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November Tool : Communicating on the right 'Wavelength'
Do you sometimes get the feeling that when speaking with those around you that you are carrying on a number of simultaneous conversations that may be mutually exclusive?
If so, then you are not on what may be called 'the same wavelength'! As a business owner, who is active in your business, you are likely to operate at 4 relatively distinct levels. Each has quite different motivators and/or drivers that can and do limit how they interact with the other levels (or roles) in the business.
The intrinsic motivators/drivers for these 4 roles can be defined (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) as:
Owner - at its most basic level, the key motivator and driver of a business owner is to generate money from the business/es they own. Otherwise, why would you risk your capital/time?
Director - they are put in place by the owner to oversee the business and protect their interests. Therefore, the key motivator/driver of a Director is to make money for the owner (i.e. meet the owners' key motivator) and keep the business viable for the future benefit of the owner.
Manager - are put in by the Directors to oversee the day-to-day operations of the business. When boiled down to the core - for a manager the key driver is to keep their job; i.e. if they do not perform - they can and usually do get the sack/fired . . . sooner or later!
Worker - frankly, for your 'average' worker the reason they work is to earn money to live the life they have. Admittedly, as skill level increases workers tend to gain other motivators but their core driver is still the necessity of getting money by working.
The tricky bit is that as an active business owner who is working in the other 3 roles (to a lesser or greater extent) the lines between the 4 roles do blur over time and you end up mentally being in all 4 roles pretty much all the time! The consequence of this is that when speaking with the other people in your business (who are fixed in one role only) you tend to start blurring the lines between these roles and this results in stress all-round as you 'connect' only some of the time with their role.
For example, if a business owner told a worker:
' . . . I am not happy, last year we made only $250,000 profit and I want to see $500,000 this year. We have to work harder . . . '.
What sort of response would the typical worker, who is paid maybe $45-55,000 p.a., have when confronted with this? I suspect their thought may be 'What a w-nker!' if they even have any connection at all. Alternatively, if the owner said that same thing to a Director then they would have a much more intimate understanding of what is at stake. Whereas, if the same thing was said to a manager there would be more connection that with a worker but less that that achieved with a director.
This can be seen when we map the connection level between these roles:
