Common sense?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

‘It’s just common sense isn’t it!’

A coaching client said this to me recently. And yes, she was right, it was common sense – to her anyway. We were talking about sales, she had worked in sales the whole of her life, so talking about the customer and the customer’s point of view was common sense to her.

But to the accountants, researchers and scientists in the room it was not common sense. They had internal functions in the company. They never met the customers and were not required to. Common sense to them was the function of a product, the cost analysis of the parts required, the logistics and the financial impact.

Good communication inside a business is not always about the obvious, it is not always about the senior team communicating (or not!) the vision and goals of the company. Sometimes it is about putting a team together who will each use their own common sense to get the job done!

In this case, adding a salesperson into a team making product development decisions provided the team with someone who would bring the customer’s viewpoint to a discussion that would otherwise have been about the internal viewpoint.

However no one had told her why she was there. And therefore she could not see her worth to the team. She thought what she brought to the table was common sense and therefore had no value compared to the technical and financial knowledge in the room.

We spoke about what common sense is and she realised that it is only common sense to her! To the others in the room it was a valid input to their decision making and without her being there the customer would not have been considered. So she did have worth to the team and that gave her the confidence to go to the next meeting and speak up with confidence.

So whilst the Collins dictionary defines common sense as…

Your common sense is your natural ability to make good judgments and to behave in a practical and sensible way

Collins Dictionary

…I would contend that in business, common sense is only common sense if that is your role, otherwise it is specific sense!

What lessons can the senior team learn from this example?

When setting up a team communication is vital. Whilst it may seem obvious to you as the leader why you need each person in the team, it is essential to make sure each team member understands that. In this case, a senior salesperson had been part of a team for a number of months. Although she was speaking up and expressing her point of view, she could not see the value of this to the team. By asking her about the experience of other members of the team compared to her own experience we were able to show that she was bringing a perspective that others couldn’t. Although she saw the perspective she was bringing as just common sense, in fact she was asking questions that no one else could or would.

Consider meeting with the members of the team and asking them what they think they are there for and ensuring that they see they have value to the team. This can be done individually, or all together. If the team has been running for a while and is already productive then consider meeting only with the individuals who you think are struggling. If the team is new then use it as one of the exercises in forming the team, perhaps asking them to tell each other what value they can bring.

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Jacqui Hanbury is the Managing Director of The Pathway Communication Company Limited and is a specialist in helping you find the thing that is stopping your business from achieving as much as it could be. Follow her on LinkedIn to find out more.