In a previous article “The Foundation,” I wrote about Clientek’s culture. I discussed how honesty, openness, and creativity are all vital components of how we operate and succeed. One of the key challenges I addressed was flattening the language and culture barrier. However, I think I missed one other challenge that is worth mentioning, what I dub as bridging the enlightenment barrier.
When we onboard new or refresh seasoned resources with the Clientek secret sauce we occasionally observe what could be considered as resistance. Rarely is it actual resistance but rather an indication of a lack of transparency, openness, or honesty on our part. Our default approach to resolving this gap relies on our knowledge that people want and desire to excel. Therefore, the responsibility of this thought-provoking experience is that of those leading the communication. It is our responsibility to reflect and refine on the delivery, process, and the content itself to ensure the bridging of this enlightenment gap.
This responsibility for clarity and enlightenment is important whether we are training new resources on our process, communicating with our internal teams, or conversing with a customer to gain a common understanding. The information and process being discussed must be mutually understood.
It is not good enough to communicate something and expect that those consuming the information understood it. It is also not realistic to expect that just because someone says they understand something that they understand it in the way you intended.
Anyone that delivers information or knowledge must also be capable of consuming it. Delivery and consumption must be done with the same passion of curiosity and patience in understanding.
Curiosity
When we deliver information, we must consider how it will be received. By considering our audience’s history, culture, personality, etc., we can tailor both the content and its delivery. We must have the same curiosity about our audience as we desire from them when receiving the information. This means we need to ask questions to provoke questions.
Regular evaluation of someone’s outputs while they are underway provides us the opportunity to hone our communications. We gain insights on how our communication was received and where the delivered information or approach may need adjustment. This process of inquisitiveness teaches the person receiving the information to have the same curiosity.
Patience
It would be an absurd for anyone to assume that people make mistakes on purpose or set out to disappoint or underachieve. Without mistakes individuals don’t grow and the reality is there would be no problems to solve if mistakes were never made. Our goal is to help people learn quickly. This means we need to have patience and allow people to make mistakes, including ourselves. As noted above, iterative inspection allows us to mitigate the impact of mistakes and sets both parties on the quickest learning path.
Enlightenment
So, when is enlightenment achieved? Fully, never. Once we can come to terms with that fact, we have entered enlightenment. Sprinkle in a little bit of humility, a touch of passion and intelligence (and the taste of the month), and you have the secret to Clientek’s secret sauce.