As a manager, half of your job is communications related. Whether you are giving directions to your workers, updating your manager about the department’s current operations and needs, or discussing with your peers how you can more effectively work together, an effective communication style may make all the difference.
You might take your communication skills for granted and feel that you don’t need any special training. After all, you have been able to talk since you were a baby. But there are dos and don’ts to ensure effective communications. Communication is a process that must take place for a message to go from the sender to the recipient. The emphasis is usually on the last step, and managers are taught to get feedback from the recipient to ensure that the message has been received and understood.
In Learn to Listen, you read about the listening filters, such as different perceptions, emotions, and poor timing, that can impede the communication process. But communication problems aren’t always due to listening shortcomings. Sometimes, the sender doesn’t convey the message clearly.
Let me share with you three experiences of new managers.
In the first case, John had told his employees what seemed like a hundred times that he didn’t want them to take their lunch break at the same time, yet day after day at 12:30, the office would be empty.
Marge felt she was ready for a promotion, and she went into her manager’s office to explain why she felt she deserved it. But, as she later told some friends, “I never got to raise the issue. I think my boss deliberately avoided the discussion.”
Easy going, it takes a lot to get Michael upset, so I was surprised when, furious with his assistant, he called me to complain about her. Because he had only told me the week before about how wonderful she was, I was shocked to learn that he was thinking of putting her on probation. Once he calmed down, he told me that he’d had a report due to a prospective client that morning, and his assistant hadn’t even started work on it. “I told her last week that I would need it today,” he fumed, “and now she claims I never said a word to her.”
All three situations have one thing in common: the managers blamed their communications problems on the other party. While many times, the person spoken to may not have been listening, the fact remained that getting the message across was the managers’ responsibility—and they failed.