Communication skills are key and inevitable in many aspects of business and leadership.
I have been hearing a lot recently that building relationships, trust, team-coherence is really difficult without meeting face to face. It takes more time and requires good communication skills from all parties, that is sure, but it is not impossible to do so virtually.
Communication in the business from a leadership aspect is vital from change management to team building, to be able to constructively give feedback, manage conflicts, solve problems, keep healthy boundaries, saying “no” if needed and even more importantly saying “thank you” more often. Expressing appreciation, respectful communication even when delivering tough messages is very important in order to maintain a positive and healthy atmosphere at work.
Learning about communication techniques may sound old fashioned but it is worthy. There is in fact a huge difference between talking with someone face to face, seeing his/her facial expressions, gestures and feeling the energy of the other person. In the current digital work era most often we only hear our teams members, colleagues, sometimes we may see them through the camera which is a limited image of the person. Therefore learning and practicing communication techniques, toning of our voice is beneficial and can be the key to our success at work. I have seen great leaders and not so great ones. One of the key differentiator of great leaders is the way they communicate. Most often people leave bosses not companies, even more so in today’s social era. Think of it, how often do you hear and face the challenge that a good leader leaves your organization and suddenly you see talent flying away following that great leader. Likewise people stick around good leaders and great team/company culture even in tough times.
It worth taking the time and effort to practice communication. Often both in individual and team coaching sessions, one of the aspects I work on with my clients is communication. No matter what the topic is, we as humans sooner or later need to express ourselves, need to communicate.
I could mention here several different communication techniques but it is impossible to list them all, and the best technique should be adjusted to the given situation or even more, I most often find that a good mixture of several methods are bringing the best results. For me the most used ones are the following: sandwich technique, delivering “I” messages especially along the side of expressing how I feel and see certain scenarios, asking questions (to invite the others to have a dialogue to understand each other’s view and listen to it carefully) and nonviolent communication technique (I highly recommend the book of Marshall B. Rosenberg: Nonviolent Communication).
Recently I have been personally experimenting with communicating better my feelings when it came to a difficult topic in interaction with others and I have realized how powerful it is. Really helped others to getter a better understanding of the given situation from a different perspective, how it affected me and why I have reacted as I did. This way of communication was an invitation – and worked – to the other party to ask questions to gain a deeper understanding, which helped all involved parties to try to find solutions which can be acceptable to all. It has effectively fostered positive collaboration.
Another personal example, which I have been using for many years and turned out to be rather useful, especially in virtual collaboration is drawing. I am not a fan of creating presentations but sometimes drawing down a process flow for example, really eases communication and helps all involved parties to understand timelines, road blocker, different scenarios with variables.
In Self-talk I have been practicing kindness and gratitude. I usually summarize my daily “moments that matter” during my sporting time or when I commute. I have observed that it does make a difference in managing my stress level. I have tried gratitude and “moment we are proud of” with my team at work as well. I have received several feedback how it helped them to learn about the challenges of other team members and recognize strengths and successes which then created an overall positive atmosphere and team coherence.
The piece of Communication in my S T R E T C H method is built on the previous elements, is the chance to practice our EQ, Resilience, Self-talk in challenging situations a lot can depend on our communication skills.
I invite you to S T R E T C H yourself: tweak the way you tell something to someone and watch what difference it makes. Experiment with saying “thank you” a few more times at work each week throughout the next month. If you already mastered this, pick another one, freestyle and enjoy the ride!
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