I’ve seen a lot of business relationships go haywire when values aren’t consistent.  In fact, I think setting up the “how” of your business can be the most important thing that you do.  It’s not enough to just figure out the vision and mission of your company (the what and why), you also need to figure out how you’ll work with customers, vendors and each other.  

That’s a set up for explaining an ‘ah-ha’ I got this morning.  Years ago, I was with a group coming up with our values for a joint venture project.  It was a big group of business owners.  We were all used to running our own companies (ie, being the boss) and so it was important that we figured out how we could work cooperatively.

One of the members in the group put forth the value “You are responsible for your communication.”  I didn’t understand that and said so.  My argument (at the time) was what if I have something I want to talk to someone and they don’t call me back: How could the lack of communication be my responsibility?  If they won’t call me back, how can I communicate?

I was pretty much out-voted and never got my question answered.

 I consider myself a strong communicator and if something starts to go out of whack, my rule is to over communicate until everybody’s on the same page.  Not yelling, just making sure there is no further misunderstanding and everybody understands exactly what is said. For example, at the end of a conversation, I’ll summarize what I understood we said, get agreement to what was said, and then send out an email with the summary.

I couldn’t figure that value out. How could MY communication be MY responsibility?

Then it hit me this morning.  If someone communicates in a way that is unclear, doesn’t follow up with communication, doesn’t answer questions or just generally fails to make a connection in a way that can be understood by the other person, it is the communicator’s responsibility to be heard.

How many times have you had someone in your business who is sullen and doesn’t communicate, except in passive-aggressive ways?  I get it!  Don’t ask him what’s wrong - tell him he is responsible for his communication.  If he can’t articulate what he wants and make it understood, then it is his responsibility and the consequences are his.

It was like the clouds opened up.  Then I did a search on the phrase on Google “You are responsible for your communication” - using the ” ” marks so I could see how many times that exact phrase was used.  My thought was, “Does anyone else know this?”  It was another break-through for me when I saw that there were 183 sites that used that exact phrase.   It was part of the rules (values) for the company.  

Most went on to say that there were always consequences to communication, and you’re responsible for that as well.  So, if you post something on a forum that makes someone else mad and they say something in return - hey, you are responsible for your communication.

In today’s Internet-based society with fast, short communication blasts, it’s very easy to be misunderstood.  And that means it’s never been more important to communicate in a way that makes sure you’re heard and understood.