Every single living thing communicates in some way or another, and communication is transmitted in hundreds of thousands of ways. In fact, you probably don’t even realize you’re communicating most of the time, even when you are.
For example, the commuter yelling through his windows at the car in front of him communicates to me that he is in a hurry. An eye roll from my daughter communicates to me that she checked out of our conversation about boys. An employee who sits on Facebook at work all day communicates that they don’t care about their job.
Communication exists in all forms, all around us, every single day. But most people only have the time and bandwidth to pay attention to your dialogue, and your success is dependent on your ability to communicate effectively with your team.
When there’s a break in dialogue, everything comes unraveled sooner or later.
Apple announced that they’re making a change to ensure they don’t have to talk about their problem with slowing iPhone growth. On a conference call this Thursday, top Apple executives laid out their plans to stop disclosing the number of iPhones, iPads and Macs it sells each quarter. It’s a move that shocked analysts and only added to jitters around a mixed earnings report.
One day after this news, Apple shares dropped. By midday, shares were down about 6.7%, and Apple’s market capitalization briefly dipped below $1 trillion, a record it hit back in August 2018
Open dialogue and effective communication are the bloodline of every company. When that dialogue gets cut off anywhere, the rest of the body begins to fall apart.
To ensure that a team is running optimally, communication is essential. Every member must be encouraged to participate in communicating and each must be heard. Our definition of dialogue at FPG is channeling the power of mutual understanding to achieve growth. There’s significant power in mutual understanding.
Having an open dialogue with your team must be made a priority in the workplace. Effective communication in the workplace is sometimes overlooked or taken for granted, which can lead to a demoralized workforce and decreased productivity.
The impact of poor communication in the workplace can be felt across the board, even leaking externally to customers and clients. If your team doesn’t have an open dialogue with each other, how are they supposed to communicate effectively with their clients? Not only will your clients feel the impact, at the individual level, employees feel disconnected with no clear direction from management, leading to low satisfaction, engagement, and performance.
So, here’s how can you start communicating more effectively right now.
1. Actively listen to others’ point of view.
All great dialogue starts here. You must take the approach that everyone around you, no matter their title, is capable of contributing to your success as a team. Listening to someone only because you have something to gain from them leads to lost efficiency and harmful dialogue.
2. Openly discuss important ideas and concepts.
There are usually two reasons why people don’t openly discuss their ideas: they feel threatened, or they don’t feel important. These are both created by past programming that tells them they either don’t have a good idea, or they’ll be attacked for presenting their idea. And neither of those outcomes will lead to your speed and profitability as a team.
3. Proactively share information that will impact the organization.
The key word in this behavior is proactively. That doesn’t mean just sharing information when it’s easy, or when it helps you, or even when it’s your job. It means proactively going out of your way to inform others about relevant events.
By using these three behaviors with your team, you will generate a circle of knowledge that lets each team members to understand their role. Communicating, learning, and growing together will only improve your company.
Your survival as a company is dependent on your ability to communicate with each other. We all know that communicating within our teams will help us accomplish goals and generate more business.
Traditional Sales and Leadership Training fails to address the real problem!
You’ve tried training your team in the past, but it didn’t really work. The old style of training just doesn’t seem to work anymore. It’s no secret that sales and leadership training is essential, but it can be hard to find a training program that actually works. Most programs are outdated and are not focused on changing behavior.
FPG Sales Training is different. We don’t use the traditional approach of lecturing your team for hours on end. Instead, we help your team understand their mindset and give them the tools they need to succeed. We help them remove their excuses so they can finally achieve their goals. Book a Meeting today!
