It’s hard to speak and feel that your words are not received well. That happens to managers who are addressing their team with less than effective communication skills. On the flip side, it’s just as difficult to listen to someone who is speaking to you but saying nothing that you understand. In order to eliminate the frustration on both sides, we are going to highlight three best practices for effective communication.
“Parlez-vous francais?”
This is how some of us feel when we speak to others. If their look of confusion is any indication, we might as well be speaking a foreign language. Effective communication is important between managers and their teams for many reasons:
- Project efficiency
- Avoids misunderstandings that could delay project completion
- Better results
- Cohesiveness among all team members
- Better relationships across the board with your team
When it comes to communicating effectively, a manager must be “multilingual” – as it pertains to communication styles. There are four ways that your team and you may be trying to get your point across:
- Achiever
- Anchor
- Adventurer
- Analyzer
Each person falls into one of these communication categories. Becoming well-versed in each allows you to recognize when the language of a conversation changes. As you speak with your team day to day, get a feel for the type of points that concern them the most. These are hints as to the type of communication language they respond to best.
Recognize Communication Styles and Use this Knowledge Effectively
You may only know at this point that your team is not working as well as it should. What could the problem be? One area to investigate is the way that you are communicating with them. Is your point coming across as you hoped? Is their feedback that you just don’t understand? This may signify a lack of “hearing” between both parties. Here are three ways to change the game.
Awareness – Become aware of the four different communication styles: achiever, anchor, adventurer and analyzer. Understand the characteristics of each. Can you label (this time it’s okay) each team member with certain characteristics? This gives clues to their communication style.
- Acceptance – Accept your style. We all have things about ourselves that we want to change but the way we communicate is a hard one. It is a part of us because of life experiences. Accepting it allows you to recognize differences and become more amenable to them. Appreciate that others have different ways of accepting information due to who they have grown to become.
- Adapting – It’s not about us but getting the necessary message across to others. For best results, when talking to someone with a different communication style, tap into the elements that they need to hear to understand what you are saying.
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