Lecture

Communication describes the transmission of ideas between or among persons in a language common to both or all. That kind of communication forms a basic ingredient of sound team leadership. In recent years, Christian leaders have become increasingly aware of the significance of solid communication theory in developing satisfactory witnesses for the gospel.

The whole idea of recognizing the dynamics which come into play when Christian leaders communicate leads us to recognize that we do all of these things all of the time without thinking about them, and that may be part of our problem. The process of communication can fall into carelessness. Many of the problems we face today in the evangelical community result from a breakdown in communication between or among people. If we want to repair that and move ahead further, then team leaders have to understand the communication process itself.

I’ve always like the Ely model of communication. You’ve perhaps seen that before. Donald Ely wrote, “There is nothing quite so wonderful as a good idea. There is nothing so tragic as a good idea which cannot be communicated.” And he develops a model which focuses on the source and the process of encoding and decoding. Let me talk about some of those things briefly.

The source of an idea in person-to-person communication begins in the mind of the communicator. The thought is transmitted to the thought patterns of another; in a teaching situation, the source is the mind of a teacher and the message is the content that the teacher wants to communicate. In a very real sense, the ultimate source of the Christian’s message is not the mind of the teacher but the mind of God. He has revealed Himself through His Word, and now we study the Word and communicate it to other people. But communication goes nowhere without encoding.

When a message has been decided upon, it has to be verbalized or symbolized in some way so it can be communicated to other people. Encoding is not all verbal. As any good leader knows, in most forms of human communication it will consist largely of verbalization, but it could also include visualization. Think about sign language, for example.

In communication people don’t always say what they mean, and they don’t always mean what they say. Sometimes we wonder whether our ideas can be encoded verbally; we say things like “I know what I want to say, but I can’t explain it to you.” If you’re going to say that very often, you’re going to have struggles in leadership, because communication is a major leadership skill. We have to figure out ways to encode, and when we encode, people decode. Encoding is futile unless it’s accompanied by the adequate process or an adequate process of decoding. When decoding works, the message is received, comprehended. Decoding is inseparably related to encoding. A word must be heard, a picture must be seen, the succulent aroma of sizzling steaks must be smelled. Our sensory experiences play an important part in both encoding and decoding.

Two things rise significant here. First, if we want people to understand us, we make pains to encode our messages clearly, and we must be somewhat confident that the receiver has the wherewithal to decode. Now how foolish to speak to a young child in Russian if we know in advance that he speaks only English. You can encode anything you want to and say it as loud as you want to, but you can forget any kind of decoding. It’s not going to happen. Sometimes defective decoding results from problems other than the failures of encoding and the receiver’s inability to understand the language of the message. One common flaw comes from the negatively charged, emotional climate in the communication process—a husband who wishes to speak seriously with his wife about some matter doesn’t begin the conversation by complaining about his supper or condemning his mother-in-law.

What about the receiver—the person for whom the message is intended? It may be an individual. It may be a group. It may be a congregation. It may be a leadership team. It doesn’t matter. The principles of communication do not change. If team leaders want to motivate followers to action, they have to go through basically the same process of encoding and decoding the counselor uses when helping a client understand and solve personal problems.

And then there’s feedback. A major process distinction between preaching and counseling is feedback. Maybe the distinction between preaching and teaching is feedback as well. Every preacher gets feedback. People smile. They may say “Amen.” They may yawn; look at a watch. Get up and walk out. That’s all feedback. Maybe nonverbal, but feedback—verbal or nonverbal—tells us what is happening in the communication process. And it helps leaders interpret whether or not receivers have understood and internalized the message. We need to find out whether we’re getting through. When Mom says, “Johnny, didn’t you hear me?” she’s asking for feedback. When the classroom teacher asks for questions, it’s a solicitation of feedback. Team leaders who suggest an innovative idea and then keep ears open for the next two weeks to gather comments—negative or positive—are sensitive to feedback and will be rewarded for efforts and improving and refining the idea.

How much feedback you really want relates to your philosophy of leadership. The autocrat speaks and wants everybody to listen; wants everybody to do what he asks without question. “Can you hear me? Do it!” Team leaders are sensitive to what people think, concerned whether or not their purposes and actions are properly understood by the group. Clark and Clark say, “Stereotypes about being in charge interfere with communication between persons of different status. A suggestion from a superior to change behavior produces a sizeable emotional response that impedes communication.”

Then there is the field of experience. Communication does not take place in a vacuum. We dare not think of it as words encoded by a source and decoded by a receiver. The total context or environment in which any message is given or received consists of more than words and ideas. It’s a veritable matrix of human relationships. Field of experience may refer to how much the receiver understands. We wouldn’t teach a Sunday school lesson in advanced eschatology to five- and six-year-olds, I would hope. Their background and learning level wouldn’t be ready for that. A wife who spends a hundred dollars for a new dress may discover after a few weeks of married life that her husband’s reaction to such news may be more favorable after an evening out together. We could also speak of field of experience in ecological significance. People act upon and are acted upon by their environment, and that environment may be a room. It may describe a social-cultural framework in which all of us live. Broadly, it’s the entire global situation.

So the effective team leader takes all these factors into consideration. We realize that the receiver’s mind consists not only of internal life, sin, worry, and frustration, but also the mass communications that permeate society today.

Now let’s talk about the messages of communication a bit. Someone has pointed out the wide diversity of information which can enter the communication process and called them messages. And they differ from element to element. It’s a cyclical pattern which repeats itself over and over as it passes these distortion points. There is, for example, what the source intends to say. You can be the source in this illustration if you’d like. The message originates in your mind. Assuming that you have some understanding what you want to convey to other people, you frame a sequence of words or symbols which will serve as the transportation vehicle for your ideas, so you encode and at this point the message is known only to you. None of us know what you’re going to say because you haven’t said anything yet. And then you speak, and we have the next landmine if you will, what the source actually says. Unfortunately, what you intend to say and what you actually say may not accurately offer a glimpse at the reality of this problem. Who among us has not had to say, “Oh, I didn’t mean that. That didn’t come out just the way I wanted it to.” We’re only in the second stage of communication. The message has been subjected to the possibility of distortion because the mouth is not always an accurate channel for the mind.

And then you have, third, what the source has said. When we do not take into proper consideration the hearer’s field of experience, the emotional state in which these people find themselves as you talk to them, we create further difficulties for communication. Many arguments, I think, in the family begin right on this point. She argues that he said a certain thing, and he argues that he never said any such thing. Who’s right? If we don’t have some kind of written record or a tape recording or a video or a third-party witness, it’s a draw. The communication process expects vulnerability toward distortion of the message, and so we’re careful about what we say and we’re careful about whether we have said what we intended to say. So far nobody’s responded. You’ve spoken. You’ve thought about it. You’ve spoken, and you’re considering what you said. Now the receiver wants to hear something. This is a fourth level.

A counselee listening to a counselor offers some possible alternatives to the problem may very well already have in mind the kind of answers he wants to hear. They may be so firmly entrenched that whatever the counselor says, the counselee goes away thinking he heard a different solution. Two students may sit in the class. Later they discuss the lecture; they’re surprised to find out they have different notes; they heard different things. They got a different interpretation. The teacher said exactly the same thing to both of them. I mean, it was the same paragraph, but their interpretation is different. Every hearer brings to a communication situation some expectation of what you will hear, and we frame this expectation by our own personal desires or maybe by the prompting of another or maybe by the reputation of the speaker or a lot of other things.

Then we have what the receiver hears. It’s possibly and even probable that the original message in the mind of the source, that’s you, and what you say and what you think you said and what the receiver wants to hear may all be different from what the receiver actually hears. We want to believe that what we say and what they hear must be the same. I mean, there’s only one set of words or symbols involved, but that conclusion fails to take into consideration all of the variables in the encoding/decoding process. What the receiver hears is colored by what he wants to hear, and what he understands about the subject being dealt with and by the pattern and make-up of his own mind. Sometimes even the basic words themselves don’t get through. How much more problematic meaning which those words convey. Remember, words are only vehicles to carry thoughts, and that’s where we get into the problem. It’s not the word. It’s the meaning that we’re after.

And then, finally, what the receiver thinks he hears. The same problem of confusion we discussed above enters in here. When you say something and you’re trying to work with a person on your leadership team, and you’ve routed a business order or that person has routed a business order in the wrong direction and then comes to you and says, “But sir, I distinctly understood you to say that . . .” and then you hear what you were supposedly supposed to say. Want to be careful about that. In fact, you want to be careful about all these points. They’re all very crucial.

If all six version of the message can be harmonized, then communication proceeds in good shape. Feedback, however, provides the built-in control factor which lets us know whether the messages have gone on through the same wavelength. All team leaders have to recognize the points at which misunderstanding may enter the communication process. You need to keep a constant vigil against distortions of your message, especially if you want interpersonal relationships to be carried on smoothly.

How can you improve your communication? Let’s look first of all at leadership situations. Avoid verbal instructions if possible or when necessary. And it’s not possible all the time, but when possible use written memos, email, voicemail. Use informal settings to facilitate dialog. Try to break down the barrier that sometimes exists between a leader and the team. Use careful planning. Before any group presentation, a pastor confronting the board with a building project, for example, should have carefully thought through how all of this will affect the budget, how he’ll make the presentation, what questions he might hear. Try to speak to small groups whenever possible. You get the opportunity for feedback, for one thing, and we enhance communication by limiting the size of the group.

Know your audience. Understand your team. Speak directly to them. Know your subject matter. Don’t bluff your way through presentations. Try to establish rapport with people. Spend time with them. Know and understand their problems and needs. Demonstrate interest and Christian love in them as persons, and be sincere. Genuine sincerity can cover and atone for a multitude of technical errors, and often this depends upon the love the team leader brings to the group.

But there’s also communication in personal relationships. Some guidelines: be friendly, polite, considerate. Don’t be cold. Don’t be overbearing. Above all, don’t be offensive. Cultivate the practice of listening. This is important for feedback, but it’s also important just for courtesy. Like the praying of the Pharisees, the leader is not heard because he talks a lot. Use positive words in speaking with people. Don’t use offensive terms. Don’t call teenagers children. Be careful with gender-offensive language. I don’t even need to talk about ethnic slurs; that’s so obvious. Give praise whenever possible. Honest praise, not flowery speech. Cute expressions and showy words may put off some people who would see you as an insecure person trying to dress up an ineffective presentation.

Avoid jargon. Don’t overwhelm others with technical gobbledygook. You know that would have been possible in this tape, or on all of these tapes. I mean, there is enough technical jargon stuff in leadership study that I could have made this . . . let’s make this post-doctrina- level stuff and talk only in the language of some of the most technical management books we can get our hands on. What’s the point? We’re not trying to overwhelm people with technical terms. We’re trying to get them to understand what we’re saying in the given situation.

Avoid ambiguity. This problem is a lot like the one above. The ability to live with ambiguity marks a philosopher, but if you want to be an effective leader, as well as a good philosopher, then speak clearly and distinctly.

Demonstrate clearly your dependence on and expectation of results. When you encourage people to do something, make sure they know exactly what it is you want them to do and when you want them to do it. Listen carefully to feedback. See if anything the receiver says or does will help you understand him better and enable you to communicate more effectively.

Now I’m going to move on from these sort of basic foundational ideas to a look at human needs as the basis for effective communication. A leader’s position in the organization provides a greater responsibility, I think, toward developing positive human relations through a proper use of interpersonal communication. One outstanding psychologist has indicated that “a person’s usefulness is enhanced proportionately as his linkages with life multiply.” So these multiple relationships which a leader maintains, which you maintain with your leadership team, depends upon your ability to keep tabs on all the variable factors which sustain those relationships, and obviously this is a lot dependent also upon face-to-face interaction. In the realm of Christian ministry, there’s the vertical relationship with the Lord which comes before the horizontal relationships.

We understand people’s needs. We must understand people’s needs. Part of the problem many leaders face in effective human relations is the very driving nature of their own personalities. Effective leaders often demonstrate a high level of personal accomplishment. They’ve learned ways to get things done. They achieve goals. They obtain results. They maintain reign on their own time. So they frequently appear to subordinates and others as cold, calculating, unapproachable.

That kind of image immediately puts them at a disadvantage in developing satisfying relationships through interpersonal communications.

Now what are the needs of people? We’ve talked about them—sense of belonging, sharing in planning, clear understanding of what is expected, genuine responsibility and challenge, desire for recognition, reasonable degree of security. These are just human needs. You need them; I need them. And we understand that communication is based on our ability to grasp and speak to these human needs.

Interpersonal and intrapersonal relations, dynamic forces which operate within human personality have profound effects upon our interactions with other people on the team. Obviously intrapersonal relations describe the phenomena existing within us—feeling, thinking, expressing. Interpersonal relations focus on our visible encounters and interaction within the organization with other people. In one sense, we could say that there is no communication without the interpersonal dimension since mutuality forms a basic ingredient, but the inner factors of personal equilibrium influence the communication process. We place meanings on words as we listen to another’s communication through that person’s grid of emotional and social and religious and political prejudices.

How do we structure for communication? The desirability of breaking up leadership responsibility into smaller units relates to the process of communication and decision making. This is decentralization again, touching all of the bases. A parachurch ministry director, for example, might decide to create a climate of openness and mutually happy interpersonal relations among the staff. One of his objects for the year might be regular staff meetings which follow a carefully prepared agenda; they explore mutual concerns.

Another objective might be to spend time individually with each member of the leadership team, attempting to build through those counseling sessions a spirit of rapport. Well, we ought not call them counseling sessions, let’s just call them sessions. A spirit of rapport and mutual exchange of ideas. As we become more specific in delineating goals for those gatherings, then we consider our roles as listeners, how we respond to questions, how open we are in providing necessary information, and those kinds of important things.

Some experts argue that communication is relative to the centrality of a person in a group. People on the periphery, they suggest, tend to be negative and contribute less to the solution of group of problems. Obviously in a centralized bureaucracy, there are many people in the periphery. Decentralization secures an increasing involvement of personnel.

How does communication relate to motivation? If mutuality and simultaneity are really crucial factors in the communication process, then no two people can meet without transmitting and reacting to signals of some kind. Communication of A depends on B’s response and vice versa. This concept is important. Sometimes leaders think about only the motivating role of communication. They see it as a one-way street. They want to drive their trucks and information from the front office and dump that information on the waiting people. Here it comes; more is coming. Trucks are still rolling. And when that happens and when people don’t respond to it, leaders sometimes become hostile. They accuse people of lacking loyalty, and they feel threatened.

But we’re concerned primarily with the development of positive human relations and motivation in the Christian organization. And communication is only one of the dimensions of that relationship environment. Speaking and listening are tools which leaders use to build a climate of receptivity and warm human interaction, and when the organization is also an organism, the relations of body members one to another may be just as important, even more important than the productivity of the collective congregation. So when we take that kind of view of communication, clarity is no longer the only important factor. See where all of this going? We’ve been talking about clarity in communication. Oh sure, that’s important. What use of it if no one understands you, but it’s not the only issue. Courtesy comes in; civility comes in. Because leaders recognize all communication generates feelings, and there’s no way you’re going to motivate people if your communication is developing bad feelings. Scriptures say a “great peace have they who love your law. Nothing can make them stumble,” but it certainly obviously not to our advantage to push that passage to unwarranted extremes. Leaders need to develop capability to walk alone when necessary but also guard against making self-dependency some kind of obsession.

How about avoiding communication breakdown? If that also means breakdown in human relations, and it can, then we have to be very careful that the problems we might encounter will be too much for us. Experts tell us that the loss in communication can be measured primarily in factors such as foggy detail, a distortion of words, retention of emotional concepts, and so on. So in that process (I know I use that word a lot, but that’s the best word to describe an ongoing system of happenings), certain central ideas sometimes hang on whereas obscure, misunderstood concepts fade into greater ambiguity. So we emphasize the centrality of important ideas.

We look for comprehension, not memorization. Any good college teacher has come to grips with the relationship between knowing and understanding. John 17 has that wonderful concept of being in the world and yet not of the world. Because the church is in the world, it finds itself both doing battle with and under compulsion to use the systems of the world’s culture. So Paul writes to the church at Rome and warns its people against the pagan idolatry all around them, and yet claims Roman citizenship in order to make a desired visit to that city. Maybe that’s what the Lord meant when He said, “Be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.” So we live within a society without becoming a part of it, and it’s difficult and somehow we recognize that biblical separation represents neither isolation nor insolation from the culture.

There are six characteristics I want to dump in right here which supposedly mark a person who recognizes that communication with others in the organization is especially crucial to the survival of his leadership and the ongoing productivity of the organization. In other words, if you really believe that effective communication is a live-or-die deal for you, then pay attention because if you do, you will do the following or not do the following, as the case may be. Number one says don’t play the role of manipulator. When somebody in an organization constantly uses others to serve his own ends, or perhaps even the ends of the organization, he will soon find himself without a leadership role.

Second, be willing to pay the price. I’ve talked about that some already. In some research . . . I can’t come up with the name right now, but it’s not important. Let me just say in general research has discovered that almost every person of a work group (or that particular work group that was studied) wanted to be leader because of the obvious rewards of leadership,

but few wanted to be leaders badly enough to assume the enormous responsibility and workload that leaders carry. So they’re saying, “Oh sure, I’ll be a leader,” and then the discover what it is and then say, “Forget that.”

Number three is talk of the quiet, reticent member of the group is rarely chosen as leader because it doesn’t appear that she has sufficient interest in the group. On the other hand, it’s not the quantity of words which makes the difference, but the clarity of the group objectives and the leader’s seeming ability to help the group achieve those objectives.

Number four, do your homework. Members who emerge as leaders have sensible, practical ideas, and they state them clearly. Number five, give credit to others. Most people are not interested in working toward the glory of their leader, but they seem quite willing to work their own glory, and we have to recognize that human feeling whether we consider it to be proper or not, and they’re willing to work for the glory of the group, and we hope in a Christian organization they are willing to work for the glory of Lord. Hey, that ought to be enough. They don’t need to work our glory. You know, that old idea about making the boss look good. Well, quite frankly, that’s exactly what happens, but that’s certainly not the way you want to try to motivate people. “Hey, make me look good.”

Number six, raise the status of other members. People who emerge as leaders compliment others when the latter do something for the good of all. They’re honestly disinterested in whether they emerge at the top of the pecking order, as long as the team does well.

One warning in closing: effective communication patterns are not achieved overnight. We discipline ourselves to perform satisfactorily in all these various aspects and elements of the process. We learn to listen rather than talk. We learn to speak rather than mumble. Rather depending upon other people’s efforts to make sense of what we say, we learn to convey our ideas accurately. We take the responsibility for the transfer of meaning that is communication. Effective communication is not a desirable element for leaders; it’s an essential element for leaders. And it’s not just for leaders. All Christians have to learn to speak to other people. Ely says, “Where does one start?” Well, start where you are. Start with what you have. You can do no more, but as a Christian communicator, you can do no less.