A recipe for better communication

Have you ever started working with someone new, and found that you had no idea how to communicate with them effectively?

It could be a new hire, or a coworker you only recognize from an email chain. Or maybe you’re the new person, meeting 20 strangers in your new department and trying to adapt to the culture. But even after all those introductions, ice breakers, team-building exercises, and casual lunches, how often is there still an adjustment period punctuated by miscommunications, dropped batons, and even friction?

Okay, now put that on the backburner and imagine you’re in the kitchen trying to recreate your grandma’s best-loved dish (stick with me here!) You can remember the taste of course, you might even have witnessed her making it, but darn it, she never did write the recipe down for posterity. Poring over recipes for similar dishes on the internet might be a good place to start, but even if you get all the ingredients right, it’s near impossible to nail the proportions and preparation on the first try. So what do you do? Usually there’s nothing for it but to go through the trial and error process… again, and again, and again.

If only grandma had written down that recipe!

Coworkers Don’t Come with Recipe Cards

Just like grandma’s elusive signature dish, coworkers don’t come with recipe cards either. And they’re all just as different from each other as the many interpretations you might find when looking for a recipe on the internet.

For me, working in an internal support role in recruitment, my job is all about figuring out the right ‘recipes’ for the people I support: what’s important to them, how they communicate, and how I can best communicate with them. Some of my teammates like a lot of communication, even when it’s just to report that nothing’s changed, while others get confused if I Slack them to say “there are no updates” and are happy to wait until something changes before we discuss it.

At least, that’s what it’s like with the people I’ve worked with for years. But my scope of work changed about a year ago, meaning I had to learn a new area of the market. The new area is a tough one that challenges me even on my best weeks, and which makes clear communication with the people I’m supporting integral to both my own growth (I live for Feedback!) and their understanding of, and satisfaction with, my work.

On top of that, I also had a bunch of new coworkers: seven people across two teams that I’d never worked with before. It had taken me a long time to perfect my recipes—my communication style with each individual coworker—and now I had to do it all over again.

But while coworkers don’t come with recipe cards, thankfully in my company they do at least come with Attuned Intrinsic Motivator Reports.

The Inside Track

Understanding what motivates someone ties back to what they value in a work context, and how they recognize effort in others. If you’re motivated by Competition, for example, you will likely enjoy challenging yourself against others, and you may well mistake a colleague’s lack of interest in competitive situations as apathy or laziness, rather than because they are motivated by something else. This is called an Interpersonal Motivator Gap or blindspot, something that can often be a source of miscommunication or unnecessary friction.

So back to me! I’m new to the market, making some mistakes here and there while trying to write ‘recipes’ for each of my new coworkers. And there was one person in particular that I was struggling to establish a rhythm with. We were already on good terms, but we’d only spoken a few times, so I hardly knew anything about her (and vice versa). To top it off, I kept coming back to her week after week with bad news. All of the searches I’d done for her had come back with a big fat zero, and while I didn’t want her to feel neglected, I was also struggling with the best way to approach her. Essentially, I was just looking for common ground before we could start the hard work of figuring out how to crack this particular market.

So I decided to take a closer look at her Intrinsic Motivator Report and make some notes.

Identifying Motivational Differences

One of the first things that I noticed is that we had contrasting needs around Innovation. This is not a significant motivator for me at all, but it’s a ‘Need-to-have’ for my coworker. To put it another way, I’m less inclined to look for new ways of doing things and generally prefer to rely on tried-and-true methods, while she is the opposite.

Once I realized that we were probably coming at things from different directions due to this Interpersonal Motivator Gap, it occurred to me that I could try brainstorming some novel strategies with my coworker. Not only would this likely unearth new possibilities around how I should approach this tricky market, but it would also be more aligned with her way of working.

Finding Common Ground

Another thing I noticed from comparing our Reports was that we were both highly motivated by Social Relationships. This one immediately gave me an idea of how to execute my plan—I asked her to lunch! Not to talk about work per se, just to hang out and get to know each other. Not everyone needs to be friendly and develop relationships with their coworkers, but I figured this would be a good way of reaching out in a way she’d appreciate, and something that was probably missing as we’d rarely had the chance to socialize previously.

So we went to lunch! (Well, actually, we were in different countries, so we went to a video lunch!)

Over a video call and takeout we traded restaurant recommendations, talked about our families, and got to know each other. Eventually, the topic naturally transitioned to work, with her giving me some great feedback, and both of us chatting about ways that I could be more innovative in my searches.

The very next week, that zero-response rate from my searches climbed up to one—which doesn’t sound like a lot, but after so long at zero, it was a relief let me tell you!

The market changes week to week, as do our strategies, but it’s great to know that she’s someone who doesn’t mind—and even appreciates—spending time with me to help generate new ideas for a difficult search. It’s also helped me feel more at ease to come to her during the week, and made for less awkwardness and miscommunication when we speak—plus I now know I can ask her to lunch anytime!

A Recipe for Success

If you already use Attuned (and you’re not a manager), chances are your own Motivator Report might be the only one you’ve read, and even then you may not remember all of it off-hand. But I really can’t stress enough how helpful it is to have a reference point for understanding a colleague’s motivation, as well as their work and communication styles (and, crucially, how they differ from your own). And with Attuned’s recently released My Motivators Page, it couldn’t be any easier.

So if you’re trying to get a handle on that coworker you just can’t figure out, the newbie in your office, or the team in the other department that you collaborate with all the time but never quite click with, my advice would be to ditch the trial and error and check their Intrinsic Motivator Reports—I’ll bet it’s the ingredient you need to help you craft a recipe for smooth communication.

Bon appetit!