Talk To Me

It’s been a busy period of late, and both my partner and I have been spending a lot of time travelling and working. Consequently household chores have taken a bit of a back seat.  Last night we had one of those typical domestic conversations that I’m sure all couples have, about who has been creating all the mess, and who doing all the cleaning up.  As I’m sure you’ll have experienced from similar situations, we each reported remarkably different perceptions!   I am happy to report that the issue was speedily and peaceably resolved without recourse to a UN Arbitration Mission, and the place is once again looking moderately spic and span.

Do the Maths

I was immediately reminded of a recent similar situation in a corporate environment, albeit on a much larger scale.  I had been asked by a medium-sized company to help them develop a better culture of Internal Customer Service.  As part of my usual preparation I sent out a brief survey in advance of the sessions, to get a snapshot of current attitudes.  It went out to around 60 employees. Two of the key questions they were asked to score were:

  1. “I and my immediate colleagues go out of our way to help other departments”
  2. “Other departments make it easy for me/my section to do my/its job well.”

On analysing the data, the first of these was scored at an average of around 80%, and the second at around 55%.   So more or less everyone felt they were offering considerably more help and support than they were getting back.  Now, I’m no mathematician, but even I can work out that in a closed system, this can’t be physically possible.   

Mutual Support

Presenting this information back to them proved a wonderful launching pad for conversations about the gap between intention and perception. Realising that there was no one objective truth, but that everyone felt much the same, was the first step towards improving communication and creating a better understanding of each others’ needs, so that everyone could start to feel truly, mutually, supported. The journey to better internal customer service had begun…

 

Creative Facilitation

Sometimes people just need a space to talk to each other, in order to solve workplace issues.  Creative Facilitation from Let’s Talk can offer the support you need to enable true communication between people and/or departments. Click here for further information.

Then contact me.

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