However small your organisation, good internal communication is not only vital, but also beset with difficulties. Making sure the right people know the right things at the right time can present significant challenges. The following are three brief tips that may help to improve the situation.
- Plan for it
As with many things, planning helps. Consider using the who, what, when and how approach:
- Who needs to know? (often very different to those who want to know!)
- What do they need to know.? Some will need all the details, some just the bare bones.
- When do they need to know? Too early and they may forget, too late and they may panic.
- How do they need to know? Is this best done via a face to face meeting, an email or some othrer way?
2.Communicate well
Particularly when considering ‘how’ to communicate, give some thought to the preferred communication style of those you are trying to reach. If it seems they never take in the content of your emails, or ‘zone out’ when in meetings, maybe you have not yet found their preferred style? If in doubt, it is worth asking what works best.
3. Lower your expectations
Just because you have communicated it and you think it is really important, it doesn’t necessarily mean the communicaton has been heard. We all filter out vast amounts of information every day and don’t always receive all the information on offer. If you are not convinvced, please try and remember the details of the plot line of a film you watched last week! You may need to say things more than once…
If you want more help with this, or your preferred communication method is talking not reading, feel free to contact me.