TOPICS
TOPICS
Can You Hear Me Now?
As a manager, what kind of communicator are you? Are you a face-to-face type of person, preferring to have employees stop by your office to touch base? Or are you more of a phone and voicemail boss, managing via your cell phone as you dart around to various meetings? Maybe you're an Internet age communicator -- an e-mailer and texter. You like reading employees' questions and responding with the click-clack of your keyboard, rather than having them knock on your door or ring your line at potentially inconvenient times.
It's good to know which one you are. It's also good to know how employees like to communicate with you. All is well if neither of you minds the other peeking into his office or cubicle with a quick question, or if you would both be just fine never seeing each other or hearing one another's voices. Mano a mano, e-mail a e-mail.
Figuring this out is not only for compatibility testing purposes. Crossed communication wires can prevent employees from getting the information they need from you to do their jobs well and can block your view of what's going on in your realm of responsibility.
Indeed, what if you don't click? What if you're an e-mail manager but an employee is a knock-knock-can-I-come-in-er? You could close your door and turn up the music, but the social butterfly employee might be less responsive to your requests if you block his preferred communication avenue. What if an employee is a cell phone fan but you hardly ever check your voicemail?
Sometimes, workers have two communication standards -- one for their bosses and one for their co-workers. They might answer the phone when you call, but they never do when it's their co-workers. They might not constantly show up at your office door, but they are frequently appearing behind their co-workers with a tap on the cubicle window -- much to the chagrin of their e-mail-only colleagues. Often workers prefer to avoid conflict and simply put up with such annoyances rather than confront them.
That's where you can come in. Unless things are dysfunctional, you don't have to set a rule establishing which method everyone should use to communicate. The best rule could be no rule -- just understanding. Tell employees how you want to hear from them -- after you ask them how they want to hear from you. To prevent or resolve conflict among employees, encourage them to find out how everyone else likes to coordinate with their colleagues.
While you're at it, find out how clients, customers or stakeholders like to communicate too. Preferred methods have changed in recent years, with some people moving almost entirely to e-mail -- especially those who travel around with a BlackBerry or other mobile device. Others crave even more face-to-face meetings.
By phone, e-mail or in person, communication doesn't have to be a battle if it's an accommodation.
Brian Friel covered management and human resources at Government Executive for six years and is now a National Journal staff correspondent.
COMMENTS
- Very good article on a topic that leaders (I don't like the work managers)need to hear and understand. When I'm teaching contracting I often touch upon the subject of how do you communicate not only to your employees, fellow team members, but also to the contractors. The response I often hear is through the use of emails and phone calls and some face to face meetings (usually when there is trouble). While emails may be a good method to keep records of what was said, I try to encourage the face to face meetings where you can talk about the positive and negative events. My favorite method of communicating with those who worked for me, was face to face, and not necessarily in my office. I would often go out to where they worked and just talk about what is going on in their lives. I believe the more you know about the people you are working with and those who work for you, the better off the entire organization is going to be, because everyone will feel a part of the team. But as Brian states each person must find out what communication style works best for them and then use it correctly. Let's face it, without effective communication where both sides can truly understand where the other person is coming from then the project, the task, the whatever we're working on might fall apart. Bob Moore Posted June 17, 2009 10:20 AM
- Having spent decades in various Federal management positions, as a piece of advice to newcomers to the management "hot seat," learn quickly to tailor how you deal and communicate with individual members of your staff by taking careful note of their own wants and preferences. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a new manager in those Neolithic times was to discard the old "treat everyone the same" mantra - that leads to confusion and misunderstandings at best and disaster at worst. Instead, what's needed is to treat everyone FAIRLY, but adjust how you interact with subordinates to their unique personalities and motivational "hot buttons." What works with Suzy would be unmitigated catastrophe with Jack, and vice versa. I had to learn that on my own the hard way; back then it was pretty much a matter of "sink or swim," with no mentoring programs and support networks - and little in the way of useful formal training. Things are better in that regard today, but there are still some things inculcated in our egalitarian society that need to be unlearned by those new to managemenmt - stressing the value of fairness as a criteron, while intuiting the need to be flexible in how you approach one-on-one interaction with your people. Been there - done that Posted June 17, 2009 9:36 AM
- I believe the human touch makes a lot of difference in management decisions. When someone meets with a person face-to-face, you see things that you don't see when texting or emailing. The facial expression has a lot of messages than words. Therefore, one should never make a decision without meeting a person face-to-face. Almaz Beyene Posted June 17, 2009 7:39 AM
