It’s one thing for an individual in an organization to find themselves in a state of stress. But when events occur bringing on stress for most everyone in an organization, now you have a critical challenge on your hands. This stress spills out into families and the communities causing more critical and, in some cases, disastrous challenges. Seeing life from someone else’s perspective takes an open mind, active listening takes effort, and understanding takes commitment. These can take time. What are some additional elements that can help?

Cave drawings, gestures, grunts, verbal ability, words, and storytelling are all part of the evolution of human communication. A growing civilization signaled the need for more sophisticated systems for communicating such as drum beating, smoke signals, messengers, the telegraph, telephones, radio, television, and now the web, and social media. As businesses sprang up and grew, it became obvious that communication systems were required to deliver important messages to employees and customers. So why is there still miscommunication, misunderstandings, and why have Frank and Wanda become problem employees because they can’t seem to get along?

Recently, one of my executive coaching clients was pulling his hair out over people in one department who were always complaining about his team. His team complained about the other team – of course. His team is essentially sales and the other team is policies, procedures, and compliance. You might as well try to mix oil and water and try to make a soufflé. What is it that has these teams all in a twitter?

Sales people are typically, not always, but typically a little more loose with rules and procedures. They just want to go out and influence people to buy so they can get paid. And yes, typically they do make more money than the “policy and procedure (P & P) enforcers.” The green-eyed jealousy monster starts running amok through the P & P team. The P & P people feel they work harder, are under more stress, and are constantly correcting the mistake of the sales team. The sales team doesn’t like rules; they take too much time to comply with and they need to be out selling. They reason, that if it wasn’t for them the P & P team wouldn’t it HAVE a job!