Communication is about setting clear goals and boundaries, looking out for body language.
Who engages when that individual talks and who switches off. Score the input members of the team have when they communicate, is it a high or low contribution score.
Your level of gravitas within your business is associated with perceptions of influence, authority, dignity and importance. The strength of this association is so strong that it leads to employees feeling more confident with the individual that has gravitas, despite their levels of experience, education or skills. This is something that should always be looked at when working with the C Suite within an organisation.
We would always recommend setting clear goals, which involves having an understanding of your current internal communication landscape. And then being clear about where you want to get to and why.
Key to powerful internal communication is having a deep understanding of the employee groups that exist in your organisation, their attitudes, behaviours and expectations. Knowing your people and their strengths and weaknesses is crucial to a successful manager/leader.
You can then develop internal communication programmes and campaigns in a way that’s relevant and engaging to your employees.
It is important that we measure and using measurement tools is key to identifying what communication strategies are working in the business and what changes we need to implement to effect a more positive change.
So often, the best place to start is a conversation, as a society now a huge amount of our communication is via email, often this is then not followed up or our inbox gets too full to manage, so immediately the communication trail gets lost
Giving your people a voice makes them feel valued. And listening to what they say is equally important. It sparks conversations that will add value to your organisation.
The different platforms in themselves are confusing as to where staff are expected to communicate, store data, track outcomes.
This then results in:
- Decrease in morale
- In boxes with unread mail
- Disjointed platforms where staff communicate
What we start looking at in in order to implement change:
- Structured meetings
- Follow ups
- Not meeting for meetings sake
- Touch base with your team daily/weekly different times for different reasons
- Duty of care
- Accountability
- Modelling good behaviour
- Using same platform too many different platforms too many people using it as an excuse to not log data
- Set a plan and stick to it unless reason to change, always communicate any changes to the plan
This creates a deep bond within your team, that is hard to replicate, and it can create a ripple effect on everything from how happy your staff are to increased productivity and higher retention levels.