Improving communication gets much better results for you and your team. This is the power of communication. It boosts productivity and improves everyone’s relationships, not just in the workplace but in their life in general.
Good communication is essential in the workplace as it is in life. Leaders who understand this have a higher chance of success. That’s because effective communication results in better productivity, improved relationships, and happier employees.
Effective communication is not as simple as it sounds. In fact, it involves some key factors like listening, the ability to empathize, being open-minded, and receiving helpful feedback. Moreover, the best leaders display confidence, a friendly demeanor, and congruent actions. These traits help foster better relationships with every team member.
Furthermore, improved communication offers many great benefits in the workplace. Some of the most known advantages are preventing and resolving problems, helping build trust, providing clear direction, increasing engagement, boosting productivity, and promoting teamwork.
Now, do you want to improve your company’s communication? Here are some tips on improving communication at work.
Implement an Open-Door Policy
One of the fastest ways to improve communication at work is to implement an open-door policy. The policy allows every team member to know that you welcome their opinions about goals, work projects, and every concern they have at work.
Likewise, it provides accessibility for all team members to ask questions, voice their concerns and even offer suggestions to make the work easier, faster, and better. According to studies, openness puts employees at ease which often results in transparency.
Moreover, it allows quick access to information. This is crucial, especially with urgent matters. It also promotes a friendly atmosphere which helps employee engagement. The key to the open-door policy is to make yourself approachable and open to your team. If it’s possible, you can leave the door literally open.
Encourage Them to Ask Questions
Your employees will love to ask questions if they’re allowed to. Giving them a chance to do so would surely make them happy. That’s because when they can openly ask you questions, especially on important and urgent matters can often make or break a deal. It also affects client relationships and even becomes a defining factor in the completion of a project.
In fact, you can even include “There are no stupid questions” in your policy. Repeat these words during onboarding, and make sure you back this down as the leader. Likewise, you’ll be surprised at how your team members’ willingness to offer their questions, especially with clarifications on important matters that otherwise you wouldn’t have thought they had.
Also, learn to read their body language. When they’re frowning, slouching in their chairs, exasperated, giving off strange vibes, etc., these are indications that you need to ask them a question. This will help every team member become comfortable with asking questions which will reduce miscommunication significantly.
Set Coffee Breaks
Research shows that switching things up is beneficial to companies, businesses, and organizations. While it’s important to stick to regular procedures and policies, it won’t hurt to give your employees some break time.
In fact, according to research, break times can improve team communication. The best example is to encourage your employees to have coffee breaks. Studies showed that social time tends to boost up to 50% of positive effects on communication.
This means you need to give your employees enough informal time to talk about their work or much better if you can provide them with beverages. However, if you don’t have time or resources to give them an informal break on a daily basis, you can do so just a couple of times a week. But make sure to solicit ideas from them after the break.
Provide Communication Training
If you can invest in training in other areas like customer service, product, skills, and sales, why not give them communication training as well? Your business will suffer because of poor communication.
A decent communications training course is enough to cover basic communication, develop presentation skills, improve speaking skills, and even managerial and business writing skills. You can do this through an in-house corporate trainer. The truth is, there are countless communication experts that can help you with their service. While this might be a costly investment, the payoff is worth every penny.
Organize Team-Building Activities
Social interaction within the organization can help improve team communication. As the leader, you need to invest time and money into social events for your team members to help them get to know each other better. One of the most effective ways to do this is to organize some team-building activities.
However, because of the pandemic, it’s better to comply with state regulations and protocols put in place. As of this time, we recommend virtual team-building challenges. This is a good way for your employees to develop collaboration and feel comfortable with each other.
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How are You Improving Communication?
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