Need good communication? Listen up!

  • Published
  • By Maj. Paul Brown
  • 860th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Last week, I was fortunate to participate in the 60th Maintenance Group's first Maintenance Resource Management course. 

This course is being spooled up for instruction to all maintainers and may be adopted by Air Mobility Command and broadened to other career fields in the wing. Modeled off the pilot's Crew Resource Management Program, the basic principals of MRM focus on the human factors involved in our daily jobs and how these factors can affect safety. MRM enforces eight key skills to help improve every day safety. One of those skills that struck a cord with me is communication. 

Good communication is essential to everything we do in our Air Force. Miscommunication can lead to minor misunderstandings or small errors that make us less effective at work, but it, in a worst case, can spiral into major mission failures, mishaps, and fatalities. Airmen of every rank have a responsibility to communicate clearly. To do this, we must understand barriers to good communication in our work environment and overcome them. 

Barriers can include our personal bias, distractions, culture, language and accents, deference to rank, complacency and fear of animosity if you speak out. We must seek the right level of assertiveness to ensure we overcome barriers and keep the communication going, which will keep the mission moving. 

What's one great way to improve communication? Start with learning to be a better listener. Steven Covey's fifth habit of highly effective people is "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." We are often so focused on getting our input in, or trying to provide fast solutions, that we fail to actively listen and fully understand the situation or problem. MRM highlights four keys to good listening. 

First, don't debate! We often evaluate as the speaker is speaking and formulate a position of agreement or disagreement to debate their point-of-view. Allow the person's position to be presented in full and try to keep prejudging out of the conversation. 

Next, don't detour. Another barrier to good active listening is interrupting to ask questions from our own frame of reference or understanding. This may throw the person off track or spiral into a tangent which prevents the original problem or issue from coming to full light. 

Third, don't pre-plan. This is the biggest area I'm personally guilty of while listening to others. I get half-way through listening to an explanation and I'm already thinking of potential solutions and how I'm going to answer... and I'm missing the rest of the story in the process! 

Finally, don't tune the person out. This is one of the fastest ways to lose the confidence of the person coming to you for help with an issue. 

Good communication is essential to our success every day, and we can all start by seeking to improve our listening skills. So next time you are listening, try to concentrate more on listening and understanding rather than formulating the response. Honing these skills will help us all be more safe and effective in our workplace.