No matter how clear and understandable communication may already be in your business, it can always benefit from being better. Fortunately, advice on how to perform this bettering can be found in the comprehensive guide on the matter found below.
From educating yourself to learning how to listen, read on to unearth all the best ways to take both your business’s internal and external communication exploits to the next level.
Educate yourself
To better your business’s communication, you, yourself have to become a great communicator. This is not an easy task, though. You don’t just wake up one day and have the ability to communicate your thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a way in which everybody can understand them. To be able to become a truly great communicator, you need to educate yourself in the art of it.
In this instance, one of the best courses of action to take is to familiarize yourself with the Affinity Diagram from 6Sigma. By becoming well versed with this kind of organizational approach, you will learn how to organize ideas by category and then look at your problems from new perspectives. In regards to the way you communicate after you have saturated yourself with the information contained in this diagram, you will find yourself able to convey your points with more precision.
The affinity diagram is comprised of four major steps:
- State the problem
- Brainstorm ideas
- Record ideas
- Sort ideas
- Identify common themes
- Create a diagram based on ideas
By taking these steps whenever you have an important piece of information that you need to communicate to another person, you’ll be able to say exactly what you need to say, exactly when you need to say it.
Learn how to listen
Communicating isn’t all about taking well; it’s about learning how to listen, too. This doesn’t mean staying quiet and allowing people to drone on, either. It’s about really taking in what they have to say, and not forming your own judgment on what you think they might be saying. In this instance, you have to turn off your internal dialogue, and you have to tune into the words they are choosing to use, the manner in which they are using them, the tone in their voice, and the forms of body language they are displaying.
Don’t be scared to face sensitive issues
You and your employees need to ensure that important issues are always faced, no matter how sensitive they may be. Nobody is going to benefit from instances of beating around the bush. All cards must be placed on the table at all times if your business’s communication is to be a clear vessel through which information can be coherently transported.
The best way to get to the root of sensitive issues is to cover them in safe, collaborative spaces — call a staff meeting every once in a while so that your employees can get their voices heard, and their issues can be brought out into the open.
If you want to better the way your business communicates, try implementing the advice laid out in the article. If communication is an issue in your company, Piedmont Avenue Consulting, Inc. has experience setting up systems for a better company communcation flow. Furthermore, our experienced HR Consultant will help you develop plans to make employees and employer on the same page.
