Effective Communication with Your Employees

Taking the time to develop effective communication with your employees is crucial to a running a successful business. Your employees can help you grow or fail, and which road you take often depends on how well you communicate with them. With so much at stake, you should take the time to improve your skills. Here are 4 tips for effective communication skills you should be using to engage your employees:

Tip #1 – Build Relationships

Your employees are people with real lives, issues and concerns. You don’t need to set out to be their friend in order to build relationships. You don’t want to take the other extreme and be a distant and uncaring person who is not attuned to their concerns and needs. Find opportunities here and there to build a rapport with them while still maintaining your professionalism. For example, if you know they have children, it’s okay to ask how they are doing every once in a while. If they hint at personal problems that you have solutions to and they are not the sort of problems that can entangle you in a legal or professional web, then take the time to be helpful. It’s harder for employees to underperform for bosses that they have relationships with.

Tip #2 – Practice Active Listening

Effective communication with your employees must start with active listening. Don’t dismiss the issues and concerns that your employees raise because they will stop saying anything at all. Ask them questions for clarification and get as much information as you can. Your job is to solve the problems they face, so that they don’t become frustrated with their jobs and helping your business grow. If you engage in passive listening, then you’ll miss opportunities to solve their problems and build relationships. You can also end up hearing the wrong message and a misunderstanding of what the employee is trying to communicate.

Tip #3 – Choose the Best Method of Communication

You should not fall into the trap of relying on one method for all of your communications. For example, if your employees work from home, it’s easy to become reliant on email for all of your communication. There are times when it’s more appropriate to pick up the phone and call. Face to face meetings may also be the best solution in some instances, especially if there is a communication problem. The verbal cues that you send with your body language are lost in phone and email communications and you may need that information for some situations.

Tip #4 – Provide Full Descriptions of Tasks

Sending short emails with vague details about new tasks that you want your employees to complete is not effective for communicating with them. It backs some employees into a corner, because they don’t want to seem incompetent or incapable of performing the tasks you assign by asking a lot of follow up questions. You can save yourself and your employees pain by providing full descriptions of the work you want done, either verbally or in writing, and encouraging them to ask questions if they are confused.

Communication can be a pleasurable experience for you and your employees. Use these tips to become effective when communicating with your employees, and you should see improved results in many areas of your business.