“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw

September 5th, 2022
By: Adam Luecking

My oldest son Connor started sixth grade in the midst of COVID-19. Not only did Connor have to make the normal adjustments a child has to make when transitioning from elementary to middle school, but he had to do it while learning from home in the midst of a pandemic.

Let’s just say Connor’s first midterm report card wasn’t what we all expected. But if we had just jumped down his throat after looking at his grades, it would not have been a productive conversation. By having a trusting and open conversation with him, we were able to figure out what was holding him back from doing his best.

After talking about it for a while, we got clarity on the core issues, what additional questions needed answering, and what actions we could take to help Connor do better. Since then, he hasn’t had any more issues and has gotten straight As.

In a way, your grantees’ performance measures are like grades. Similar to Connor’s middle school saga, you should create a space for your partners and grantees to tell you the stories behind their measures. You must seek to understand what is going on before jumping to conclusions or taking drastic actions.

What is Effective Dialogue?

To navigate communication pitfalls and get closer to achieving social impact, the most important tool you have at your disposal is effective dialogue. Effective dialogue with your partners will prepare them for on-the-ground work, action-plan management, and continual alteration of plans to obtain measurable progress. Effective dialogue increases your odds of achieving what you set out to do.

Specifically, effective dialogue consists of communication between two or more parties that result in both parties understanding each other and taking action. Effective dialogue occurs face-to-face (in person or virtual) and requires diverse groups to have opportunities to participate, speak their minds, and challenge assumptions. To do this, there must be mutual respect and above-average trust.

Four Ways to Support Effective Dialogue

1. Hold 1×4 Meetings

There are many ways to communicate with your partners, but I recommend what I call “1,1,1,1 meetings,” or “1×4” for short. In 1×4 meetings, funders should sit down once a year for one hour to discuss progress on one metric with one grantee at a time. Exploring grantee Turn the Curve Plans in depth is a great model for conducting your 1×4 meetings. Program and grant leaders will not just think it is a paper exercise if the data, story, and plan are the basis for a conversation with their boss or funder.

2. Host Productive Introductory Conversations

Introductory conversations with newly funded partners sets the stage for continued trust, commitment, and accountability. They are pivotal for the success of both parties. In 2013, Caroline Altman Smith, Senior Program Officer at The Kresge Foundation shared tips with the Center for Effective Philanthropy to have productive conversations with grantees. These tips are all helpful, but I’ll briefly summarize my favorites below:

  1. Assign One Point-Person. Both the funder and the grantee should be clear on who they should be talking to (this should be the same two people every time).
  2. In-Person Communication is Best. As much as possible, make conversations about critical information face-to-face (virtual counts). This will help you avoid “out-of-sight-out-of-mind syndrome.”
  3. Make Reporting Requirements Clear From the Beginning. Make sure your grantee understands your reporting culture, structure, reporting templates, data management systems, and guidelines. This may include training around reporting software and grading rubrics (you can access a sample grading rubric for Turn the Curve conversations at SocialSectorHero.com under Chapter 8 Resources).
  4. Avoid Communication Droughts. Don’t just make contact annually! This will make your relationship seem uncaring and transactional. Don’t be afraid of informal contact to check-in but make sure both parties are aware of preferences and expectations.
  5. Be Transparent with Difficult Information. Be proactive and transparent about anything that affects the relationship, including financial difficulties, staffing changes, or anything affecting program implementation.
  6. Read all the tips in the original article here >>

3. Be Intentional About Building Trust

The more trust you have in a relationship, the faster you can move in creating understanding, making decisions, and achieving your goals. Whether you’re engaging with your employees or grantees, make them feel like they’re a part of critical organizational processes (help them see the connection to your Common Purpose). You must also actively embrace diverse people and their perspectives, accept differences, include employees in decisions surrounding their work, treat employees at all levels of your organization fairly, create an open and safe place to express ideas, and encourage positive relationships. Finally, be transparent about your thinking and never make decisions on data without context. In some cases sharing that you’re trying to be more transparent and want to build trusting relationships, and then asking your partners for their ideas on how to help you do so, can lead to higher levels of trust in and of itself.

4. Ask Effective Questions

Asking the right questions — and ensuring there are open-ended questions — allows your grantees to surface information, challenges, and needs you can address. For example, some grantees may need better data infrastructure or more flexibility with their funding or staffing but may be reluctant to ask for these things if they’re never asked.

With over 30 years of experience helping top executives create focus and alignment to achieve results, Doug Krug is a true organization and cultural transformation expert. In 2008, Doug developed what he called ‘effective questions’ for successful leadership. According to Doug, effective questions are usually open-ended, focus on the positive, and foster action. Effective questions should create a sense of possibility while avoiding issues of blame that can trigger defensiveness.

Here are some examples of effective questions, based on Krug’s guidelines that you can ask about a grantee’s organization or program at the start of your meeting:

  1. What are your strengths?
  2. What improvements have you made recently?
  3. What have been the benefits of those improvements?
  4. What areas of your performance please you most?
  5. What specifically about your performance would you like to be recognized for?

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At the end of effective dialogue, there should be a common understanding of everyone’s next steps. Concluding every conversation with an action plan creates a clear sense of what needs to happen next, when, and by whom. If you do this well, your dialogues will result in an enhanced level of trust, commitment to your Common Purpose, more accurate data, and accountability for action. 

You can learn more about how to support effective dialogue, how to build trust, and how to design effective questions in Chapter 8 of my book Social Sector Hero. You’ll also learn from two real-world case studies from the United Way of Central Iowa and the Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Primary Healthcare.