What is one tip you’ve used for effective communication at work?
To help you communicate effectively at work, we asked HR leaders and CEOs this question for their best tips. From creating an agenda to involving teams in daily decision-making, there are several insights that may help you foster effective communication in the workplace.
READ ALSO: Here are the Ranking Arizona Top 10 lists for 2022
Here are fourteen tips for good communication in the workplace:
- Create an Agenda
- Learn the Importance of Body Language
- Foster a Positive Work Environment With Gratitude
- Listen and Wait Your Turn
- Remain Calm and Speak Clearly
- Consider Proper Timing for Effective Communication
- Create Specific Channels
- Encourage Feedback
- Start and Finish With Your Key Point
- Use Project Sharing Tools
- Implement ProofHub
- Put Everything in Writing
- Practice Clarity and Brevity
- Involve Teams in Daily Decision-Making
Create an Agenda
I find it’s useful to create an agenda to clearly set out the topic to be discussed, the points to be made, and the goal of any discourse. It’s incredibly helpful for everyone involved in a discussion to know what you’re going to talk about before starting to do so. You can even have others involved in the discussion share their own agenda or add to yours so everybody is on the same page. You save yourself a lot of stress, and the people you’re communicating with appreciate it, too.
Jon Schneider, Recruiterie
Learn the Importance of Body Language
Communication comes in many forms, and although it is easy to concentrate on the verbal, body language and environment can be every bit as impactful and why it is important to focus on both at work. Studies have shown that over 50% of all communication is non-verbal, and understanding those cues, both received and given, can make your communication style more effective and reduce misunderstandings.
Knowing the meanings behind arm carriage, fidgeting, head movement, and hand gestures, can provide you the information you need on whether your communication is being well received, or causing discomfort. In addition, recognizing the impact of the physical environment on tension and relaxation levels, can help you pick the right one to convey your message. By learning the meanings of body language and the atmosphere created by the physical space, you can heighten the effectiveness of your communication.
Omid Semino, Diamond Mansion
Foster a Positive Work Environment With Gratitude
Express your gratitude to cultivate a positive work environment. Giving your colleagues affirmative feedback encourages open communication. No matter your company size, expressing appreciation for one another boosts collaboration. Team members feel free to express their ideas and ask questions, which leads to effective communication throughout projects. When gratitude is the norm, communication is efficient.
Hector Gutierrez, JOI
Listen and Wait Your Turn
Communication is all about give and take. If you expect others to listen to you, then repay them the same courtesy. In any discussion, listen and wait for your turn to speak. It can be tempting to interrupt, especially if emotions are running high or a thought occurs to you, but losing your cool or suddenly interjecting can be a huge communication faux pas. Be patient, let others speak, pay attention, and they’ll do the same for you.
Ashleigh Wilkes, A World For Children
Remain Calm and Speak Clearly
Every conversation represents an opportunity to practice attentiveness and mindfulness. Above all, it is important to demonstrate respect for others and their viewpoints. Do what you can to remain calm, as this will help you speak clearly and share all you mean to say when it is your turn. Rushing to be heard can result in words stumbling out of your mouth. Remember to stay calm and centered.
Brandt Passalacqua, Breathing Deeply
Consider Proper Timing for Effective Communication
Proper timing is necessary for effective communication. The time, day, and atmosphere should be considered before delivering a message or holding a meeting. Be mindful of how your colleagues are feeling or doing, and ask yourself as a team leader or supervisor: “Will my meeting impact their schedule?” “Is Monday morning or Friday afternoon the best time for holding a conversation?” Choosing the right moment is equally important as the information or announcement you would like to share. The timing and employees’ mood at that moment influence how they react or understand your message.
Michael Haas, Angry BBQ
Create Specific Channels
Creating channels for specific topics or subgroups is the best way to ensure proper and effective communication among parties involved. Simply having a single channel or thread for everything is confusing and time-consuming. Even if you mention an individual in the thread, it would be difficult for them to sift through unnecessary messages and topics that are not connected to the issue/concern at hand. Instead, we create specific channels for specific topics, projects, and groups and strongly enforce that all relevant chats concerning a topic are placed in their respective channels.
Ian Sells, RebateKey
Encourage Feedback
I actively encourage feedback to enable my organization’s communication flow to be open and encouraging. It’s important to me that my employees feel comfortable sharing their questions and concerns. Just as I use multiple channels to communicate messages to employees, I use those same channels to encourage feedback from them. When you encourage feedback and listen to what employees have to say, you send the message to your employees that their opinions matter.
Michelle Arnau, Rowan
Start and Finish With Your Key Point
Whether you’re giving the most intensive presentation of your life or stopping by a teammate’s desk to chat about a project, bookending every conversation with the critical message helps make it stick. Starting off the discussion with your key points helps your audience understand where their focus should be throughout the conversation or presentation. Reiterating your point again helps use repetition for better retention and provides clarity for the listener – if they’re still confused about what you’re communicating, it gives them the option to ask clarifying questions.
Samuel Devyver, EasyLlama
Use Project Sharing Tools
Because we work remotely, a lot of things can get lost in communication. To ensure that we’re all on the same page, we use project sharing tools to reduce the communication barrier and boost effective communication. Tools such as Trello allow us to easily collect all the required data and information needed for a project in one place to avoid any mistakes, assign tasks and roles and see progress to make sure we’re all working on the latest documents and that nothing is lost in translation.
John Gardner, Kickoff
Implement ProofHub
This is 2022 and we are living in a flexible and unpredictable world. In-office work, remote work, and hybrid work co-exist and organizations are implementing these work models according to the situation. So, when one half of your team is working remotely and the other half is working from the office, how do you manage to keep everyone on the same page? One thing that allows all our team members to communicate effectively at work is the use of a reliable project management and team collaboration tool – ProofHub.
Yes, we’ve been using our tool to keep all team members in the loop through useful inbuilt communication features, like Group Chat, Discussions, Real-time Notifications, Announcements, etc. ProofHub has kept our entire team together as we switched to and fro between in-office work and remote during the last couple of years. Our team members can communicate with each other even on-the-go with the ProofHub mobile app version.
Vartika Kashyap, ProofHub
Put Everything in Writing
No matter how trivial you think conversation is, write down the high points during or afterwards. You don’t need to send it to the other party if it is truly trivial but keep a work diary where you jot it down. If it’s even a little significant, send an email reiterating the crux of the discussion and what was agreed to by the other party(s). In your diary reference the email. If you build a habit of memorializing your conversations, meetings, and telephone calls, you’ll avoid future misunderstandings, while preserving a record that keeps you from being blamed for another person’s failure.
Patricio Paucar, Navi
Practice Clarity and Brevity
Practice clarity and brevity as much as possible. The ultimate goal of communication is understanding, so it is best to maintain communication as clear and concise as possible. Make sure to leave out the technical jargon when communicating with groups of people since they are most likely coming from different backgrounds and may not understand what the terminologies mean. Choose words that are easy to understand to prevent misinterpretations and do not mislead people with overly lengthy or ambiguous explanations.
Collen Clark, Schmidt & Clark, LLP
Involve Teams in Daily Decision-Making
One tip I use to promote effective communication in the workplace is to involve teams in daily decision-making. We use our communication tools to let everyone recommend ways to improve work conditions or vote for workplace changes that we decide on during meetings. This approach significantly boosts employee engagement. When the workforce feels heard concerning workplace matters, they feel more valued and appreciated. It promotes the creation of collective solutions from team members as part of the decision-making process, giving the management valuable feedback for improvements.
Nunzio Ross, Majesty Coffee
Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.
