Understanding Communication Strategies

Many employees are expected to argue for themselves in order to promote the organization's interests through their own department.

But how do you monitor the strategies these people use to argue for their interests?

You can encourage people to use communicative strategies to resolve conflicts. You can also stress the importance of avoiding contentious strategies that result in division. To do this, considers these points:

• rules for open communications
• conflict-resolution methods
• avoiding contentious strategies.

Rules for open communications
When you hire someone for your department, or when meetings start to get out of hand, you could bring up a series of basic rules for open communication. These are communicative strategies. The following provide more about the elements of open communication:

• I statements: When discussing your feelings about an emotional situation, use statements such as, "I feel this way when this happens." It's non-accusatory and expresses what you feel.
• willingness: People on both sides of a disagreement need to indicate their willingness to resolve their differences.
• listening: Everyone needs to hear the speaker and acknowledge through verbal and nonverbal means that he or she is listening.
• restating: When it's your turn to speak in reply to what someone else has said, restate what you believe you heard him say. This helps eliminate misunderstandings.
• agreements: It's also important to point out what interests you have in common with those you disagree with. This sets an optimistic tone for possible agreements.
• requests: It's divisive to ask someone to stop doing something you don't like; however, it's OK to request a change of behavior, especially if you suggest alternatives.
• consistency: Be consistent with your verbal and nonverbal message.
• word choice: Be careful with the words you use when describing negative feelings. Try to choose noninflammatory language and tone down your emotions.

Conflict-resolution methods
There are other strategies you can use, but these strategies should be used as a last-resort tactic, when nothing else has worked. These strategies lie somewhere in between communicative and contentious.

The following provide more about these strategies:

• Giving in is an acceptable strategy when you won't suffer long-term harm. It can be an effective bargaining chip that lets you move on to a more important point.
• When it appears that a conflict is about to escalate, it's OK to break off or even give up on trying to resolve it.
• Avoiding a problem can be OK if time will take care of it. This is a difficult decision to make.
• In emergencies, when quick and decisive actions must be taken, when you must implement an unpopular decision, or when someone is playing games with you, it is OK to be abrupt.

Avoiding contentious strategies
It is very important to point out to the people in your group what you consider to be contentious strategies. The following provide more about these inappropriate tactics:

• Sometimes, when people try to become your new best friend, and flatter and compliment you, they may be trying to get you to make a decision against your interests.
• Inducing guilt is an inappropriate way to get someone to change her mind.
• Gamesmanship is the use of maneuvers that further your own position over others.
• Another contentious tactic is the use of threats.
• Side issue remarks are derogatory comments directed at your opponent.

To resolve a conflict with an employee, it's important to use appropriate communicative strategies and avoid contention. You should show willingness and consistency in resolving a conflict, use I statements and proper word choice, listen to and restate a message, find common ground and request a change of behavior.

If these strategies do not work, you should then use an appropriate last-resort strategy.

Understanding Conflict

Conflicts among employees occur in every organization.

As an effective leader you need to know how to deal with conflict.

Understanding conflict means examining:

• the concept of conflict
• constructive conflict
• the escalation of conflict
• the psychological changes that accompany conflict
• the two primary reasons for conflict.

Constructive conflict
While we all know conflict when we feel it, most of us don't work with it well because we don't understand its dynamics. What are the inner workings of conflict?

Conflict is an everyday, naturally occurring fact of life. Without it, there is no progress, evolution, or art. Don't fear it; learn how to face it and work with it. It occurs when you believe that in order to get what you want, someone else won't be able to get what he or she wants.

The concept of conflict
The resolution of a problem can show the three ways conflict can be constructive. These are:

• when it leads to unity of purpose and collaboration
• when it leads to better decision making
• when it produces change.

The escalation of conflict
Many conflicts, however, turn destructive because they escalate out of control. Consider the following reasons that conflict escalates:

• Cooperation turns into accusations and threats.
• One issue becomes many.
• A specific issue gives way to general complaints.
• Consideration turns to getting even.
• More people begin to get involved.

The psychological changes that accompany conflict
There are a number of psychological changes that happen to people when they get involved in conflicts. These are explained in detail below:

• When you are in conflict, you develop selective perception, only seeing your own side of the story. You begin to look for evidence to prove you're right.
• Conflict can also cause you to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, where you create a worst-case scenario, and then get what you expect by acting as if it's going to happen.
• When conflict is played out, a complete communication breakdown occurs. Trust is rarely reestablished, and any polite conversation that follows is filled with tension and bitterness.

The two primary reasons for conflict
There are two primary reasons for conflict. One primary reason for conflict is that two people have different interests; they want different things. Another primary reason for conflict is two people have the same interests, which are in conflict; they believe only one of them can have what they want.

Exploring conflict resolution within your organization can improve the atmosphere in the workplace and lead to greater creativity and collaboration.

Understanding Listening Strategies

Listening is one of the most valuable skills a leader can have.

Many people assume that listening is a passive experience, but it actually requires active participation. There are a variety of methods for effective listening, including:

• using attentiveness, silence, and neutrality
• reflecting and summarizing
• sorting and patterning
• noting gaps and interruptions
• expressing feeling and testing for responsibility.

When people talk, they expect others to listen to them, but they generally give little thought to what this means. The following are some first steps to good listening:

• Focus your attention on the person who's talking. Maintain eye contact. If your body language says you're not interested, the person will sense it.
• Remain silent, except for recognition that you're following along, such as a semi-verbal "uh-huh" or a head nod. This says you're paying attention.
• Maintain a neutral frame of mind. This means not judging or attempting to control the conversation, not suggesting or correcting, and not praising or criticizing.

There are two other techniques for making people aware that you are paying attention. First, use reflective statements. These are words that echo important words or phrases that the patient uses. Second, summarize what you have just heard and repeat it back to the speaker.

You can also wait for a break in the narration, and then sort out and find patterns in their experiences. This can help to sort out the differences between symptoms and deeper problems.

Try to notice inconsistencies in narratives. What is left out of a conversation can be as helpful in analyzing a situation as what is included.

Toward the end of a conversation, you can encourage the speaker to step back from their story and summarize it for themselves.

Remember that effective listening requires active participation. You should use attentiveness, silence and neutrality when listening. It's important to use reflective statements and summarize the employee's message. You should also sort symptoms from deeper problems, note gaps and interruptions in your employee's story, encourage your employee to express feeling, and test for responsibility.

Understanding Group Communications

Group communications are essential to successful organizations.

Leaders can improve group communication by:

1. increasing team communication
2. improving organizational communication
3. using informal communication networks.

Increasing team communication
There are a number of things you can do to improve the way your group shares information. Some of these are shown below:

• Use a variety of formats to get the team together to talk, including team meetings, informal chats, and scheduled informational discussions.
• Ensure everyone understands the purpose of these sessions.
• Ensure that the group understands how proud you are of their work.
• Some people in a group can be bashful about raising questions, so you could attempt to anticipate their needs when responding to others' questions.
• You could use newsletters, bulletin boards, and e-mail to communicate with your team.

Improving organizational communication
In addition to improving communications, it is important to contribute to the communications of the larger organization. The following are examples of how contributions to organizational communications could be made:

• Every organization needs a dependable internal communications program. In larger companies, someone is usually in charge of this. In smaller companies, it can be a collective function of leaders at all levels.
• Good organizational communication means that the members are well informed on all significant issues which affect them, including business challenges, policy changes, and operational and strategic issues.
• Other issues which are included in organizational communications include organizational structure, customer service, workplace improvements, and the use of information technology.
• Leaders should always be searching for ways to improve communications outside of their immediate realms. You are also responsible for correcting any misinformation about your subordinates or department.
• It's also necessary for a leader to actively communicate with other departments to discover information that you need but has not been given to you.
• Another way of improving communications among different groups is to suggest a shared function such as a potluck lunch or weekend social activity.

Using informal communication networks
Another means used to communicate is to use informal networks. This is not much different than what is commonly called the grapevine. Leaders can use this type of communication in the following ways:

• An informal network, or grapevine, can complement or detract from other group communications.
• Accept the fact that grapevines can't be eliminated and are very difficult to control. They are, however, easy to use.
• Talking informally or casually with your subordinates and others can provide you with a vast amount of information about your organization.
• As a leader, it's your responsibility to correct and dispel any incorrect information that you discover in the grapevine.

You can use a variety of methods to improve communications among your group and between your group and the rest of the organization. How can these techniques improve your own group communications?

Improving Personal Communication Skills

Improving leadership abilities is intrinsically connected to improving communication skills.

Factors that improve personal communications include the following:

• face-to-face communicating
• listening to others
• speaking well
• presenting effectively
• writing clearly

Most staff interactions, like most business communications, occur one-on-one and in small groups. You should try to increase the quality and quantity of these small encounters because they are the most effective means of delivering his message.

The following four suggestions can be used in this setting:

1. One key in getting people to come to you when they need your help is to be approachable. Do this by adjusting your speaking style to more closely resemble those to whom you're speaking.
   
   
2. Be understanding and sincere. Being empathetic towards others and trying to understand their motivations and concerns helps create a two-way relationship.
   
   
3. Consistency in the way you communicate to others improves communication. If your approach to others is erratic, this sends confusing and conflicting messages.
   
   
4. It's also valuable to repeat your important messages from time to time to make sure that they are received and understood. Also, having your instructions mirrored back to you helps when you're having a difficult time communicating with certain people.

In addition to the face-to-face communication skills, there are other skills that would improve communication abilities:

• Leaders should aim to spend more time listening than talking. This is an active, not passive process in which you try to understand the other person's perspective. Let your ears be the gateway to others' strengths and concerns.
  
  
• Leaders need to communicate clearly. Proper speech and grammar, along with easy-to-follow points are vital to your effectiveness. Seek help if this is a problem for you.
  
  
• Making presentations is part of being a leader. Being natural, using visual aids, and including humor are all part of good presentations. Rehearse with someone whose criticism you value.

Writing skills are another area that should be considered important to your development as a leader. Learning to write correctly takes time, effort, and a real commitment. The following are tips to improve your writing:

• Visit a library or bookstore to see the resources available. In addition, write whenever possible.
• Make note of the purpose and main points of your document before you begin to write it.
• Consider who will be reading what you write, what they know about the subject, and what you want them to do after they read the document.
• Avoid using phrases that make excuses, lack confidence, or suggest incompetence.
• Keep your language simple, use a minimum of jargon, or specialized words, and be as brief as possible.
• Reread what you've written at least twice and make whatever corrections or improvements you can.
• Have an assistant or associate review the document for effectiveness, clarity, and correctness before you send it.

Finally, you should learn to improve your awareness of what you communicate nonverbally.

People are naturally aware of your physical actions when they are contradicting or working against what you're saying. Tapping your pen out of nervousness, avoiding eye contact, or looking bored all work against effective communications.

On the other hand, you can use nonverbal communications to your advantage by relaxing, maintaining good posture, staying energetic, and directly addressing others. Videotaping one of your presentations can help you correct bad habits.

The continued success of your company is due, in part, to the effectiveness of your personal communication skills. Consider which of these skills would improve your abilities.

Understanding Clear Messages

For executives, communication is a critical part of leadership.

The essential elements of sending clear messages include:

1. conceiving your messages
2. sending your messages
3. monitoring your messages.

Conceiving your messages
There are a number of steps that you can follow to create a clear message. These are shown below:

1. The first step in creating a clear message is knowing why the message needs to be sent. You could be requesting information or asking for a specific action. Carefully consider the reason for your message before you craft it.
2. Focus on who it is you're contacting. The greater your awareness of that person and his or her concerns, the greater the effectiveness of your message.
3. Believe that the details of the message already exist within you. Learn how to let this information come to the fore, and distinguish between the details that are important and those that are extraneous.

Sending your messages
The second stage of communicating her message is choosing the means of delivering her message and actually sending it.

If the message dictates a personal delivery and you can't go yourself, consider a spoken form such as a messenger, a telephone call, or a videotape. However, if the message is nonpersonal, technical, or routine in nature, then consider delivering it via letter, e-mail, news release, or organizational publication.

Monitoring your messages
The last step that you have to consider before sending your message is how you are going to monitor the receipt of the information and whether or not it was understood.

The following are a few key ideas about following up after the message is sent:

• Set up a way to check whether the message was received, understood, and retained.
• If the recipient didn't receive the message, find out why and correct the problem.
• Make sure you have the attention of the person to whom you're sending the message.

By carefully following the steps to sending a clear message and understanding the key elements of the process, you can effectively communicate information.

Using Project Communication Documents to Control Risk

Often, team members spend time sharing information that may provide clues to potential project risks. How can this valuable information be incorporated into the risk monitoring and control process?

Project managers and project team members can monitor risks through project communication. Generally, these are documents that provide information on project performance and risks throughout the project's life cycle. As project performance is being monitored, so are project risks. Performance that is lower than expected may indicate that a project risk is emerging, or if performance improves, this may indicate that a risk has been brought under control.

The most obvious communication documents to use in monitoring risks are the work results, project records, and project reports.

Work results
Work results are the outcomes of a project and may include results such as information on the completion status of project deliverables, acquired or allocated costs and resources, and whether project quality standards have been met. It is important to gather reliable and consistent work results, as they are useful for performance reporting and monitoring project risks.

Project records
Project records contain other project information that you should consider when assessing project performance and risks. Project records may include correspondence, memos, and documents describing portions of the project. Project team members may even keep personal records in a project notebook.

Project reports
Project reports are a type of formal documentation that you and your project team can use for risk monitoring and control. Some of the most commonly used reports are:

• issue logs keep track of issues that are risks and issues that could lead to risks. Issue logs contain information such as the date, time, details of the issue, responses implemented, and person reporting the issue.
• action-item lists record information regarding responses to risks. These lists often include a description of the action, the name of the person assigned the action, when it is due, and its status.
• jeopardy warnings are reports that warn project team members that a risk may be about to occur. This information gives the team a chance to prepare its response.
• escalation notices are reports that inform decision makers that a risk has escalated to a higher level. With this information, decision makers can determine the best way to respond.

You and your project team can extract important clues for risk monitoring and control from project communication documents such as work results, project records, and project reports.

Common Causes of Project Risk

Marina is a project manager for Outback Retailers. Her current project involves the development of a new type of high-speed racing bike. She has learned that there are several identified risks that have the potential to negatively impact her project objectives.

As a result, Marina is trying to develop risk responses that will eliminate or reduce the impact of these identified risks. Do you think it is possible for Marina to address two or more of her project risks with the same response?

Yes! By addressing more than one project risk with the same response, Marina will be able to deal with risk threats and risk opportunities more quickly, which will maximize the likelihood of a successful project completion.

Every project will encounter numerous risks. Many of these risks will be driven by a common risk cause. A common risk cause is an event or situation that produces more than one project risk.

As a project manager, you can identify common risk causes during the risk identification and risk analysis processes. It is important to take advantage of these opportunities whenever and wherever possible.

It is important to remember that every project is unique. Therefore, you cannot expect to identify the same common risk causes in every project that you manage. However, there are some causes that may occur more frequently than others. These common risk causes include:

• unavailability of resources
• inadequate quality standards
• lack of communication
• inadequate tools or technology

One common risk cause that may threaten the successful completion of your project is unavailability of resources. These resources may be people or materials. During the life cycle of your project, many risks may arise if you do not have sufficient personnel or supplies available to complete the project as planned. Such things as excessive cost and schedule overruns are only two of the risks that you may encounter if your project is threatened by a lack of available workers or materials.

Another common risk cause is inadequate quality standards. Identifying this common risk cause early in the course of a project is especially valuable because this risk cause has the potential to create several project risks that can adversely affect the promised consumer deliverable.

As a project manager, it is important to remember that if quality standards are not properly set or are not specific enough, your project will either fall below the expected standard or aim for a standard not required by the client.

Marina, from Outback Retailers, is beginning the risk response planning process for her current project. After studying the results from her project's other risk management processes, she finds that some of the quality procedures that concern the new product are not clearly detailed. In addition, phase three may be short by two people due to a recent staff reduction. Marina hopes that the identification of these two common risk causes up front will help make her risk response planning process more efficient.

A lack of communication is another example of a common risk cause. In daily life, whether at home or at the office, people often suffer the unpleasant consequences of not giving or receiving adequate or accurate information. This is especially true in project management. If clear and open lines of communication are not firmly established, a project may be put in serious jeopardy. Such things as change requests and project plan modifications may not be properly carried out if there is a break in communication.

Inadequate tools or technology is a common risk cause that can severely impact the outcome of a project. It is difficult to develop a product efficiently or according to its established standards if you do not have the adequate tools or technology to complete the product as specified in the project plan.

It is also possible that a project may suffer a complete failure if critical tools are not readily at hand when needed. This common risk cause may also result in project deliverables not meeting widely accepted industry standards.

As a project manager, it is important to remember that some of your project risks may be driven by a common risk cause. As a result, the identification of these common risk causes is a valuable input to risk response planning because it may allow you to address more than one project risk with a single response. This will help eliminate the creation of redundant risk responses and make your risk response planning process more efficient.

Managing Communication Interfaces

One of the most important aspects of project planning is communication. As a project manager, you must define needed interactions between project teams and project support groups as part of the project planning process. To do this, you need to understand where communication occurs. Areas of communication, called interfaces, generally fall into one of three categories: organizational, technical, and interpersonal.

Organizational interfaces
An organizational interface is a communication interface among organizational units. Communication between organizational units is affected by the:

• Individuals that make up organizational units - Good communication between individuals is essential to project success. Miscommunications and disagreements between individuals can cause delays in your project.
• Overall unit goals - When units within an organization have similar goals, everyone can work together to meet those goals. When the goals of organizational units conflict with one another, each unit's effort works against the others.
• Different managerial styles within each unit - Difference in managerial styles from department to department can cause confusion, frustration, and miscommunications.
• Decisions made outside the immediate organization - Decisions made by governments, interest groups, and competitors can influence your project and must be communicated.

Technical interfaces
Technical interfaces are the formal and informal reporting relationships among different technical disciplines.

Technical interfaces occur within and between project phases. They can occur in products, facilities, and hardware, in other words, in anything that is non-people related.

The technical interface falls into two categories: physical and performance. The physical interface is between interconnecting parts of the system. The performance interface is between various functional or product subsystems. These categories contain both good interfaces and problems with interfaces.

For example, MercuryRising has an excellent technical support team that is familiar with the hardware and software within the various departments. Quick response time to computer problems ensures little disruption time on projects and makes meeting deadlines easier.

The office supplier for MercuryRising has software to let them know what and how much of a product is being used daily. This tells them exactly when and how much to deliver. Such precision aids project delivery.

Project managers can help to ensure project success by managing technical interfaces.

Interpersonal interfaces
The interpersonal interface deals with formal and informal reporting relationships among different individuals working on a project.

Differences in personality, skill level, and communication style can create issues as a project team begins to work together. Typically, as the number of people involved in a project increases, so does the potential for problems with communication. A project may involve:

• different organizations
• organizational departments (Accounting, R&D)
• groups (special interest)
• subgroups
• individuals

To enable effective communication at the interpersonal interface, you must carefully plan your project reporting relationships and keep the communication lines open to accommodate everyone involved.

For your project to succeed, you must remove barriers to communication through interface management—a constant juggling of communication issues.

A good project plan outlines individual, technical and organizational responsibilities and authority. It enables you to simultaneously manage the three interfaces and maintain the flow of communication.

If you effectively use the inputs to organizational planning, you can avoid most conflicts. Your projects will run more smoothly, and your project will have the best chance for success.

Understanding Communication Strategies

Many employees are expected to argue for themselves in order to promote the organization's interests through their own department.

But how do you monitor the strategies these people use to argue for their interests?

You can encourage people to use communicative strategies to resolve conflicts. You can also stress the importance of avoiding contentious strategies that result in division. To do this, considers these points:

• rules for open communications
• conflict-resolution methods
• avoiding contentious strategies.

Rules for open communications
When you hire someone for your department, or when meetings start to get out of hand, you could bring up a series of basic rules for open communication. These are communicative strategies. The following provide more about the elements of open communication:

• I statements: When discussing your feelings about an emotional situation, use statements such as, "I feel this way when this happens." It's non-accusatory and expresses what you feel.
• willingness: People on both sides of a disagreement need to indicate their willingness to resolve their differences.
• listening: Everyone needs to hear the speaker and acknowledge through verbal and nonverbal means that he or she is listening.
• restating: When it's your turn to speak in reply to what someone else has said, restate what you believe you heard him say. This helps eliminate misunderstandings.
• agreements: It's also important to point out what interests you have in common with those you disagree with. This sets an optimistic tone for possible agreements.
• requests: It's divisive to ask someone to stop doing something you don't like; however, it's OK to request a change of behavior, especially if you suggest alternatives.
• consistency: Be consistent with your verbal and nonverbal message.
• word choice: Be careful with the words you use when describing negative feelings. Try to choose noninflammatory language and tone down your emotions.

Conflict-resolution methods
There are other strategies you can use, but these strategies should be used as a last-resort tactic, when nothing else has worked. These strategies lie somewhere in between communicative and contentious.

The following provide more about these strategies:

• Giving in is an acceptable strategy when you won't suffer long-term harm. It can be an effective bargaining chip that lets you move on to a more important point.
• When it appears that a conflict is about to escalate, it's OK to break off or even give up on trying to resolve it.
• Avoiding a problem can be OK if time will take care of it. This is a difficult decision to make.
• In emergencies, when quick and decisive actions must be taken, when you must implement an unpopular decision, or when someone is playing games with you, it is OK to be abrupt.

Avoiding contentious strategies
It is very important to point out to the people in your group what you consider to be contentious strategies. The following provide more about these inappropriate tactics:

• Sometimes, when people try to become your new best friend, and flatter and compliment you, they may be trying to get you to make a decision against your interests.
• Inducing guilt is an inappropriate way to get someone to change her mind.
• Gamesmanship is the use of maneuvers that further your own position over others.
• Another contentious tactic is the use of threats.
• Side issue remarks are derogatory comments directed at your opponent.

To resolve a conflict with an employee, it's important to use appropriate communicative strategies and avoid contention. You should show willingness and consistency in resolving a conflict, use I statements and proper word choice, listen to and restate a message, find common ground and request a change of behavior.

If these strategies do not work, you should then use an appropriate last-resort strategy.

Understanding Listening Strategies

Listening is one of the most valuable skills a leader can have.

Many people assume that listening is a passive experience, but it actually requires active participation. There are a variety of methods for effective listening, including:

• using attentiveness, silence, and neutrality
• reflecting and summarizing
• sorting and patterning
• noting gaps and interruptions
• expressing feeling and testing for responsibility.

When people talk, they expect others to listen to them, but they generally give little thought to what this means. The following are some first steps to good listening:

• Focus your attention on the person who's talking. Maintain eye contact. If your body language says you're not interested, the person will sense it.
• Remain silent, except for recognition that you're following along, such as a semi-verbal "uh-huh" or a head nod. This says you're paying attention.
• Maintain a neutral frame of mind. This means not judging or attempting to control the conversation, not suggesting or correcting, and not praising or criticizing.

There are two other techniques for making people aware that you are paying attention. First, use reflective statements. These are words that echo important words or phrases that the patient uses. Second, summarize what you have just heard and repeat it back to the speaker.

You can also wait for a break in the narration, and then sort out and find patterns in their experiences. This can help to sort out the differences between symptoms and deeper problems.

Try to notice inconsistencies in narratives. What is left out of a conversation can be as helpful in analyzing a situation as what is included.

Toward the end of a conversation, you can encourage the speaker to step back from their story and summarize it for themselves.

Remember that effective listening requires active participation. You should use attentiveness, silence and neutrality when listening. It's important to use reflective statements and summarize the employee's message. You should also sort symptoms from deeper problems, note gaps and interruptions in your employee's story, encourage your employee to express feeling, and test for responsibility.

Understanding Good Questions

To accomplish your goals as a businessperson and leader, one of the best strategies is knowing how to ask key questions.

Key questioning strategies can help you:

• uncover the problem in front of you
• identify the purpose of your actions
• discover the premise you're following
• determine the resources you need
• determine customer interest
• gather the data you need.

One questioning strategy used by Japanese teachers of quality is the use of Why? They suggest asking this question five times to discover the underlying causes of a problem and then finding solutions.

Another key question is aimed at discovering the purpose of any action. For example, whenever someone suggests a new project or product, you could ask, "What is the purpose of this?"

You should also subject every suggestion or idea that is presented to a question concerning its premise. A premise is the belief or attitude that forms the basis of an assumption.

Every new project, idea, or suggestion that is presented to you requires effort and resources to be carried out. To help employees figure out how to convert these thoughts into actions, you should ask them questions about resources.

Occasionally, your employees will come to you with a suggestion that you know they have not researched. Instead of dismissing the idea, use questions designed to encourage employees to come up with the data they need.

You can maintain a thriving business by knowing how to ask good questions that engage your employees in the process of improvement.

Understanding Group Communications

Group communications are essential to successful organizations.

Leaders can improve group communication by:

1. increasing team communication
2. improving organizational communication
3. using informal communication networks.

Increasing team communication
There are a number of things you can do to improve the way your group shares information. Some of these are shown below:

• Use a variety of formats to get the team together to talk, including team meetings, informal chats, and scheduled informational discussions.
• Ensure everyone understands the purpose of these sessions.
• Ensure that the group understands how proud you are of their work.
• Some people in a group can be bashful about raising questions, so you could attempt to anticipate their needs when responding to others' questions.
• You could use newsletters, bulletin boards, and e-mail to communicate with your team.

Improving organizational communication
In addition to improving communications, it is important to contribute to the communications of the larger organization. The following are examples of how contributions to organizational communications could be made:

• Every organization needs a dependable internal communications program. In larger companies, someone is usually in charge of this. In smaller companies, it can be a collective function of leaders at all levels.
• Good organizational communication means that the members are well informed on all significant issues which affect them, including business challenges, policy changes, and operational and strategic issues.
• Other issues which are included in organizational communications include organizational structure, customer service, workplace improvements, and the use of information technology.
• Leaders should always be searching for ways to improve communications outside of their immediate realms. You are also responsible for correcting any misinformation about your subordinates or department.
• It's also necessary for a leader to actively communicate with other departments to discover information that you need but has not been given to you.
• Another way of improving communications among different groups is to suggest a shared function such as a potluck lunch or weekend social activity.

Using informal communication networks
Another means used to communicate is to use informal networks. This is not much different than what is commonly called the grapevine. Leaders can use this type of communication in the following ways:

• An informal network, or grapevine, can complement or detract from other group communications.
• Accept the fact that grapevines can't be eliminated and are very difficult to control. They are, however, easy to use.
• Talking informally or casually with your subordinates and others can provide you with a vast amount of information about your organization.
• As a leader, it's your responsibility to correct and dispel any incorrect information that you discover in the grapevine.

You can use a variety of methods to improve communications among your group and between your group and the rest of the organization. How can these techniques improve your own group communications?

Understanding Clear Messages

For executives, communication is a critical part of leadership.

The essential elements of sending clear messages include:

1. conceiving your messages
2. sending your messages
3. monitoring your messages.

Conceiving your messages
There are a number of steps that you can follow to create a clear message. These are shown below:

1. The first step in creating a clear message is knowing why the message needs to be sent. You could be requesting information or asking for a specific action. Carefully consider the reason for your message before you craft it.
2. Focus on who it is you're contacting. The greater your awareness of that person and his or her concerns, the greater the effectiveness of your message.
3. Believe that the details of the message already exist within you. Learn how to let this information come to the fore, and distinguish between the details that are important and those that are extraneous.

Sending your messages
The second stage of communicating her message is choosing the means of delivering her message and actually sending it.

If the message dictates a personal delivery and you can't go yourself, consider a spoken form such as a messenger, a telephone call, or a videotape. However, if the message is nonpersonal, technical, or routine in nature, then consider delivering it via letter, e-mail, news release, or organizational publication.

Monitoring your messages
The last step that you have to consider before sending your message is how you are going to monitor the receipt of the information and whether or not it was understood.

The following are a few key ideas about following up after the message is sent:

• Set up a way to check whether the message was received, understood, and retained.
• If the recipient didn't receive the message, find out why and correct the problem.
• Make sure you have the attention of the person to whom you're sending the message.

By carefully following the steps to sending a clear message and understanding the key elements of the process, you can effectively communicate information.