When Communication Isn’t Your Strong Suit
But, Heather, what if communication isn’t my strong suit? How do I, as a leader, begin to communicate consistently?
It’s drilled into our heads that ALL leaders need to be effective communicators. They need to be clear, concise and to the point.
But, it’s important to realize that communication isn’t everyone’s strong suit.
That doesn’t make you an ineffective leader.
Period. End stop. Mic drop.
The very first thing you can do in building your communication style is focus in on if you’re being an active listener. Start paying attention to your chats with people or your video calls. Are you listening to respond, or are you listening for a greater understanding?
Start to ask more questions. Really start to seek to understand why the person you’re speaking with thinks the way that they think. Try to understand WHY they approach things the way that they do, what their challenges are, and what they think their own biggest challenge is.
Often, in and of itself, this is the best strategy to begin.
When you start listening and paying attention and taking notes, start asking more prompting questions:
Tell me more about that.
Why do you think that’s a challenge?
What’s going on? Is there maybe more to this story?
This begins you being curious. #getcurious
This will help you be able to reflect on what is actually being said and give you the time to process the information.
So the first step to strengthening your communication is to, ironically, stop talking and listen. Then ask more prompting questions and see if you can pull those things forward.
Then, secondly, begin to think how CONSISTENTLY you’re communicating. So if you’re listening well, what is your consistency?
This can be a programmed approach — scheduling one-on-ones, phone calls or just daily check-ins to see how your team is doing.
You might want to simply make sure you check-in with each of your team members once per week or you can let it be more organic than planned meetings.
But however you decide to move forward with checking in on your team, be sure it is consistently.
Once you start to actively listen and understand each individual person as a whole and how they’re trying to get their thoughts, words and emotions across, you can begin to consistently check-in with them to make sure that they feel supported.
This facilitates trusts and lets your team know you can be depended on, too.