5 Effective Ways To Communicate Better With Your Team

Morning Leaders,

The importance of not just communicating with your people but communicating effectively is often underestimated. Communicating effectively will ensure your message is not only heard but understood with the right context. Your message should also be delivered in the right way that it’s clear it has the right spirit and intent.

Communication with your colleagues and the people you lead is one of the most important skills you can work on as it has a profound effect on your team.

How can you communicate more effectively while also building huge relationships with your people?

1) Face time - get more face time with your team. Communicating face to face always wins over Slack or an email. It helps develop a trusting and meaningful relationship. Sending a Slack or an email is just words, it lacks tone, cues, intent and love. When you are about to send that feedback or message to one of your colleagues, think about how you can build on your existing relationship while also delivering the message. Stop focusing on just the message or getting the task done, focus on the opportunity to nurture your relationships at the same time which will pay longterm dividends.

2) Why - always explain why you are implementing a change, why the business does things a certain way or why you decided to follow a specific path. ‘Because we said so’ or ‘that’s just the way things are’ will lead to frustration and people making their own conclusions why you or the business did it. Explaining why to customers and to your employees wins you a lot of friends! Without colour to the situation, people will make their own conclusions and it’s not always a good one.

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

3) Language - how you describe things and how you talk about things has a massive impact on how it’s received. Always use positive and respectful language. Rather than ‘it’s costing us a lot of money to implement this’ or ‘this project is having lots of issues because of third party suppliers’ try ‘We’re making an investment into this product as we believe it will make a meaningful difference for our customers’ or ‘This project has seen a few challenges but we have good next steps to overcome these hurdles’. You’re saying the same things but with a more positive view, and you would be comfortable anyone including your CEO reading it. The language and energy of the leader can have a sweeping effect on the morale of the people in the room. Always be careful what you say as you don’t know who is listening, reading and being influenced.

4) Listen - 2 ears and 1 mouth. Focus on doing more listening than speaking. You learn things when you listen rather than speaking when you share things you already know. Really listen to understand and not to respond. You also don’t always need to answer their concerns there and then, as it can come across as dismissive or defensive. Instead, let them know that you are listening and want to learn more. Following the interaction, it might be wise to let them know you wish to take it offline so you can take a deeper look into the challenge they have raised. This way you have taken the time to absorb what they have said and to get a true understanding of the problem, rather than responding with limited insight.

Photo by Christina

5) Feedback - stop seeing it as a negative, whether you are delivering it or receiving it. Feedback is a gift, feedback helps us all get better. Specifically for the people you lead, you are providing the answers to help them reach a higher level of competency. Preferably they have already recognised their mistake through their own introspection but it’s important you also talk to them about a miss or a failure. If you could provide feedback to 10 people in your team and improve each individual by just 1% each. That’s a huge 10% gain and you have done your job! Always deliver timely feedback which is direct but with the right spirit and intent. If you can provide regular and continuous feedback that is focused on their behaviours rather than the person, you will nurture the right supportive environment. Remind yourself, by holding off that difficult conversation you are doing your people a disservice and will quickly lose their trust if you don’t let them know when they’re missing the mark.

Whether you are a leader or an aspiring leader, or even someone who is just interested in the subject. We could all work on our communication skills more to foster a more enjoyable and meaningful working environment. Which of these items could you focus on this quarter?

All the best

David

Resources Of The Week

• Book - 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. This book goes into the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. Patrick outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team.

• Book - Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Radical Candor is the perfect handbook for those who are looking to find meaning in their job and create an environment where people love both their work and their colleagues and are motivated to strive to ever greater success. It hits on why feedback is critical to improvement and why you must have the balance of being direct with your feedback but also so it’s received with the right spirit and intent.

• Leadership Community - we’re launching a Leadership Community in the next month or so. This will be a private safe place for leaders and aspiring leaders to calibrate and improve as a group. It will include a knowledge base of resources, Slack Group, Monthly Q&As and Book Clubs. If you are interested in joining to develop your leadership and professional skills for a small investment within a nurturing, positive and supportive environment, please register your interest here.

Quote of the Week

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” - Peter Drucker

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