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Better Communication Creates Higher Performing Teams – a conversation with Maria Garaitonandia
1 Playsin 9 hours
Untangling Communication So Teams Can Get Things Done
Maria Garaitonandia is a leadership communication strategist, which means that she helps leaders in any organisation plan how they are going to communicate with their teams. The outcome is, in many ways, that team members can answer the ‘what’s in it for me question’.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, Maria discusses her book Untangling Communication with host Michael Millward.
They explore the elements of communications that create a team that gets things done and those that make it more difficult for teams to function.
Their conversation covers
- The different interpretations that a word can have in different places
- The problems of not understanding cultural, generational, geographic and socio-demographic differences
- How different body language can be interpreted differently
- How humour does not always travel well
- The role of emotional intelligence
- Applying situational communication theory
Maria mentions how understanding the Johari Window might help leaders to build stronger communication strategies.
They also discuss Maria’s Four Pillars of communication and her C.L.E.A.R approach to delivery.
This episode of The Independent Minds delivers implemental communication solutions for new and experienced leaders.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:05
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Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution process so easy.
00:00:18
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Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:34
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I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abusida. In this episode of the Independent Minds, Maria Garaitonandia will explain how leaders can improve the performance of their teams by improving how they communicate with their teams.
00:00:53
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Maria is the author of Untangling Communication, how leaders can strengthen communication, resolve conflict and build high performing teams.
Host's Experiences and Podcast Goals
00:01:03
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Maria is also the creator of the clear model for common sense communication.
00:01:09
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Maria is based in Florida, US state that I have visited. I ever get the chance to go again and explore more of Florida, I will make use of my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to make all of my travel arrangements.
00:01:24
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That is because membership of the Ultimate Travel Club gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
00:01:34
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I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club and just like me, travel at trade prices.
00:01:46
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Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of the Independent Minds that will be well worth listening than to, liking, downloading and subscribing to and probably good enough to share with your friends, family,
00:02:02
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and work colleagues as well. As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
00:02:13
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Hello, Maria.
Maria's Background and Career
00:02:14
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Hello, Michael. How are you today? I'm doing very well. Great. Looking forward to our conversation. I am as well. And I've got to say your surname once more at the end. So I've been practicing it, but it is That's quite a long surname. What are the origins? I know it can be a little intimidating because there are 13 letters. And yes, I was the last child to learn how to write my last name in school.
00:02:41
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But it has the origin is from the northern part of Spain, from the Basque country. My grandfather was Basque. Nice. Nice. It's a beautiful part of the world.
00:02:53
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Just as beautiful as Florida. That's really interesting. I'm also interested in how you got to be doing what you're doing today. What's the history, the work history of Maria?
00:03:04
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I guess as some people live through one thing, thinking they're going to go in one direction and find themselves in a completely different direction. Growing up, my father was a finance executive who was transferred to many different countries. So growing up, I had lots of international exposure and loved it. and thought I was going to go into the foreign service. I studied international relations. I loved languages and history and culture.
00:03:34
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But life took me in a different direction. When I found myself a young mother with young children, I became an independent consultant specializing in cross-cultural communication and management, a small niche which was growing at the beginning of the 2000s, and one which I felt very comfortable in having lived through so many different transitions myself.
00:04:04
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That turned into other communication issues that I helped teams and leaders solve because if you think about it, cross-cultural communication bleeds into some of the other leadership communication issues. If you learn how to be situational Cross-culturally, lot of those same skills are the ones that you can bring into many of the other communication challenges that you have.
Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges
00:04:33
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So that's how I became involved in being a consultant, coach, and trainer for teams and leaders seeking to improve their communication skills.
00:04:45
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You're reminding me that during the 1990s, aging myself a little bit, I spent an awful lot of time traveling internationally, all around Europe, North America, West Africa, Asia, all over the place.
00:04:58
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You do, as you're doing that, realize that words, expressions, body language mean different things in different places. And the nuances of what is it the way in which we speak English in England And even in different regions of England is not the same as the way that it's spoken in another country.
00:05:20
Speaker
Fascinating topic. And you've been doing this since the early 2000s and we're in 2026 now, so quite a while. You must have built up quite a business. Yes. And it's it's so funny that you mentioned the different words, because even in the Latin American countries, that people have funny stories about saying what they think is an innocuous word in one region or one country and it turns out to be an obscenity in another one. You find people making funny faces at you when you innocently say a word. There's so many funny stories. I have a Norwegian friend whose surname in Norwegian is quite bland, but go to Denmark and it's it's not the sort of thing that you say in black society.
00:06:06
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Yes, for sure. It's fascinating. I am fascinated by the topic of cultures and what makes people tick, the values that they hold, the concepts that translate and those that do not. For example, the the concept of respect is universal.
00:06:27
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But how you show respect can be so tricky. And it's usually one of those things that inadvertently causes conflict among teams and shows up as a communication barrier when you are interpreting a behavior with your own cultural filter. versus what a person may have intended. It's one of those things that if you, it's like the Johari windows, you know, there's things that you so you know, and everybody knows, but there's always going to be something that others know that you don't know, or vice versa. And that's where we need someone to help us translate, interpret what's really going on.
00:07:10
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And of course, you've built quite a business out of this
Founding of Global Bridges and Book Insights
00:07:14
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this as well. Yes, Global Bridges training came out of this desire to help teams and leaders untangle communication knots. And I think I like that analogy because ultimately it is, it's it's like a a big tangled knot that you don't know if you should pull on it or if you should slowly try to unravel it. And I hope that what I do is help leaders
00:07:43
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patiently, slowly unravel the knot and have that sense of satisfaction at the end of being able to see a string smooth out and be able to connect one end with another end.
00:07:58
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As I'm listening to you, I'm reminded of various different situations that I have been in where I've either been on the receiving end of rather insensitive communication because someone hasn't remembered that I'm an English person, and they're an American or an African whatever. And also times when I have taken my Yorkshire sense of humor to the far corners of the earth and wondering why people aren't laughing at things in the same way that I do.
00:08:31
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That's a perfect example. it is. Humor doesn't always translate the same way. What In one culture, you may appreciate irony. It takes a while to learn the art of the the ironic. And then in some other cultures, it may be a different sense, but it doesn't translate the same in what makes people laugh. And one culture doesn't necessarily make them laugh in another. You're absolutely right.
00:08:58
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yeah You can watch the same comedy programs. But face to face, it's as if we've never seen the same comedy programs, I think. Exactly. yeah So the book, Untangling Communication, it's no small task to write a book.
00:09:13
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What made you decide that it was the right time and the to write a book about untangling communication? I think it's a few different things. For a number of years, and i I'm sure that many people, many people who have been consultants or professionals for a number of years, there comes a time when you've pat been around the block a few times and a few decades have gone by and you hear certain patterns and you are solving similar challenges.
00:09:46
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You figure it's time to put all of the coaching and training and build a compendium of what you have developed or worked with people throughout the years and It just happened to be the time, you know, it's just that little flame that comes up and you know, okay, it's time now to put it all together.
00:10:08
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I just thought it it was the next logical step. It makes things a little bit easier. The four pillars I touch upon in the book have to do with managing conflict. The second has to do with knowing how to give feedback, both recognition feedback and corrective feedback in an effective way. The third one has to do with managing cross-cultural teams and being able to interpret what is actually being said versus what we think is being said. And then lastly,
00:10:42
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is the cross-generational challenges that we're seeing accelerating through the development of technology.
Managerial Influence on Team Culture
00:10:49
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So those four elements are usually the challenges that I've heard many of my clients ask me about, and I thought that I would dedicate a chapter to each one of those challenges and propose some effective solutions.
00:11:05
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Yes, there are four big challenges for definite. I think it's very easy to think that, okay, we don't need to worry about culture because everyone's from the same country. But even people in the same town will have cultural differences related to the part of the town that they are from based on their life experiences and the experiences of other people from their community within that town.
00:11:29
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Their culture will be slightly different to people at the other end of town, on the other side of town. It's not just because you're in a different country that you have to be culturally aware.
00:11:40
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Exactly. It's like I i usually use the the metaphor or the analogy of imagining that you have a certain colored lens like sunglasses.
00:11:53
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and you may have blue colored lenses and somebody else has yellow colored lenses. Well, you're never going to be able to see the world through yellow colored lenses because you already have your blue lens.
00:12:05
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But it's not until the moment that maybe you can layer a yellow lens on top of your blue lens that you find you can see perhaps the whys behind the behaviors and understand where you need to make certain adjustments in order to not be like a bull in a china shop and lessen a little bit of that negative impact as you're interacting with people. Do managers, leaders, normally expect their teams to adjust to them?
00:12:33
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Or is it 50-50? Where does the actual breakdown happen? It's a good question. I find that sometimes the more mature leaders, the ones who have higher degrees of emotional intelligence, are very willing to take a look at themselves and actually ask for feedback in order to be more effective.
00:12:57
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Once in a while, you'll get some leaders who will maybe blame their team members. Maybe there'll be a generational difference. and And it's not so much that they want to blame them because they think that they're acting in bad faith. It's usually because they just don't understand the dynamics that might be going on.
00:13:17
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So for example, working with a leader who may be a baby boomer, somebody who's in their, maybe a in their early sixties, working with early career professionals who may be in their twenties or early thirties, there's gonna be a big abyss in in the way that things are done, the way that people communicate. That can cause some difficulty, especially when it comes to giving priority to certain things or ways of working. So I've worked with leaders who are totally open to continue to learn and then others who you need a little bit more of a nudge. And in my coaching, sometimes I may have to challenge certain perspectives in order to help people along to see where they may be able to make an adjustment, even if it's just for pragmatic reasons to make their lives easier and to be able to achieve the objectives that they have set out for themselves. Yeah. Because when you mention objectives, I suppose it's the manager who has the objectives and uses the people within their team to help them fu fulfill those objectives.
00:14:29
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So any changes that have to happen have to logically sort of come from the person who wants to gain from the relationship, which in the first instance has to be the manager. Exactly. And the manager is the one who sets the culture. It's a very important responsibility.
00:14:47
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to make sure that what you want to see reflected is something that you are modeling from the beginning. This idea that the manager is responsible for setting the culture.
00:14:58
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But if you're a manager coming into an established team, it already has a culture. It's then changing the culture. If you are a new manager of a new team, there is no culture because everyone is new. It's the same issue, I suppose, of How do you create stroke change a culture?
00:15:19
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Well, as we know, in the stages of team development, there's always going to be that forming and then the storm. So there's going to be storming no matter what, regardless of whether the manager does a little more adjusting to the existing culture or whether the team starts adjusting to the manager's culture, because ultimately the manager will be showing what he or she recognizes or what they don't like or the way of working that they prefer. So there's going to be an adjustment or an adaptation on both sides, but there is going to be a bit of a storming stage until you get to that norming.
00:16:02
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When it comes to the culture, it may become a hybrid depending on What's stronger if this, if the existing culture is stronger and and the manager adjusts, or if the manager comes in with a mindset of change and has the the directive to do so and starts shaking things up a bit.
00:16:26
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It's fascinating. I mean, the best managers that I've had, I could see that they were communicating with me in one particular way and created a culture around the way in which I worked that I really enjoyed.
00:16:41
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But I had a colleague who hated the way that i worked. But our manager had a completely different way of communicating with her to create a way of working for her that worked for her. The whole culture was almost slightly different, was different.
00:17:02
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He worked out what it was that we enjoyed, what we liked. and facilitated that as part of creating the right sort of communications, the right culture.
00:17:14
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And I know from personal experience, made me want to perform my job much better than I might have done if I was just left to my own devices, I suppose.
00:17:25
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And I think that the magic of being a great leader is knowing how to be a great communicator. I think that that descriptor comes up very often when you ask people to recall a great leader that they had.
00:17:41
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That ability of being able to adjust your communication style so that you're quote unquote speaking the other person's language can make such a difference. it Like you said, it motivated you and your colleagues seem to be happy with the way he communicated with her.
Motivations and Cultural Leadership
00:18:02
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One of the reasons that I wrote the book, Untangling Communication, was precisely that. If you have that ability, if you develop the skill of learning the art of situational communication, it makes your life not only more simple, but it also creates harmony in your relationships with others. And it helps people align towards the same goal a lot faster.
00:18:34
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I recall my father having a difficult time as a a foreign expat because the last assignment he had was challenging because he just didn't understand how to communicate with his team in this brand new culture.
00:18:49
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And I think part of me longed to help my dad after the fact and reach out somehow. to say, look, don't worry, you got this. This is how you do it. That's what motivated me most to write this book.
00:19:08
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There are lots of experts who land in a country and can almost see that they're working at a desk that is very similar to the desk that they were working on in the previous assignment.
00:19:22
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The phone is the same model, the pictures on the wall, the furniture. Everything looks and feels very corporate, but the people are very different and it's very easy to forget that the people are different when you're in an environment in that office that could be anywhere in the world.
00:19:43
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So when you go outside, feel a different temperature or the the people look completely different. Exactly. And it's very easy for successful leaders who have developed a way of working that has been successful in one environment to go into another and and face challenges or difficulties or failure because sometimes they they are just at a loss of not knowing what it is that they need to change.
00:20:17
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And it could be something as simple as understanding the underlying values of a particular culture. Is a culture more oriented towards relationships and tasks or vice versa?
00:20:29
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So if you are investing a lot of time in, for example, focusing on task, task, task, being very economical in your communication in order to give priority to time management,
00:20:45
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and you skip some of the customs like greeting someone or or breaking the ice or making a little bit of small talk, you might think it's not important, but in the long run, you may be inadvertently losing the opportunity to develop trust because in some cultures, you need to get to know people before you trust them. Whereas in some others, all you need to know is that someone's competent.
Introduction to and Application of CLEAR Model
00:21:11
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That brings me, I suppose, to this clear model that you have created for common sense communication. What are the the elements of the CLEAR model? The CLEAR model starts out first with the C that means context, being able to convey context.
00:21:31
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This simple first step makes life so much easier because it helps bring people into alignment quicker. Leaders are usually focused on the what and the how, because of course we're hired to be results oriented and get things done.
00:21:49
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However, if we skip a little bit of the context or, or establishing the vision clearly or telling people why we're going to make a request or why something is important, then we, we find ourselves having to deal with the pushback later on.
00:22:08
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So what I tell people is start with context, give a sentence or two, where you take that step back, start a little bit further back, give the why, and then once you give a little bit of context, you'll see that the ball starts rolling a little faster. Even if they may not agree with what you're proposing or how, at least they understand the reasoning behind what you're asking and you've had the courtesy of bringing them with you.
00:22:36
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From there, you can now listen and empathize, asking open-ended questions, garnering more information, which may be key, to go on to the next two steps, which are adjusting. This means maybe adjusting your mindset once you have obtained that quality information in the listening and empathizing part.
00:22:59
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And then the final step, which is the reframing. That's where you can make a new value proposition or reframe something in the language of the receiver that will be more palatable to them.
00:23:14
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And that way you can move on. And of course, it's a dynamic process. It doesn't stop there. It's something that continues. Yes. One situation where you've improved your communication using a clear model, and then the next time you've also got to do the same thing again.
00:23:31
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can't assume that people will transfer from one communication to the next in a positive way, because what they're witnessing, what they're experiencing, may have created a negative impact on them.
00:23:44
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Exactly. Which of these five elements of the clear communication model are the easiest ones, do you think, for most people to adopt? The active listening, a lot of people are very familiar with that. So I think that when it comes to listening and listening with empathy, I think most people understand that instinctively. It's just a matter of making sure that when you listen, you use more open-ended questions to get better information. i would say the challenging one, it's not so much that it's challenging, but people forget
00:24:19
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is that first step, which is actually conveying context.
Communication Context and Collaboration
00:24:23
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Because people wind up starting jumping right to the what and how, and then they find themselves having to give the context after the fact.
00:24:31
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And by then it's almost seems like a debate rather than a sharing of a little bit of this vulnerability. Because when you do give context, it is like you're opening up a little bit and it shows goodwill. So if you're showing that goodwill, that good faith,
00:24:48
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From the very beginning, you're connecting at an an emotional level as well, because as I said, it's a courtesy that you're extending to the other party. Is it fair to say that the context aspect of this clear model is where you're almost answering that question, what's in it for me?
00:25:08
Speaker
Yes, yes. And the what's in it for me is is very valuable and it doesn't have to be so explicit. Ultimately, it could be what's in it for us, but the idea being, this is what I'm thinking, this is what my vision is, and I wanna share it with you.
00:25:27
Speaker
yes And it becomes more of a brainstorming rather than an imposition. It's more persuasive. Without that contextualization of the situation, you're issuing an instruction to someone rather than bringing them on board. So I can see how the issuing of the instruction means that you get what you want but you might not get what you need and you wouldn't get that individual employee thinking outside the box about what they have been asked to do because they've been given an instruction yes if you contextualize it and so the question what's in it for me provide all the business case type of information as well you're almost must improving increasing
00:26:15
Speaker
enhancing the status of that person that you want to do something in order for an objective to be met. And everything fits into place. And I can totally see how you can then say that that change in communication style will lead to an improvement in that employee's performance.
00:26:38
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It goes from a mere exercise in compliance to a more collaborative, or more of a commitment if you share your reasoning beforehand. Yes.
00:26:51
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It moves it from an adult-child relationship to an adult-to-adult relationship. Exactly. That is especially what younger generations are looking for.
00:27:03
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Can't work out whether they should be saying, yep, we're going to tell you what to do, which actually is old language, whereas what we want to do is not tell you what to do, not ask you what to do, but explain the situation that we want to resolve, the situation we want to improve and get your inputs into how we do that.
00:27:23
Speaker
That then means the employee has taken some ownership of that, the tasks, the process that they're going to follow because they've inputted into the decision-making about what what needs to be done.
00:27:37
Speaker
Exactly. You've really put into another model, that the CLIR model is about common sense communication. But you really have taken lots of ideas that have been floating around in management books and training courses and all sorts of things for a long time and put it into a very practical, workable solution that is based around having conversations with people and integrating them into the decision making process.
00:28:08
Speaker
I think it's fascinating, or really fascinating. Thank you. And thank you very much for your time today. It's been a very interesting conversation to have and I do appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure for me as well. Great. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasidah.
00:28:26
Speaker
Today I have been having a conversation with the independent mind Maria Gareton
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:28:32
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Nadia, the author of Untangling Communication,
00:28:37
Speaker
how leaders can strengthen communication, resolve conflict and build higher performing teams. Maria is also the creator of the clear model of the common sense communication. You can find out more information about all of these by using the links in the description.
00:28:54
Speaker
I am sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of the Independent Minds as much as Maria and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:29:06
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You'll probably also want to share the link with your friends, family and work colleagues as well, especially perhaps managers or colleagues that you're having difficulty communicating with.
00:29:23
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening.
00:29:36
Speaker
And goodbye.