26 Sep Managers: 6 Tips For Being A Good Communicator
Do you give your employees meaningful feedback? I guess that all depends on what is meant by meaningful feedback.
Here are six tips to help you improve your communication as a manager:
1. Negative feedback is a good thing. No one likes hearing how they screwed up. But how can you expect your employees to fix something if they don’t know what they are doing wrong? You don’t need to be mean, and you should give positive feedback as well, but you must tell employees where they need to improve.
2. Subtlety is not an effective tool. A lot of people don’t get subtle hints. Demonstrating how you’d like it done without saying specifically, “I’d like it done this way!” leaves a lot of people thinking, “Tom does it this way and I do it that way,” and not, “I’d better do it how Tom does it.”
3. Set concrete goals. When your employees know what you think is important, the communication problem is largely solved. It also makes for less awkward conversations when there are failures.
4. Listen to your employees’ complaints. Every workplace has what I like to refer to as a “Norma Rae.” And, yes, some people are just whiners. But how do you expect them to listen to you when you won’t listen to them? Sure, you’re the boss, so of course they should listen. But in real life, respect has to be earned. If your employees are saying they don’t understand why things need to be done in a specific fashion, they may well have an idea for a better process.
5. Document, document, document. Theoretically, communication is a separate thing than documenting what happens in the workplace, but in an employer-employee relationship this documentation is critical. People often hear what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. Not only should you make notes on what you said and when, but if you’ve had a conversation with an employee, follow up with an email to the person listing the key points that were discussed.
6. Don’t do important communication via text message. Texting is a convenient, time-saving tool, but it’s not good for dealing with employee problems. Face to face, phone, and even email are better tools for important information.
If you include these simple techniques in your daily interactions with your employees, no one will be taken by surprise, you won’t experience as much frustration, and if you do need to fire someone, it won’t be without fair warning.