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Communicating for Results

Guest post by: Michael D. Diercks

Article Overview: Have you ever felt that no matter how much you "communicate" nothing is getting done? You are saying the same thing over and over. No one seems to get it. How do you get your message to "stick"?

Communicating for Results

Investment of time and energy to successfully communicate with your team members and team leaders always pays rewarding benefits. These rewards are far reaching and mutually beneficial. The goals of your team and your personal goals can be reached through effective communication to prevent crisis situations, save time and effort, enrich relationships, and increase your effectiveness.
To maximize your success as a team, follow these steps to facilitate good communication:
Focus on the goal. Put all your attention on your goal and your specific responsibilities for doing what it takes to accomplish it. This attention will directly reduce the number of distractions you face on a weekly, daily, and hourly basis. When you know what you need to do to reach your goal, anything that takes you off track is clearly a distraction. Keeping your attention, and your communication, focused on the goal minimizes distractions. Nonetheless, some distractions may develop. The more quickly you can see distractions for what they are, the more quickly you and your teammates are able to push them aside and move on with actions that help you progress toward your goal.
Make communication a top priority. To improve in any area of life, you must move from mere talking and wishful thinking to setting goals and taking action. This is especially true for enhancing your communication ability. First, you could choose to begin by improving your listening skills – a very important skill for becoming an effective team member, or for that matter for becoming more successful in any endeavor. When you communicate, make sure you stay focused on the goal of the team and your personal responsibilities for reaching that goal. Also choose the method of communication that is most appropriate for the message you want to send or for information you are requesting. Be sure to use every opportunity to make communication a top priority.
Handle conflict right away. Whenever people come together as a group, it is only natural to have different points of view and differing opinions. Instead of letting these differences build into disagreements or barriers to progress, use them as stepping stones toward clearer communication, an improved way of reaching the goal, and more effective teamwork. To resolve conflict constructively, follow these guidelines: • Focus on the problem, not people or personalities. • Be sure to study and examine the situation from every angle. • Consider all the best suggestions for dealing with the issue. • Actively give and receive feedback. • Treat others as you would like to be treated as you work through the conflict. While most attention is given to sending messages, the ability to listen is especially helpful in handling conflict constructively. Active listening: • keeps the communication channels open • provides opportunities for learning • enables you to understand the other person’s point of view • reduces friction, misunderstandings, and conflicts • enlists the support and favorable responses of others • increases productivity by saving time and effort • alerts you to opportunities for continuous improvement • enables you to reach personal and professional goals you have set.
Seek to understand others. As a responsible team member, your job is to do your utmost to understand what other people are saying and what they mean. When you do that with them, they will tend to do it for you. The result is mutual understanding, a good basis for making progress toward the team’s goal. Understanding what someone is saying does not necessarily mean that you agree with what that person says. The feeling of mutual understanding is possible even when two sides have different answers to the same problem. When you listen and seek to understand others, you may discover a new appreciation for what others have to offer to the team.
Inspect what you expect. If you review and evaluate the work as it progresses, whether it is your work or the work of someone else on the team, you will know almost instantly if you are on track or if some adjustments need to be made to improve the performance. From customer feedback to a conversation between team members, make sure you keep track of what is going on. Then you can focus your attention wherever it is needed to ensure that you are making progress toward the achievement of the team’s goal. Clearly it is much easier, less expensive, and less time consuming to fix things when they are slightly cracked than waiting until they explode into a full-blown catastrophe.

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Article Tags: communication ability, communication focus, crisis situations, distraction, distractions, effective communication, effective team, endeavor, hourly basis, listening skills, personal goals, personal responsibilities, rewarding benefits, setting goals, team leaders, team member, team members, teammates, top priority, wishful thinking



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