Curiosity (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

7

How to Avoid Common Miscommunications at Work

By Marsha Acker

Do you ever feel like you’re having the same conversations over and over again at work? Chances are, you’re experiencing a breakdown in communication.

While we all know that clear communication is needed to successfully collaborate with our managers and team members, it’s often one of the most difficult skills to master for someone new to the workforce. Why? Because many of us tend to assume that other people see and experience things the same way we do.¹

Researcher and systems psychologist David Kantor offers a key principle that can help us overcome this bias in our thinking.² He came up with a theory known as structural dynamics, which describes how face-to-face communication ...