How Managers Can Improve Their Communication

Being promoted or hired as a new manager often means that you’ll need to learn to communicate on a much wider scale. Whether it’s giving updates in public or reprimanding individuals, it may well be something that you have never done before.

All too often, managers underestimate the power of communication or are just plain bad at it. Either they don’t make time to listen to the team or they forget about the power of feedback; even if they do communicate, they may well hide behind technology and send email after email from the relative safety of their office.

A friend of mine, we’ll call him Jack, was certainly guilty of the latter. In charge of a team including some very bolshie individuals, he found it easier, and less daunting, to communicate by email rather than approach people face to face. He told himself he was too busy to keep leaving his office.

His 360 degree appraisal, however, certainly collared him. After every single employee questioned raised his emailing proclivities as a problem, he had to bite the bullet and talk to people directly. After a few awkward attempts, it started to become second nature and even he agrees that his relationship with the team is much improved because of it.

So ask yourself a question: do you listen, really listen, to your employees? If you want to be an effective leader, you need to understand your employee’s issues and concerns and the easiest way of doing that is to listen to them. Listening shouldn’t be a chore or a sop but an active process. In turn, your employees will feel heard, valued and appreciated.

Feedback, of course, is just as important as listening, and yet according to a poll by The Ken Blanchard Companies, failing to give feedback is THE most common error made by managers of all levels and experiences.

That’s perhaps because giving feedback can be fraught with issues. Reprimanding someone is never easy for a first-time manager but if you don’t tell people where they’re going wrong, how can they improve? They key is to do it right, to give feedback in a way that teaches without ruining their confidence, humiliating them or fostering resentment.

How can you do that? By following the private and public mantra…

The Solution

Here’s a mantra for any manager to live by when it comes to feedback…

Praise in Public and Criticize in Private.

First up, let’s discuss the latter part of that phrase. In every manager’s life, there will come a time when you need to reprimand an employee, or point out that they are not meeting the standards that you expect. NEVER do this in public. You can’t expect people to work at their best if you’ve just embarrassed them or pulled them down in front of their peers. Even if you don’t feel any emotion about doing it, they most certainly will, so always do it behind closed doors.

The former part of the feedback mantra is also important. All too often, experienced and new managers alike concentrate their feedback on things that need to improve and forget to acknowledge good work.

We’re all human: we like to know we’re appreciated, and praising employees in public shows pleasure with the results, reinforces trust and boosts the entire team’s morale.

This all feeds into positive communication, the cornerstone of a good manager. As well as the praise and feedback mantra, establish a positive tone with the team by discouraging gossip and negativity across the board. Also be aware of your own non-verbal communication and body language and aim to keep it positive as well.

Let your team know that your door is always open; if you are genuinely busy when someone stops by, arrange a time to meet and discuss the issues later. When they come to you, encourage them to be candid and honest.

Live by the same refrain; always be honest to employees, otherwise you undermine your credibility. Go out of your way to keep people informed, however if there are some topics that you shouldn’t share with your employees, don’t. If you’re not sure what you can and cannot discuss with the team, ask your boss for clarification.

Don’t shirk giving bad news as well if you need to. Promising something you can’t deliver, or running away from delivering unwelcome news, will only make your employees distrust you. If you must deliver bad news, know your facts, choose the right time, deliver the news, allow employees to respond and, if relevant, finish the meeting by discussing what you as a team will do moving forward. This puts a positive focus on the future.

Finally, always explain your decisions as much as possible. Give your employees the respect of hearing, and therefore understanding, your thought process. If you cancel a project, for instance, tell them why, explain the considerations that went into it as much as you are able.

All of this establishes trust between employee and manager and helps you to be an effective communicator.

Some practical steps:

• Look for opportunities to praise and to publicly recognize a job well done.
• Make more opportunities for discussion and feedback. Meet with your direct reports frequently, to discuss goals and issues.
• When receiving feedback yourself, don’t take it personally. Consider it an opportunity to improve your management skills.
• When you start to send an email to communicate with one or more of the team, consider if it is the most appropriate way to handle the situation. Face-to-face discussion may be better in certain cases.
• Despite all of the above, there may be times when you want to praise in private. Perhaps the employee is consistently outstanding; praising them much more than anyone else may cause ill feeling. Likewise, something may be praiseworthy for one particular employee as they seek to improve, but may not be particularly impressive to everyone else.
• Never communicate in anger, take the time to calm down before speaking to employees. Ditto when you are emotional. Learn ways to handle conflict; read on to mistake ten for advice on handling difficult employees.