Office life: Communication

As a marketing professional, significant part of my performance and achievement are built on how well I can communicate with others. Compared to general public, my skills in communication is well above the average. Compared to my colleagues in marketing, it is not my prominent strength. I know what to say but still learning how to say. Even speaking in Chinese, my story telling techniques could be improved.

Recent case in hand. We are about doing a market research to solve an issue around whether to increase the price of one product and the best approach to justify the price increase with our customers. An e-mail was shared by a non-marketing colleague leading the research. She proposed several questions to add in the survey. My immediately feeling was that the questions were written terribly. Also they were wrong questions to get the answers we were seeking. In the next 15 minutes I tried to write a response to say politely why the questions would not work, then I decided I should not to focus on the problem and start to put together questions I would like to ask. While I was working on the response, another e-mail popped up on the screen. It was from Jill our US marketing director. She had three questions to add in survey and that was it. All were well stated and were exactly what I tried to capture. I felt really relieved but also defeated.

So, what is the point here? Maybe this is the incidence showing why I am still a manger and she is the director. From some other encounters with Jill, I always felt that I am better in what to do/say. Now she proved that she is better in how to say it. While marketing is about both, the “how” part is much more important in the corporate world (particularly when it is promotion time). There is no objective measurement to evaluate communication. One of old colleagues joked that I should get the sales job where communication capability is very well measured by the sales numbers. On the other hand, I have to admit there are some well accepted and fair measurements after all about how well one communicates.

Stopping crying discrimination, baby! It is time to work on my communication skills.