“Communication works for those who work at it.” – John Powell

Today’s world requires outstanding communication skills to keep teams motivated, focused, and aligned through a myriad of change, distraction, and ambiguity.

Communication happens in both formal and informal ways. Keeping the key points that move others forward at the forefront of your daily, weekly, and monthly communication helps people to be clear and up-to-date to handle their job. In addition, making it easy to connect to you or a knowledgeable source helps for clarifying conversations and additional questions.

Here are 5 Key Practices to Communicating through Change:

1. Offer Daily Updates – be prepared with a quick update on progress, wins, and successes from the prior day. Highlight any best practices that are working well with team members.

2. Focus on Agendas – note the goals for the team and company on the top of each agenda, and keep topics and discussions aligned and engaged with the goals.

3. Host Regular Open Mics – set a date and time each week (or day) where people can come online to a Zoom call or into your office to ask any question that will support them in moving forward. Use Slack, Teams, or another app to provide a channel where people can ask questions and get answers quickly.

4. Deliver Weekly Updates – provide progress to change, learnings, and next steps. Keep everyone abreast of where you are, new information you have, and open it up to questions. Ask members who have intimate knowledge on the answer to engage and share their knowledge. Have this meeting on Zoom or in-person and record it to share on your internal company network.

5. Identify a Team to Help Move Change Forward – have their number one role be to ensure everyone is up to date on communications, can move forward, and knows how to get support when there are roadblocks.

“The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.” ― André Gide

Remember when people hear things for the first time, they may not catch the entire message, and that is why creating a consistent and dependable flow of information allows for others to listen, understand, and integrate it as part of their day. Great communication happens when people are engaged and exploring the information.

“Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.” – Brian Tracy

Engage!

Bobbie