Intent vs Impact: How Do You Communicate?

How do you communicate? What can you do to improve the effectiveness of your communication?

People thrive on communication; introverted, extroverted, verbal, and nonverbal, we all need to be able to communicate with one another in order to survive and succeed. Though sometimes, things get lost in translation. Your intent, the way in which you are communicating, doesn’t necessarily send the messages and signals that help to achieve your desired goals, the impact.

Intent vs. impact is not uncommon in human interaction. People can hear things via their own filters, and messages can become misunderstood. So what happens when your attempts at communication go a bit awry? When your intent doesn’t match up with the intended impact?

Part of being a successful communicator is being able to identify these potential situations. Identifying these situations starts with awareness and understanding. It is important to try and understand the other parties’ point of view, possible filters, and the way in which they may see and hear things. You must adapt your style and messaging in order to maintain positive communication and strong relationships.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw

This is especially true when it comes to workplace communication in the business world. And there’s no sector of the working world to which communication skills are more critical than for those in leadership positions. A good leader successfully communicates with their employees, building trust, creating understanding, raising awareness, and engaging them – guiding them to achieve the company’s goals – as well as their own. The results of a flexible and positive communication strategy affect both the long-term sustainability and the immediate success of an organization.

Clear communication can lead to:

An open dialogue and effective transfer of ideas. This can contribute to finding the best possible solutions for success and increase high performance.

An open and clear communication strategy can boost employee morale, which helps increase the rate of employee engagement and retention. This improves the overall employee experience and increases performance, profits, and long term sustainability.

Enhance Your Communication

However workplace communication often gets messed up – the wrong thing gets said or the right thing gets said in the wrong way – intent vs. impact. Often nothing gets said – or heard – at all. Not having communication awareness as a leader can be extremely detrimental. It negatively impacts an organization’s ability to achieve success through people! A lot of communication mishaps come down to this one issue: intent versus impact.

Someone in a leadership position communicates something to an employee but does so in a manner that doesn’t consider the potential impact of what they’re saying and how it’s being said. Or how the employee receives the message. We’ve all had that leader (or peer, or friend, or partner) who we know had the best intentions (or at least we gave the benefit of the doubt), but they communicated those intentions in a way that may have been conflicting, terrifying, and unclear. Thus our feelings and responses to the message resulted in the opposite of what they actually intended. And when we as human beings receive the impact as negative, it shuts us down. In the workplace, it also shuts your employees down. They can feel unheard, uninvolved in the decision process, unappreciated in what they do, and uncertain as to their purpose in the organization.

So how can you avoid making these little mistakes?

Think Personal: in order to build trust, leaders need to have an understanding of the people they’re actually leading. Understanding and trust go hand in hand. This means making an effort to understand employees as people, not just drones. It’s important to try and understand who your employees actually are, and what experiences and situations may have led them to hear and see things, via the filters and lenses they do. This will help you determine how they respond to certain things enabling you to flex your communication strategy to create a relationship that will lead to success.

Listen with an Open Mind: If you’re a successful leader or an entrepreneur, you probably achieved your success because you had brilliant ideas and were terrific in the job you did, you also probably have a leg up on effective communication practices. But that doesn’t mean you know everything. So listen to your employees. Be open to new ideas and suggestions. Be open to feedback. Be willing to keep an open mind and remain flexible. This is especially critical when you’re working with a diverse workforce.

Own up to Your Mistakes: When it comes to communication, mistakes and misreads are inevitable. But be prepared to manage the conflict. If something you said is perceived in a way you think you didn’t intend then check-in and ask the receiver. If they ask for further clarification, provide it, and check-in again. If in fact, they inform you that the message was not received in the way intended, ask why then flex your communication style based on their feedback and try yet again. Often, sometimes an “I’m sorry” goes a long way for building trusted relationships and resolving communication conflicts. Learn from your mistakes and adapt for the future.

Communication Offerings

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” -Tony Robbins

When you’re leading any group of people, you’ve got to understand how to communicate with a given audience and within a given situation to be most effective. Truth, no two people or organizations are identical, and thus neither are their communication strategies. So you must flex and adapt. However, all in all, clarifying intent vs. impact and developing good communication skills and strategies is a key to success in business – and life (just ask my spouse)!

About Scott Span, MSOD, CSM: is CEO at Tolero Solutions. As a people strategist, leadership coach, and change and transformation specialist, his work is focused on people. Through his consulting and training work he supports clients to survive and thrive through change and transition and create people-focused cultures and a great employee experience. Through his coaching work, he supports people willing to dig deeper to identify and overcome what’s holding them back, change behaviors, accelerate performance and achieve their goals.

Intent vs Impact: How Do You Communicate for Success?

So how can you avoid making these little mistakes?