Leadership Lesson On Communication From Excel

So, most of us have probably used Microsoft Excel - it's an extremely useful program in many ways.

It has the ability to take a lot of data and then it can be transformed in many different ways to what we need.

It can take large tables and make them into smaller one.

You can have it make charts and graphs from information.

It actually can be utilized in many different ways.

However, Excel also has a tendency to be... picky.

This is what happened (and what you can learn as a Leader) from this situation.

The Story

I was working with a group early today trying to get what's called a "Pivot Table" ready.

For those who have had the blessing of not needing to use Excel to extremes, a "Pivot Table" is essentially a small Table of Information that is created from a significantly larger Table of Information.

In order to do this, you have to set up Excel to look at a Large table of information, and then tell it what information you want it to take, add, or not use in the smaller table.

Then, in theory, it does all the hard work for you!

As we were going about this process, we thought we had set everything up correctly.

All of the information looked good.

However, we discovered that, for some reason, the numbers involved were not adding together correctly!

We looked at the Pivot Table itself, and everything looked good.

We looked at the large Table, and all of the numbers looked correct.

Yet, the numbers were not adding together correctly!

The "Sum" was not summing!

We were really confused, until I realized that Excel has a "very picky" way of understanding information - it has to have a specific "format".

If the numbers are not all in the EXACT same format, then the program has a difficult time distinguishing what you are trying to do.

You could say that it speaks a very specific language, and if you don't understand how it "speaks", it won't do what you want it to do.

Once we realized how to get the right "speaking" to occur, the Pivot Table worked EXACTLY how it was supposed to!

In Leadership

Often as Leaders, we need to communicate a message.

When we do, we usually feel like we explained it perfectly, without flaws, and everyone should be able to comply without a hitch!

If only (insert eye roll here).

Most of the time, in reality, our message ends up like the Excel challenge described above.

We "think" we have communicated perfectly, but we used the wrong format in speaking with our teams or clients.

They don't understand the "format" that you presented your message to them with, and so are not able to "put together" what you are looking for.

In many situations, the Leader (wrongly) accuses the people of incompetence, and the people (rightly) think the Leader is a jerk.

The problem isn't that they are incompetent, the problem was that the Leader failed to speak the right "language".

Part of the role of a Leader is learning how to communicate in different "languages" so that everyone within a group understands the message.

So, as a Leader, if you try to communicate something, and you think you did well but find out that others are confused, know that you have just spoken the wrong "language".

Everyone has slightly different communication styles (I'm a Certified Behavioral Consultant, so I know a lot of how communication impacts behavior), so you may need to adjust how you communicate.

When you understand "how" others communicate, when you "speak" their language, and doing it in a "format" they get, getting them to "Sum" together what you are seeking as a Leader becomes significantly easier!