Last night, I gave a presentation at the American Family Dream Bank in Madison. It was titled “Effectively Communicating Through Change.” The audience was lively and the interaction rich. I proposed three different ways that my audience, a group of professional Information Technology (IT) Consultants, could effectively communicate with their teams—especially during times of change (when communication is often imperiled!). Here’s what I shared (and what they told me afterward that they found incredibly valuable!):

Build a Foundation of Trust

 

Don’t wait until it’s “too late” to build trusting relationships with your colleagues. If you wait until you’re under deadline, in a conflict over ideas about a decision point, or at a sticky point in a project, you may find that communicating with one another is incredibly challenging because you don’t really trust one another. Building trust is easy when you get to know your colleagues a bit before these situations occur, and you’ll be much better prepared to weather the storms that you’ll go through together. A great way to kick off a trusting relationship is to spend time together: go for coffee, grab a lunch together once in a while, and/or just take a few minutes once or twice a week to genuinely ask how each other is doing. You’ll be amazed at what a difference-maker this simple act of relationship-building can be.

 

Use Behavioral Models and Tools

 

Tools like Everything DiSC, which help us to understand how to communicate with different behavioral styles (especially those NOT like us!), are powerful to employ. When you use DiSC on a regular basis, you find that you can efficiently and effectively get your point across, as you learn to “speak in a way that the audience will hear.” I can’t recommend this enough. You can learn more here.

 

Don’t Be An Information Hoarder

 

Communicating effectively—especially during times of change when all hands on deck is key—is critical for a team, project, or organization to succeed. Unfortunately, many of us shy away from speaking up about areas or items of concern (when we know we probably should). Give yourself permission to speak up! It can be a huge difference maker for a team or a project. I heard countless examples at last night’s talk that spoke to the power of speaking up.  As I like to say “don’t be an information hoarder!” If you know something or believe you have an idea that could positively impact overall results, share it. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, had this to say about the topic:

Forget outside competition when your own worst enemy is the way you communicate with one another internally. Lack of candor basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer…people just don’t open up. Instead they withhold comments or criticism. They keep their mouths shut in order to make people feel better or to avoid conflict, and they sugarcoat bad news in order to maintain appearances. They keep things to themselves, hoarding information.

 

 

Communication is hard enough in the good times; you need to prepare yourself to be effective communicators for the rough patches. That’s when you’ll need the trust, understanding, and contribution of everyone on the team most. So go ahead and invite your colleague out to lunch…you’ll be glad you did.