Have you ever noticed the degree to which we routinely underestimate the amount of communication necessary to ensure…
- Clarity of roles and responsibilities
- Final decisions made
- Initiatives being launched
- Organizational restructures on the horizon
- Someone’s key takeaways from a meeting
- How someone on your team is feeling on any given day
The list is endless. We think we’ve communicated clearly, assumptions are made, we forget to hit “send” on the email we’ve drafted (guilty as charged), etc.
Coupled with all of this, we may forget to consider the audience we’re targeting, or may be too new in role to fully understand the landscape and the stakeholders.
Knowing your audience and adjusting your communication accordingly, is not a novel idea. It’s just one that we may not think about in the “sprint” that is known as the workday until after the fact when things aren’t clear.
When you know your audience, you know how to adapt and plan accordingly to maximize productivity and efficiency.
Here’s a mini case study:
Katelyn and I started working together two years ago when I engaged her to help me with a specific project. After a short time, she recommended and set up a shared space for us in Clickup (a very comprehensive project management platform).
The challenge was that Katelyn and I didn’t yet know each others’ work styles, strengths, and preferences. (OK, that, plus I was all over the place but I digress…) In pretty short order, I abandoned ship on Clickup, and we moved on to another platform.
Fade to black.
Two years later, and the volume and nature of the work is such that I *really* need to shift how the work (and me) are organized. Katelyn again introduced Clickup into the picture.
Here was the difference. Today, she is very well-versed in my work habits, my personality, quirks, idiosyncrasies, how I organize myself, and my general likes and dislikes, and she was able to easily customize the platform to best suit my needs.
Taking the time to ask questions, get to know each other, and how each of us works best has made the work much more seamless, and we’re both more productive as a result.
So the question, is how well do you know your people and how do you leverage what you know to create an optimal working environment?
- Can you identify their skills, passions, and preferences?
- Are they morning people or night owls?
- What are the conditions under which they are most productive?
- Have you tapped into the skills they most love to use? (Do you know what those skills are?)
- Have you eliminated tasks that they loathe, despite having a proficiency for?
- Do you know what their career aspirations are?
- Do you take their work styles into consideration when creating new project teams?
- Do you know how many kids they have?
- Do you know where they’re going on their next vacation?
Not all of the questions are work related, obviously. They are all relationship related. It seems that over the years, we’ve managed to scare the pants off many managers who are afraid to have a conversation with their direct reports for fear of saying the wrong thing and creating an employee relations issue. (Sigh.)
We live in a relationship economy, and work gets done with and through other people. And it’s more enjoyable and easier when you have a relationship with your colleagues. But it doesn’t happen on its own.
Your call to action this week, is to have a conversation with your colleagues and get to know them a little better.
