Gaining Agreements

One of the biggest challenges in business communication is obtaining agreement. I'm not referring to everyone agreeing to a decision, with marching orders that move them forward. What I'm referring to is agreement on terms, agreement on conditions of satisfaction, and agreement on time frames.

Frankly, it's not that difficult to obtain agreement; the issue is that very few people take the time to gain agreement. We assume if we say something that the other person understands exactly what we mean. The reality is sometimes very different. The words blue, tomorrow, lunchtime, complete...and many others are totally subjective.

Gaining agreement on terms means specifically defining what you mean. If it's a certain color you want, find an example.

However, even with specificity, if you don't find out whether the other person understands and agrees to your requests, you will still have difficulties. These two parts of getting agreement - specificity and feedback - are what make business communication challenging, and ultimately, rewarding.

What are the consequences of no agreements? How often have you made a request and what was delivered was far different than what you asked for? You think you gave crystal clear instructions. They thought they understood. What happened? The likely result of having no specificity and/or feedback is a need for a do-over which cost you time, productivity and caused frustration on both sides. You can't understand why they didn't 'get it.' They think you once again changed your mind and can never be satisfied.

Another consequence of no agreement is morale is negatively affected. When morale is low turnover is high, productivity suffers and management spends an inordinate amount of time handling personnel-related issues. You'll find people coming in late and taking more sick days, arguments and bickering between employees or teams become commonplace, and a general malaise settles over the