Culture Corner: 10 Ways You Can Improve Communication
Good Communication is vital for building and maintaining healthy relationships and strong teams. It allows people to connect, exchange ideas and feelings, solve problems and resolve conflicts. The value of an honest conversation is vastly underrated.When people are communicating effectively, it leaves all parties involved satisfied and feeling more accomplished.
We often work with individuals who are struggling with one thing or another, the root cause is usually poor communication. It’s too easy to avoid difficult or uncomfortable conversations but when we do, it only leads to more frustration for everyone involved. When individuals have better communication tools these conversations become easier. We identified 10 things you can do to improve your communication skills and start improving your conversations.
Below are 10 ways to improve your conversations:
- 1.Create a safe environment.
- 2.Keep healthy boundaries.
- 3.Have realistic expectations.
- 4.Stop focusing on being right.
- 5.Listen to understand, not reply.
- 6.Express empathy and respect.
- 7.Use warm no-verbal communication.
- 8.Identify underlying issues.
- 9.Be clear and to the point.
- 10. Remember you’re a team.
At Lead to INSPIRE, we recommend leaders create opportunities to talk with their team. Some best practices are having an open-door policy, scheduling frequent 1:1 conversations with direct reports and each quarter scheduling time to really connect with the team member and learn from their perspective what is working, what is broken, as well as to hear about their innovative ideas to create better processes and experiences.
These conversations are invaluable in many ways. Not only do they help you understand what is happening in all areas of your team and allow you an opportunity to resolve issues, but they also show the team members you value their thoughts and opinions. We often hear from the team members that they are more engaged when their manager asks them what they think
and ultimately, they enjoy their jobs more. As a member of the team, if you’re not having these conversations with your leader, it’s okay to ask if you can meet.
If you want to start to deliver greater results from your team, start a conversation and get them involved in improving the work you do. We have NO DOUBT all involved will enjoy the outcomes.
