A Discussion of Workplace Misunderstandings
It is a fact of life that if human beings communicate with each other, at times there are bound to be some misunderstandings. Even with our “higher level” reasoning capabilities and “intelligence,” we are not smart enough to always get our point across to another human without sometimes having “crossed wires” and hurt feelings. This paper will discuss two such episodes that I personally encountered in the workplace. I will discuss how the misunderstanding occurred as well as what I learned from the experiences.
Did you call me irresponsible?
In my current job, I work as a supervisor of tech support personnel for a wireless service provider in an inbound call center. Recently I had a customer that called in at around 3 a.m. and demanded to speak to a supervisor because his device had been lost and he wanted to order a new device. We were willing to make an exception to accommodate him even though he was not eligible for an upgrade, however the customer did not have a credit card with which to pay for the order and was not eligible to bill the order to his account due to his very poor payment history (he had two returned checks within 90 days and his service had been temporarily disconnected for non-payment four times within the past year). As I attempted to explain to the customer that our options were limited and I would not be able to override the inability to bill to account, he asked me to put myself “in his shoes” and understand that “I make my money the same way you do. I’m just a working guy, and if you were in this situation, you would want an exception made.” My response was, “Sir, as a working guy, I too have to ensure that I pay my bill on time in order to keep my account in good standing, and since that hasn’t happened on your account, the system has prevented you from being able to bill to the account.” The customer’s response was a very irate, “Did you just call me irresponsible?”
What really happened?
In this case, the customer and I were communicating via the verbal communication channel. In the portion of the conversation where the misunderstanding occurred, I was the Sender and my customer was the Receiver. The misunderstanding occurred when the customer felt insulted by my response to his attempt to gain my sympathy to his plight and resulted in the customer escalating beyond me, to the next level of management. The misunderstanding could have been avoided by me responding differently to his plea. For example, rather than engage the customer by trying to rationalize his statement, which was based solely in emotion and intended to get me to feel sorry for him (even though the situation was of his own creation), I should have made it a point to bring the conversation back to the pure facts. Those facts were: a) I was willing to make an accommodation to allow him to upgrade his line although he was technically not eligible; b) there was no way to make a further exception, to allow him to bill a purchase to his account because there is no way to bypass the system; c) he could pay for the order the next morning in a store location with cash. As the sender, it was ultimately my responsibility to explain to him why we would not be able to accommodate his request.
Did you just kiss me?
Another misunderstanding I experienced in the workplace took place several years ago at a previous job. I was the Operations Manager for a national computer retailer and I had just gone over with one of my employees his annual performance review. He had really done well the previous year and I had just told him that he was getting a raise. The employee was very happy as he left my office, and in the hallway outside of my office he ran into another one of our employees, a young lady who had been his coworker in the department for about 6 months. In his happiness at his good fortune, he felt compelled to hug the young lady and give her a kiss on the cheek. She did not at all share his enthusiasm, and her response was a shocked utterance of, “Did you just kiss me? How DARE you?”
What really happened?
In this incident, the sender was the young male employee and the recipient was the female. The channel of communication was physical touch and the misunderstanding came about when the young lady misconstrued the expression of happiness of this fellow as sexual harassment. I had witnessed the entire episode, which lasted all of 5 seconds. Although I sincerely feel he simply made a very poor decision in how to express his happiness, the incident was very clearly sexual harassment and (rightfully so) absolutely not tolerated by the company. I had no choice but to terminate the young man’s job. This unfortunate incident could have been avoided by the young man maintaining decorum and keeping his emotions in check.
Conclusion
Although the customer was approaching me from an emotional standpoint in the first situation, I could have prevented the further escalation by removing the emotion by returning to the facts of the conversation. Although the young man was emotional about getting a raise, he should have contained his enthusiasm and greeted his coworker in a way other than a hug and a kiss.
In retrospect, emotion played a major role in both of the incidents discussed and is what fundamentally caused the misunderstandings. When we allow emotion to enter into our communication we greatly increase the likelihood that the message will be misunderstood. The sender has a responsibility to make every effort to remove emotion from the communication to help assure that the message is well received.