How are you? Fine. Thanks.

What our closest relationships can teach us about better business communication

There are friends who ask, “How are you?” and you say, “I’m good, thanks. How are you?”

And then there are FRIENDS who ask how you are.

Those are the people who get the full, unedited version. Work is driving you mad. Something wonderful happened last week. You’re worried about someone. You’ve made a decision you’re not entirely sure about. Twenty minutes later, you realise they only asked one question.

I was thinking about this recently and realised there is a rather good business lesson in it.

The difference isn’t the question.

It’s the relationship.

Are you getting the real answer?

Businesses ask people what they think all the time.

We send customer surveys. We ask employees for feedback. We check in with clients. We monitor reviews and comments. We hold meetings specifically designed to find out how things are going.

But asking the question doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting the real answer.

“Everything’s great.”

“No complaints.”

“Happy with everything.”

Sometimes that is absolutely true.

Sometimes it’s the business equivalent of, “I’m fine, thanks.”

The really useful conversations tend to happen when there is enough trust for someone to say, “Actually, while I have you…”

That sentence can tell you an enormous amount.

Perhaps something isn’t working as well as you thought. Maybe a client needs something they haven’t felt comfortable asking for. There might be a frustration that has never made its way into a formal feedback form.

You only get those answers when the relationship allows for them.

Trust changes the conversation

I see exactly the same thing in PR.

Some of the strongest media relationships I have built over the years have developed through hundreds of small interactions.

You learn what a journalist is interested in. You respect their time. You don’t send them something completely irrelevant and hope for the best. You answer the phone when they need something. You become a useful and trusted contact.

Eventually, the conversations become better.

A journalist can comfortably tell you, “This isn’t quite a story yet.”

A client can say, “I don’t think this is working.”

And, importantly, I need to be able to tell a client, “I think we should approach this differently.”

Nobody particularly enjoys being told that their brilliant idea may not be quite as brilliant as they thought it was.

But if you have built the right relationship, honesty isn’t interpreted as criticism. It is understood as part of the value you bring.

What are you giving in return?

Trust, of course, works both ways.

Businesses also need to consider what kind of answers they are giving the people around them.

There is considerable space between oversharing and saying absolutely nothing of substance.

Not every announcement needs to be “exciting”. Not every year has to be your “best year yet”. Not every challenge needs to disappear beneath carefully polished corporate language.

People are remarkably good at recognising when they are being given the corporate version of “I’m fine.”

Honest communication doesn’t mean sharing everything. It means communicating like there are real people on both sides of the conversation.

Sometimes that means acknowledging a challenge. Sometimes it means admitting that something changed. Sometimes it means listening before deciding what needs to be said at all.

The conversations worth having

We spend a great deal of time thinking about what businesses should say, how they should say it and where they should say it.

Perhaps we should spend just as much time thinking about the relationships surrounding those conversations.

Do your clients feel comfortable telling you when something isn’t working?

Do the people advising your business feel able to challenge you?

Have you built relationships with the media before you need something from them?

And when your organisation speaks, have you earned enough trust for people to believe what you say?

Good relationships don’t guarantee comfortable conversations. They create the trust that makes honest ones possible.

In friendship, that’s the person who gets the full answer when they ask how you are.

In business, those relationships may be some of the most valuable ones you have.

Shirley Williams
Shirley Williams Communications
shirley@shirleywilliams.co.za