A wise man once said, communication makes friends; a lack of communication makes enemies. Our words have power! We all know communication is important, and yet effective communication can be a battle for individuals, teams, and organizations. Communication is the gateway to clarity, which ultimately gets the right things done.
As Alan Schaefer, Branding People Together states, “to ensure we have clarity, we must consider how we share and process information. Most of us have experienced a scenario where you have a meeting with one or several people. You have a robust, or at least what appears to be forward-moving, conversation. You break the metaphorical huddle and go running whatever plays you understand to be correct. You come back together and people are so off course that you have a twilight-zone moment of disbelief wondering, Was the other person in the same conversation as the rest of us?”
So how do you prevent your team from falling prey to the telephone game? Below are three ways to prevent miscommunication:
Use the right format –Email? Phone? Face to face? We tend to default to email a lot! Email is best used to spread information, like recapping action items after a meeting or sharing attachments others need, NOT for in-depth communication. This means no debating, convincing or critiquing via email—save that for face-to-face communication.
Know Yourself and Others. The more you know about yourself and those you’re communicating with, the more effective you will be. This is especially helpful with people who are wired differently than you.
Repeat and Recap. At the end of a conversation, repeat what you heard, allowing for feedback on whether you understood the message in the way the speaker intended. You will be amazed by how many times the other person will say, “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant…” This includes recapping next steps if applicable.
The good news is, like anything else, you can build your communication skills and become a skilled communicator that’s productive and clear. You are what you repeatedly do.
Luckily, researchers at Google and Facebook have conducted extensive studies to determine the most effective leadership strategies, allowing us to tap into their data and discover the three simple changes that will improve the effectiveness and the performance of the teams you manage.
Support your team, don’t lead them
Recently, leaders at Facebook shared some really fascinating strategies that they use. It all starts with a critical mentality shift.
Managers don’t “lead” teams at Facebook, they “support” them. Here’s one thing you can do to immediately increase your effectiveness with your team…Stop saying you “lead” a team.
“Whenever you are about to say “the team I lead,” catch yourself and shift your attention.” – Mel Robbins
Instead, teach yourself to say you support a team. This one-word shift, from lead to support, alters how you view your role as a leader and changes everything.
Try it for one week. Whenever you are about to say “the team I lead,” catch yourself and shift your attention. Never doubt that it’s the smallest changes that make the biggest impact—even something as simple as changing one word.
Encourage and welcome escalation
A study found that 85 percent of employees are withholding critical feedback from their bosses.
We only do what we feel like. And if people at work feel like they’ll get in trouble if they come to you with an issue, or that it’s futile, they won’t come.
Without open and transparent communication, there is little room for innovation, collaboration, and engagement with your employees.
A few years ago, Google embarked on an initiative to study hundreds of internal teams and figure out why some teams rock and others fail.
As Google crunched the data, a concept called “psychological safety” emerged and it is one of the most important things their leaders now focus on creating. It means you operate in a manner that people feel safe coming to you with problems, challenges, and improvements.
There are two simple things you can do that create psychological safety. First, encourage and welcome escalation and concerns by showing appreciation when it happens. Second, ensure that everyone talks in meetings.
Everyone’s opinion matters
Remember, your job isn’t to lead the team, but rather to support them. And that means removing the obstacles that are in your team’s way. One of the biggest obstacles you can remove is the fact that many of your team members are holding themselves back.
You are going to make sure that everyone talks and contributes in meetings.
Whenever you hold a meeting, try this:
Make a list of everyone attending.
Place a check mark next to people’s names when they talk.
As the same extroverts start to speak again, engage the “quiet people” by asking them for their input.
By giving someone a push to become more visible and showing interest in their inputs, you are making them know that they matter. Through this experiment, meetings will spur collaboration and open communication.
As a leader, if you pay attention to these few things, you’ll not only increase your effectiveness—you’ll be changing the way your team works together.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. The best way to improve upon our weakness is to practice a new behavior, right? Practice practice practice. But how easy is that?
The answer is not as easy as you may think. We are creatures of habit; habits we aren’t even aware of. This is why change is so hard for many of us. We can learn a new behavior, sure, but how quickly…and when does it stick?
What steps should we take to sustain changed behavior?
Be VERY specific on the habit you would like to create (which may also be stopping a certain behavior).
Understand the reason why you want to change. What are the benefits to be derived from this changed behavior?
Create a plan of action and STICK WITH IT! Consistency is key. Stay committed to your plan.
Practice, practice, practice. Our brain creates pathways for behavior. We need to repeat and repeat and repeat to create new pathways.
Expect resistance from your body, from your moods, added stress. This is your natural resistance to creating new pathways. Don’t give up!
One day, and you won’t know when and where, your behavior change will become your new habit.
If you are interested in further readings on creating habits, here are some excellent books on the topic:
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (name one of the best books of the year by NY Times)
Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results
23 Anti-Procrastination Habits: How to Stop Being Lazy and Get Results in Your Life
“Our actions change our minds, our minds can change our behaviors and our behavior can change the outcomes.”
–Manish Abraham
Let’s be honest. How many times do you read the same email message over and over again? Guess what? The information hasn’t changed. You’re just procrastinating.
I have a personal rule: I will only read each message once, then take the appropriate action. The goal is “Inbox: 0” every day. Now, honestly, I don’t do it every day.
I do it almost every day, and I always keep my emails under a hundred. But I have met people who have thousands of emails in their inbox—with hundreds, sometimes even more than a thousand, unread. This is not helpful. Not only is it potentially bad for your personal brand, it also makes email far more time-consuming than it needs to be.
The key is not to get bogged down, to keep moving, to deal with each email message once and only once. The way you do this is to start by asking, is this email actionable? Does somebody expect me to do something with this email, or is it asking me to do something?
If no, there are three possibilities;
If yes, there are three different possibilities.
These are taken from David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done. And this summary will help you deal specifically with your email.
TIP 1: HOW TO PROCESS NON-ACTIONABLE EMAIL
If the answer to the question ‘Is this email actionable?’ is NO, then you have three options.
Delete it. Yes, there really is a delete key when it comes to email. My own philosophy is if it’s really important, somebody else somewhere in the world has a copy.
Add it to you Someday/Maybe list. If I don’t want to lose the idea but there’s nothing to do with it just yet, I can drag it into Evernote or a saved folder and return to it another time.
File it. When in doubt, file. Why? Because you can always get back to it if need be, and it really doesn’t take up a lot of space. Here is what’s important: I use one and only one folder for my filing. It’s called “Processed Email.” The reason I do this is because it keeps me from getting distracted and wasting time. The moment I have to start answering questions like, “Where am I going to file this? This is about Project X from Client Y, so do I file it in Project X? Or do I file it under Client Y?What if it’s about two projects?Do I make a copy and put a copy in each folder?” It can become very complex very quickly. And that means time down the drain. Instead, I just put it all in one folder and let the software do the searching when I need to find that message. I can get back to almost any message in a matter of seconds. It takes less time than me having to remember what folder I filed it in. But what if the email is actionable?
TIP 2: HOW TO PROCESS ACTIONABLE EMAIL
Just do it. Here is where I use David Allen’s two-minute rule. If you can take care of the action in two minutes or less, why even take the time to put it in your task list? You run the risk of losing it, not getting back to it, or not being as responsive as you’d like to be. So just go ahead and do it.
Defer it. It may need to get done, but it doesn’t need to get done now. So go ahead and put it on your calendar, create a reminder, but defer the action until a later time. You can drag the email to Processed and set a reminder in a task manager like Basecamp. You can also drag the email into Evernote or Notes and add a reminder. Email apps like Dropbox’s Mailbox let you defer emails with a swipe or place it on a todo list. However you manage it, the thing is to get it out of your email inbox.
Delegate it. I am preaching to myself here, by the way. I’m kind of a control freak, and I have this unspoken assumption that nobody can do it as well as I can do it. But the simple truth is that we’re not always the best person to handle every task. You probably have other people on your team more competent than you at one task or another. They may be colleagues. They could be contractors.
Recommended Resource: Robyn Marcotte’s note: One of our favorite Podcasts is Michael Hyatt’s Lead to Win
When we think of someone with integrity, we think of someone we can count on to come through on what they promise. Unfortunately, that’s not always a safe bet today.
Over the last several years I’ve noticed a change in the way we use the word integrity. The word used to mean staying true to your word—even if it’s difficult, inconvenient, or expensive. But today I hear more and more people using the word as if it means being true to themselves—even if that means leaving someone else to clean up the mess.
This might look like a win if we’re trying to save ourselves from difficulty and discomfort, but it will come back to bite us in the end. Nothing destroys our credibility faster than bailing on a commitment.
Why is integrity so important?
Trust depends on integrity. If people can’t rely on your word, they won’t trust you. They may extend some grace, but eventually, people will doubt and disbelieve.
Influence depends on trust. People will refuse the influence of leaders they distrust. Just look at how this plays out in politics or the media. We follow people we trust.
Impact depends on influence. You can’t make the impact you want unless you can influence others and shift their behavior.
Now think of other relationships: marriage, parenting, church, whatever. The strength of our relationships is measured by how much people can count on us. If we’re not true to our words, that means our relationships will be as unreliable as we are.
“The strength of our relationships is measured by how much people can count on us.” – Michael Hyatt, Author
Great 1:1 meetings drive accountability by continuously keeping top priorities, top priorities.
If you feel that your one-on-ones aren’t especially useful, then it’s time to improve your process. I truly find that 1:1’s are the single most important meetings of my week. It helps me set expectations, communicate priorities, and listen to the struggles/challenges that each person on my team is having. When done well, 1:1’s drive engagement and accountability.
Trap: Don’t get caught by the misconception that 1:1’s are just another meeting or that the “open door” policy is better. I truly believe by focusing 30 min of time each week on each of your direct reports, you will free up hours of meetings by delegating decision making power, and eliminate last-minute fire drills by getting ahead of problems before they blow up while results by motive each person to stay focused on your team’s top priorities. When done well you will also reduce email and phone calls because both of you have a predetermined weekly time to talk through or share key information.
How to create more effective 1:1 meetings
1-Recurring, scheduled meetings: Weekly, bi-weekly depending on your role/business.
2-Brief – 30 minutes. It may look like this:
15-20 min: Progress on goals and priorities
Progress should be reviewed for each goal; share with your leader any issues or blockers they may need to help with to ensure that the target will be achieved.
5 min: Share recent accomplishments – ask for feedback
Ask for feedback from your leader. Any good work or praiseworthy behavior should be recognized and encouraged. Be open to it. It is a gift!
5-10 min: Development and open-ended Communication
Leave this open in the agenda – where does your leader need help? It may be an opportunity!!
What are you working to further your career development? Discuss ideas.
3-Location: Consider having your one on one meeting outside or out of the office – the change of venue can contribute to a more relaxed session.
4-Timing: Consider the timing for the recurring meeting. 4pm on Friday is not ideal for a focused conversation about your career development.
5-Commit to your 1 to 1 meeting – make it a priority: The first thing you need to do is make your one on one meeting a priority. It’s easy to skip meetings, so schedule a recurring calendar event each week to ensure the appropriate time is set aside.
6-Establish the 1:1 Meeting Agenda Format: Setting a mutually agreeable agenda allows the both participants to show up prepared and with aligned expectations.
7-Prepare so you can look forward, not backward: Thoughtful preparation. If you submit your template to your leader the day before your one on one meeting, each will arrive at the meeting knowing what will be discussed and allow you to spend the bulk of your time looking to the future, brainstorming, creating action items, and connecting personally.
8-Focus on you and your projects and development: Avoid discussing other employees’ work during your time together, unless it’s specifically applicable to the conversation.
Let’s be honest. How many times do you read the same email message over and over again? Guess what? The information hasn’t changed. You’re just procrastinating.
When we think of someone with integrity, we think of someone we can count on to come through on what they promise. Unfortunately, that’s not always a safe bet today.