Influential Communication & Efficient Work
Open Systems Design Principles and Ecological Learning create organizational environments conducive to influential communication and innovative, creative, efficient, and synergistic work through a set of fundamental conditions.
The fundamental conditions for influential communication and efficient work are: openness, a common humanity, a shared objective world, and trust.*
1. Openness
An environment with no hidden agenda, where exploration and checking out are highly valued and where it is assumed that differences in perception and opinion will exist and be respected. It is healthy and creative to acknowledge such differences from which mutual learning will follow by sharing experiences and perceptions.
This is a necessary precondition for the rationalization of conflict and the establishment of common ground (not consensus, which is usually a power game).
2. Common Humanity (Basic Psychological Similarity)
We are all human with similar human concerns, fears, and needs. It is the actual behavior of people that best conveys this ultimate similarity. Once behaviors and motives can be seen to be similar or congruous with one’s own, it becomes possible for people to admit that they can learn something from each other. However, if there is a perception of contempt or condescension on the part of one towards the other, the probability of effective communication declines rapidly.
Encourage confidence in the validity of the individual perception and value stance such that the prevailing psychodynamics favor cooperation and creative work and learning.
Most people seek confirmation of their basic psychological similarity and unspoken human ideals.
3. Mutually Shared Objective Field
We all live in the same world, our environment has features which are objective and commonly perceived. People establish interlocking directive correlations for continuing joint purposeful action.
4. Trust
The emergence of individuals as “Open Systems” is a joint function of the preceding three conditions. Trust accumulates over time as individuals experience the openness of the world and the mutual respect and consideration from initiating a new topic or depth in communication with each other.
As trust accumulates, so do interpersonal relationships. Strengthening and deepening mutual learning and network building. People working together as people rather than as roles or positions.
By making the assumption that people come to experience confidence and trust only in situations where the conditions for effective two-way communication are present and where there are no externally imposed restrictions on affective or expressive behavior, we constantly test Chein’s thesis (1972) that “a behavior is a motive of the behaviors it includes.” Collaboration, thus defined, becomes the motive for spontaneously sharing the self with others.
Trust accumulates to the extent that people find an opportunity to exercise care about their own and shared concerns and can put away — gradually, without risk — the masks of passivity and dissociation.
The resultant release of energy enhances our consciousness and intensifies interpersonal engagement in association with any task at hand and therefore leads to more mutually supportive action.
Without this virtuous spiral of learning, commitment, energy, and trust, a process of influential communication and efficient work would not be possible. This virtuous spiral allows for Tropophilia to be built on a daily basis and remain a day-1-always attitude company!
Here’s To Influential Communication and Efficient Work Within Your Organization!
*Taken and adapted from Merrelyn Emery
Juan Carlos Wandemberg Boschetti Ph.D.
President & Founder
Sustainable Systems International
About the author: Dr. Wandemberg is an international consultant and analyst of human behavior. For the past 30 years Dr. Wandemberg has collaborated with corporations, communities, and organizations to catalyze a Culture of Trust, Transparency, and Integrity through self-transformation processes and Open Systems Design Principles.
