Good communication is essential for a positive and productive workplace, and even leads to higher customer satisfaction and higher revenues. When communication is poor, the confusion and frustration can cause real problems with morale in your organization. In order to build trust and rapport in your company, therefore, it is necessary to optimize communication. Doing so is not difficult, and will result in many benefits both tangible and intangible.
Tips on How to Optimize Communication
There are many ways to optimize communication – some involving putting procedures in place, and others targeted at understanding the people who work for you.
Make time for regular meetings: An open door policy has been a popular way for managers to stay in contact with their team, but this doesn’t guarantee that one-on-one meetings will take place. Whether it makes more sense for you to set up weekly or monthly meetings, scheduling such conversations as events on your calendar makes sure that management and employees are talking and communicating regularly.
Schedule weekly team meetings: While staying in contact with people one-on-one is important, it is equally important to keep your team connected and goals aligned. Weekly team meetings are the perfect for people to share their workflow, talk about challenges and successes, and offer support to one another. Managers can also clearly communicate upcoming plans and projects, making wure every member of the team hears the same message.
Follow up after your meetings: This may not be appropriate for every meeting, but for many, managers should provide clear notes and communications to reiterate the subject matter of the meeting. This is especially important if roles and responsibilities were assigned, or deadlines for projects were discussed. People function far more productively when they understand what is expected of them.
Explain your motivations: Randomly assigning tasks without explaining why they are important or how they fit into the overall plan can be harmful to morale. Work becomes more meaningful when we understand how we are contributing, and how our efforts matter. For instance, when asking someone to take on a mundane data entry project, explain that the finished result will provide rich data to increase sales significantly. This makes a boring task meaningful and can boost productivity and morale. However, you won’t always be able to make a boring task meaningful – acknowledging their willingness to be a team player and praising their work ethic will go a long way.
Keep feedback constructive: People on your team do require feedback to have a clear understanding about if they are meeting expectations and if their job performance is up to par. However, negative criticism may come across as a personal attack. Constructive feedback will not only help them to do a better job, but it will result in positive outcomes for your organization.
Recognize that communication is requires two parties: Good managers don’t just hand out orders and directives. The effort to optimize communication should include two way conversations which allow your people to speak and add their thoughts and opinions.
Get to know your people: Communication always goes more smoothly if you have a rapport and personal connection. Understand your team as people and get to know their personal situation in order to have more insight as to how they think, react and are motivated.
These are just a few ways to optimize communication in your organization, and you may find many more. The important thing to remember is to stay open to speaking with your team on a regular basis, and listening to their concerns and feedback.
Alliance IT is a managed services company based in Sarasota. We help small to medium sized businesses to optimize their growth and revenue by streamlining processes and enhancing productivity. to learn more, contact us today.
