A simple solution to fix workplace miscommunication | Melissa M. Mikus

**Modupe Akinola** (0:00)
If you call my cell phone and I don't pick up, you're guaranteed to get my voicemail greeting. It says, if you're trying to leave me a message, I won't listen to it. I don't check this inbox. You can text me, you can email me, you can send me a note via carrier pigeon, but you can't reach me here. This has been the case for a while now. I was spending a lot of time fielding calls, being spammed, listening to voicemails, and talking on the phone. And I realized that wasn't where I did my best or most direct communicating. And more than that, it was cutting into time I wanted to use for contemplating, that quiet, uninterrupted zone where your mind can really chew on some difficult ideas. I decided that if people didn't know the best way to communicate with me, I should just tell them.
I'm Modupe Akinola.
This is TED Business, a podcast from TED. Our speaker today is leadership expert Melissa M. Mikus. And she's here to say that miscommunication and misunderstanding in the workplace isn't just a nuisance, it's often expensive. But luckily, she has a simple, effective solution to clearing up the chaos. A communication style tag. Then after the talk, I'll ask you how you like to best communicate. But first, a quick break.
And now, Melissa M. Mikus takes the TED stage.

**Melissa M. Mikus** (1:37)
So I'm sure everyone here has been on the giving or receiving end of a workplace communication failure. Is that fair? Well, I want to share a time when I sent a message to my team that created countless hours of wasted effort, a few sleepless nights and maybe even some tears.
That message was, sure. Yep, that's it. One word, four letters, no punctuation, no emojis, just sure. I bet you were expecting something a little bit more controversial or spicy. So here's what happened. My team was working on an important presentation for an upcoming board meeting, and right on deadline, the project manager Charlie sent me an email with a presentation and said, Are we okay to send this to the board chair for feedback? I reviewed the presentation that evening while simultaneously making dinner, but I was delighted. It was spot on, key messages, graphics, so much so that I didn't even have any feedback. But as water is boiling over on the stove and my dog's trying to sell chicken off the counter, I just forgot to respond to the email. The next day, Charlie sends me a quick Slack. Are we okay to proceed? I was on another call, but I didn't want to delay my response further, so I just said, sure.
Well, the next morning, I checked my inbox, and I have this detailed email from Charlie with a whole new presentation attached, and I was confused. I called him up on the phone, and I said, hey, Charlie, what's going on? Defeated, he admitted that he interpreted my sure to mean, meh, this is okay, I guess.
That simple sure spun out my entire team. And that's just one small example of miscommunication, but think about the bigger ones. How many times have you or your team gone down the wrong path on a project, or felt frustrated by lack of progress, or maybe even spent hours or days in a disagreement that wasn't even a disagreement in the first place?
So you're not alone because employees and executives, 86% of them, blame workplace failure on ineffective communication.
And US businesses alone lose $1.2 trillion, trillion dollars a year as a result of miscommunication. So this isn't just about being nice and diplomatic. Miscommunication is expensive. It hurts employee morale, it stalls progress, and it increases turnover.
So I want to provide a simple solution to address this. It's minimal effort. We all like that. You can do it today. And it's low cost, maybe even free. Are you ready?
The best way to enhance communication effectiveness is to tell people how you best communicate and how best to communicate with you. It's pretty simple. But how do we do this in real time and in a way that the information is accessible to those that we engage with? So most of us have an email signature, social profile, an internal directory profile that typically includes name, title, contact information. What if we normalize adding another highly visible piece of information, a communication style tag that covers two critical pieces of information? One, how we best communicate, email, phone call, text, Slack, and any workplace norms you've set for yourself, like working hours or protected focus time. And two, how we show up as our best selves or avoid getting tripped up.