forced to follow it too." He immediately calmed down, and apologized 3 times to me for yelling. "No worries," I responded. "I know how you feel, legal and compliance boundaries are often frustrating."
Clearly, there's a time and a place for yelling, preferably in private. And there's a clear distinction between loud emoting and loud (demeaning) abuse. I'd rather have my partners and customers at work be authentic, and at times, they need to yell. In a functional culture, yelling is definitely more the exception rather than the rule, at all levels. When change is occurring, yelling can be part of the flak we experience from each other as we get closer to the change target.
During my training as a mediator with Mediation Matters, our trainer, Duke Fisher, confirmed my HR experience in needs-identification perfectly. He encouraged us through role-play and other mediation training experiences that the key to mediating conflict (whether it's over dog poop or international relations) is to first have the courage to listen for the needs underneath the yelling without taking it personally. And that when one party keeps yelling about the same issue, that's one of several divining rods to accurately isolate the needs underneath the yelling, which in turn will become the building blocks of a solution to move forward. To meet needs and create peace.
The source of all human conflict, Duke taught us, is needs met and unmet.
I'm here to listen, whether you're yelling or not: just tell me what you need.
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