Employee Experience
Effective Communication in the Workplace for Building Stronger Teams
Poor workplace communication negatively impacts trust among team members and their leaders. But at the same time, one of the most important things to understand about communication is that there is no "one size fits all" approach to getting it right.
Different people will naturally have different styles and, as a leader, one must make sure they all fit together into the cohesive whole they were meant to be. Getting to that point isn't necessarily difficult, but it will depend on your ability to lean into a number of core best practices along the way.
The Importance of Effective Communication
The chasm between communication and effective communication can be a deep one.
Effective or positive communication is important because it creates a two-way street. It's not just about relaying information, but rather explaining things in a way that makes it easy for people to understand even complicated ideas. It's about providing solutions to tasks that enhance collaboration.
Benefits of Effective Communication in the Workplace
Even in the context of a business, a team is nothing if not a relationship between several people who are all focused on the same goal. For any relationship to be successful, it needs to support trust, respect, empathy, and understanding in all involved. This is accomplished by clearing up confusion, particularly when it comes to spending. If purchasing something for work is confusing thanks to complicated policies and protocols, people can't be expected to do it right - at least on the first try. Likewise, teams need accurate information to work from, especially with regard to financial matters. They can't be going from a gut instinct or feeling - the budget is the budget, after all. Effective communication can help clear up all these pain points and more, bringing people closer together in the process. Effective communication does that, particularly when it comes to something as important for the long-term success of the business as communicating spending policy. It allows for the effective management of relationships between not only staff members but also customers/clients and other key stakeholders. Never forget that the reverse is also true: poor communication can damage those relationships in a way that harms company culture, that pushes away clients through lowered productivity or poor quality work, and that can and often does result in lost sales. When you also consider the long-term reputational damage that a business can sustain, it's easy to see why this is so essential.
Not only does this improve productivity and increase employee engagement, but it also helps to keep people motivated as well.
Effective Communication in the Workplace Examples
Effective communication in the workplace can happen in many formats - from verbal to nonverbal to written communication, visual communication, and more. A one-on-one conversation between a team leader and team member would be an example of verbal communication, as would a meeting that the entire department is required to attend. Written communication could take the form of a memo or email, while visual communication could be a chart, graph, or some other type of image-based guide.
Regardless of the delivery mechanism, all effective communication tends to share a few common characteristics in that it sends a clear, correct, and complete message.
Understanding Different Communication Styles
One common type of communication style in the workplace is what is called being an assertive communicator. This means that regardless of any disagreements or conflicts, you still value the feelings of the person you're talking to. You're willing to stand your ground in a disagreement to stick up for yourself or what you believe in, but you're not willing to let it hurt someone else.
An aggressive communicator, on the other hand, does not care about the other person's feelings. This doesn't mean they don't care about them as a person - just that in this conversation they've decided that a more direct attitude is appropriate. For effective communication, you will likely need to switch up your own style based on who you're speaking to.
Why Active Listening Matters
When you're in conversation with another person, always try to avoid missing essential information. Don't wait for someone to stop speaking so that you can talk. Meaning, don't politely stand in silence, not listening, until you can convey whatever information you wanted to. Listen to what they're saying and digest that information. Be prepared to respond to it and add to it.
Don't just ignore it and say whatever you were going to say in the first place. That's not a conversation. Listen to what someone is saying and make an effort to understand them. Maintain
eye contact with them. Show them you're listening. This is called active listening, and it helps make sure all parties feel both seen and understood.
The Power of Nonverbal Communication
Sometimes, what you don't say when you're communicating is just as important as what you do. Certain gestures or facial expressions convey quite a bit. By paying attention to things like body language you can tell when someone is angry, confused, unhappy, or in a similar emotional state even if they never come right out and tell you this is the case. Then, you can respond accordingly.
Be mindful, because your own facial expressions and body language convey the same thing so be sure to always use the most appropriate gestures given how you really feel.
Building Trust Through Communication
The easiest way to build trust through communication in the workplace is to always "say what you mean and mean what you say," as the old phrase reminds us. Be mindful of how communication might show that we actually distrust someone in a given situation. Micromanaging certainly doesn't convey trust in someone's abilities, even if your words are meant to reassure them.
Likewise, don't set expectations for people that you are unwilling to follow. Insisting on one thing and then failing to practice that harms trust, morale, and the ability for a team to function.
Setting Clear Expectations
If you're trying to communicate effectively with another person, you need to be as clear as possible about what your goal is or what your expectations are in a given situation. The words you use should be easy to understand, and you should speak in complete sentences whenever possible. This is especially evident when you're talking about something like the communication of travel and expense-related matters and invoice policies. The financial stability of any team or business depends on people complying with spending guidelines that were put into place for a reason. But again, people can't comply with those guidelines if they don't understand them because they're too confusing or if they're unaware that they exist at all. Those expectations must be crystal clear to everyone involved if the group has a hope of meeting them, both as individuals and as a collective.
Keep any policy like this clear and concise while still covering the fundamentals. Have key stakeholders and department heads review drafts to make sure that everything stays fair and that the policies are easy to understand. Anything that is confusing or ambiguous should be removed. Don't just do this for financial policies - do it for any policy you create on a company-wide basis.
This is one of the many ways in which technology and automation can also offer positive ways to not only communicate important information but to also help reduce communication errors and improve the work atmosphere. Not only can tech-driven tools help streamline the document creation process, but they can also distribute it to key stakeholders for review easier and with a paper trail, so you know who has seen something and contributed to it before it is then disseminated to the larger business.
In the end, effective communication in the workplace is about so much more than just literally understanding what someone is saying. It's about encouraging people to actively listen and to embrace diversity. It's about adequately resolving conflicts through action rather than allowing them to negatively impact morale. Doing so not only builds trust and empathy, but also stronger and more productive teams, which in and of itself is the most important benefit of all.
If you'd like to find out more information about the importance of communication in the workplace, or if you're interested in related topics like how to improve your employee experience in a tech-driven way, please contact us today or follow us on social media.
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