How to Communicate for Results

The ability to communicate clearly and effectively at work is crucial to success. Effective communication skills help you achieve the desired results on projects and get ahead at work.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. First identify for each situation the communication method that can best achieve your goals. Spoken communication is most effective if you want to see and hear the listener's reaction so that you can respond and modify the project accordingly. Spoken communication is also most effective when you are trying to solve a problem or get feedback and want a back and forth discourse. In contrast, written communication is most effective when you have specific details that need to be converyed, you want to make sure that there is a record of your instructions or information, or you want to ensure that a group of people receive exactly the same message.

2. Next you want to identify for each situation the style that fits the situation. Directives such as "the deadline is" should be used for basic facts and situations where you do not seek nor do you want to encourage questions from others. It also should be used when you are warning the other person. A consultative communication such as "let's see" should be used when you want to encourage buy in and open communication. This also requires you to have sufficient time allocated for a long discussion. The benefits of this is that it shows more respect for the other people's knowledge, views, and contributions than the directive communication. It also will tend to motivate others to pay closer attention to what you are saying so that they can form a thoughtful response.

3. Now take a step back and think about the last week communicating at work. Evaluate the success of your communication style. Ask yourself if your instructions were followed properly, if your ideas were understood and supported, if you received the interaction and cooperation you desired, and whether or not you were more successful with one person than another.

4. Now plan your communications- remember the old saying if you fail to plan you plan to fail. When you are trying to communicate effectively you need to plan. Make sure that you have a clear understanding of what you want your communication to achieve. Now outline your points in an orderly manner to help clarify your thought in your mind. Plan how to keep the communications brief, clear, and simple to avoid information overload. Finally consider how your audience could react and plan on how you can handle any negative reactions.

Tips & Warnings

• Review your e-mails, memos, and reports before sending them out. If possible consider asking someone else to review them too. Afterall four eyes are often better than one.
• When you ask communicating ask the person questions to see if they truly understood your requests.
• Phrase things positively (e.g. do) instead of negatively (e.g. don't).
• Present tasks and instructions in a step by step format.
• Explain the why and not just the what whenever possible.
• Restate your key points for emphasis.
• Do not assume people understand jargon.

[mityland]

on 8/5/2009 Very useful article, Lucinda. Step 3, review and evaluation, and Step 4, planning, are true of being effective in almost everything.