Human Resources Videos

HATTIE: (Voiceover) At strong small companies, everyone has a seat at the table. Owner's shoulder the financial burden, but they seek ideas from everyone on the payroll.

DR. GRINT: The most important way to think about communications is to realize that there is a difference between transmission and exchange models. Transmission models of communication are the equivalent of a lecture, so if I'm giving you a lecture I'm talking at you, not talking with you.

And the consequence of that -- all the research that we know about transmissions models suggest that people don't listen to very much of what anybody else is saying. So within 10 minutes most people are asleep.

By and large transmission models of communication fail, but that what is used by most leaders most of the times. Or they send you the corporate video, or they give you the corporate lecture or they talk at you or they shout at you or whatever it is that they do, and we don't listen. A different way of thinking about the communication would be an exchange model. Now rather than the transmission model where it's one to one but it's a kind of hierarchical relationship, exchange model is another hierarchical relationships in the egalitarian relationship. So we speak with people, we speak with our friends. In this sense what we're doing is we're exchanging communication, we're exchanging information.

This is where the Latin word comes from. It's about exchange. It's not about transmission of information, it's the exchange of information. And we know that when people are communicating in an exchange method, that far more of that communication is actually retained, so it's a far more effective way of learning which is why we know that lectures by and large don't work. But if we engage in a conversation about something, more of the information is exchanged and more seeps in and more is retained.

So if you're thinking about leadership and communication what you wanna do is move away from a transmission model wherever possible and try to get into an exchange method. It's much more time intensive, it's much more difficult to do, but it works compared to a transmission model.