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Return to Article: Can You Hear Me Now?

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  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
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  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
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  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