Tips for Communicating With Subordinates
It’s not necessarily what you pay…it’s what you say!
The professional communicators at Communication Steroids keep repeating it, like a mantra chanted over and over again, that it’s the quality of relationships that determine the level of your success in the modern marketplace. Every entrepreneur and manager knows the importance of a good relationship with your client, and most know that a positive, responsive relationship with vendors can spell the difference between triumph and catastrophe in an emergency. Just as important, in many respects, is your relationship with your employees, your reports and your associates.
Communicate effectively with your employees and you encourage them to take ownership of their work and your success. Communicate effectively with your employees and they will be less resistant to necessary change. Communicate effectively with employees and they will be more receptive to instruction and direction.
Here are a few tips for productive communication with your subordinates:
- Have a message and keep it consistent. The management team should always understand the mission; and communication with employees, wherever possible, should be framed in keeping with that mission. Even periodic goals (quarterly goals, for example) should be framed to reflect the mission statement.
- Listen. Active listening is at least as important for you as it is for your employees. Use active listening skills to gain insight into what is troubling them and what inspires them. Use that information to shape motivational messages and stress-reducing tools.
- Pick the appropriate time and place. A team meeting is never a good place for a discussion that only affects one team member. I have been to a thousand meetings where the workflow was interrupted by a question leading to a discussion unique to only one team-member. A public location is never a good place to criticize a subordinate; or to discuss disciplinary action. And choose a vehicle appropriate to the conversation; individual meeting, team meeting, phone, or email.
- Communicating with subordinates solely by annual performance review is usually a terrible idea. Feedback should be common and, if necessary, should escalate gradually. Focus at least as much on what is going well as on what needs improvement. Feedback should always concentrate on real action items and mechanisms for improvement. The annual review should be just that, a review, of conversations held throughout the reporting period; and it should end with goals to be pursued during the next reporting period.
- Be available. An open door policy may, or may not, be appropriate for your circumstances, but making yourself available to your employees is important. Even if it’s only over the phone be in touch with your employees at least a couple of times a month if not weekly. And make sure they understand that the time you spend in one-on-one with them is theirs. Listen, and make sure there aren’t any interruptions.
Money isn’t the only reason people come to work every day, and it isn’t the only, perhaps even not the most powerful, inducement to achievement. Studies show that employees most often cite poor management as the reason they leave a job. It may not show up on the resume, or even in their next job interview, but people quit when they’re dissatisfied with their boss. Have a communication strategy that encourages your subordinates to “buy in” to company strategies and goals. Use that strategy as the basis for your business communication.
And improve your skills. Get better as a communicator. Learn to talk effectively to groups and teams. Find out the ways language can be used as a motivator as powerful, and sometimes even more powerful, than money.
