Professional Development

This past December 2008, our company held an 'all-hands' meeting day. Basically, we all came together in our main office in Houston to get together before the holiday vacations and do a little internal training and networking.

I gave a presentation to all our consultants about professional development. While I believe there was interest in the topic, I think the presentation was received with bewilderment and a collective "huh?".

Have you ever volunteered for something and then been given the list of expectations after-the-fact (kinda like signing up to send out the church volunteer schedule only to find out that you are really responsible for managing the entire schedule - from finding the volunteers to facilitating communications to filling in for no-shows)? Yeah? That's the response I saw on the faces of our consultants.

I wasn't upset about the reaction. That's happened to me before - I used to be a corporate Java programming and software engineering instructor, and have seen worse reactions as I presented material. But, the reaction did make me think and assess ("inspect and adapt" as the agilists say).

So I did my own personal retrospective of sorts. It's taken me a couple of weeks to process what I can only describe as guarded "what the?" for what I had to say.

Here's my retrospective results:

We simply had mismatched expectations, and that is a communications failure - my communications failure.

I failed to adequately describe what the presentation was about. I just told everyone I would talk about professional development (like I just wrote above). That's it. So, miscommunication happened.

I believe the expectation of our consultants was that I would talk about "How to be professional as a consultant". You know, guidance on proper consultant behavior on and off a clients' site, and ways for managing your time and relationships with a client.

I certainly talked some about that, but my presentation was broader - I came ready to talk about "growing professionally" (not just as a consultant). I included discussion about proper consultant behavior, but also included skills training and company responsibilities as a professional.

Wow. That's really different perspectives. But, they can both be concluded from the same base idea, "talk about professional development". I really missed the mark communicating within my own organization.

So, what's the moral? "Don't let Bill present to our consultants anymore..."

I hope not. Or, maybe I do... Hm...

No, that's not my take-away.

My learning is that communication, whether formal or informal, whether verbal, written, or otherwise has a lot to do with success, especially as a consultant. It is one of the pillars of wisdom for consultants, and affects most, if not all best practices for consultants (and really, for professionals as a whole). Bad communication is the bane of professionals. We all need to develop and keep refining our ability to communicate. It's in our best interest and our customers' best interests too.

So, I'll add communication skills to my "Professional Development" presentation (and at the same time, try to come up with a better title!).

Do you have any good stories about miscommunication that lead to unexpected circumstances? I bet you do!