Observing

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The best communicators are also good at observing and interpreting nonverbal communications. (As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot by watching.") For example, by reading nonverbal cues, a presenter can determine how her talk is going and adjust her approach if necessary. Some companies train their sales forces to interpret the nonverbal signals of potential customers. People can decode nonverbal signals to determine whether a sender is being truthful or deceitful. Deceitful communicators tend to maintain less eye contact, make either more or fewer body movements than usual, and smile either too much or too little. Verbally, they offer fewer specifics than do truthful senders.81

A vital source of useful observations comes from personally visiting people, plants, and other sites to get a firsthand view.82 Many corporate executives rely heavily on reports from the field and don't travel to remote locations to observe firsthand what is going on. Reports are no substitute for actually seeing things happen in practice. Frequent visits to the field and careful observation can help a manager develop deeper understanding of current operations, future prospects, and ideas for how to exploit capabilities fully.83 Tools like the Rapid Plant Assessment are available for visiting managers to evaluate a plant's performance on such factors as safety, scheduling, teamwork, and inventory.84

Of course, you must accurately interpret what you observe. An American employee working at Razorfish in Shanghai was surprised to discover how much he was expected to socialize with his Chinese boss. Beyond attending occasional happy hours and lunches, the employee observed: "In China, it's really expected that you become friends with your boss and you go out and socialize in a way that doesn't happen in the U.S."85

Japanese are skilled at interpreting every nuance of voice and gesture, putting most Westerners at a disadvantage.86 When one is conducting business in other countries, local guides can be invaluable not only to interpret language but to decode behavior at meetings, spot subtle hints and nonverbal cues, identify who the key people are, and tell you how the decision-making process operates.