Got Communication?

A few weeks ago over lunch, I had the pleasure of participating in a discussion about how we improve communication at Goddard.  In short, communication is currently a big concern on center - everyone knows that it is important, and most think that it isn’t currently particularly effective.

(By the way, I would personally propose that effective communication may be THE area that could raise NASA’s success to a whole new level.  Look at our history: In 1986, Challenger exploded thanks to poor communication that manifested itself as a bad O-ring.  Seventeen years later, the same thing happened AGAIN to Columbia, this time disguised as a piece of foam.)

As I was participating in this discussion about communication at Goddard, I could see three levels of communication, which I’ll call tools, content, and context.  I found it interesting because most of our discussion focused on tools: PowerPoint vs Twitter vs Word vs Spacebook vs blogs, all those mechanisms that are used to communicate between people.  Of course, these tools are developing so quickly that many people find it difficult to keep up.  And you know what?  I think we spend way too much time worrying about catching up to the latest and greatest tool.  In the end, while we want to be able to use these, I would propose that these make NO real difference in the way we communicate with each other.  (I’ll come back to this.)

The second layer of communication is the content.  Engineers love the content – this is all the data, the calculations, and the information that folks have to share with each other.  The content is the substance of any particular communication – this is the answer to whatever question is being asked.  I think we generally do content pretty well at NASA – after all, we’re a technical organization, and so many of us are specifically trained to be able to produce answers and solutions to problems.

The third layer of communication is the one that has the potential to shift our entire paradigm of how we do business at NASA: context.  Context can be more difficult to see, yet as human beings, we can sense it even when we don’t see it.  Context is (usually) the unspoken in the room, generated by all human beings… trust, excitement, nervousness, confidence, etc.  It gets in the way of our listening to each other.  It has some people talk constantly while others speak almost nothing at all.  It has absolutely EVERYTHING to do with how well we communicate with each other as human beings.  Think about it… do you actually respond to the words that people say or who they are being when they say it?

The bad news?  As far as I know, scientists and engineers aren’t getting a whole lot of this kind of training in school and don’t necessarily appreciate the benefit of it.

The good news?  People CAN be trained in the areas such as self-awareness and in relating to others.  There is a lot of momentum that has been building (at least at Goddard) in adding these skills to people’s skill sets, through coaching and leadership programs!

So I wonder… what would it take to provide this kind of training to EVERYONE at NASA?