Effective Ways to Communicate with Your Team

“It’s not what you say, but how you say”-

This old aphorism says everything about the importance of communication skills. Communication plays a key role in a leadership position, differentiating a great leader from an inefficient one.

An effective communication with your team is vital for achieving the successful results, creating a peaceful work environment, and eliminating misunderstandings within the team. Communication is a complex activity that involves the use of words, voice tone and body language, among others. It is a key element of success for any organization as poor communication can easily create tensions in workplace relationships; resulting in low productivity and conflicts.

It is vital for any team manager to understand the effective ways of communicating with the team, such as one-on-one discussion, gestures, openness/closeness with the team, prompt response to employees’ queries, voice tone, etc.

Effective Ways to Communicate

Tone of Voice

Your tone of voice plays a crucial role in sending the desired message in an appropriate manner. Words can convey entirely different meaning when said in a different tone. Hence, to avoid any misunderstanding with your team, make sure you use an appropriate voice tone. For instance, when discussing employee performance, keep your tone confident to make your employees take your feedback and suggestions seriously. At the same time, if you use a harsh or loud tone, this simply makes you look arrogant and leaves your employees demotivated and confused about their growth prospects in the company.

Body Language

Your body language communicates your ideas to others in a faster manner. Knowingly or unknowingly, this form of non-verbal communication plays a crucial role in building relationships with your employees. Body language includes facial expressions, hand movements, and gestures such as an eye contact, smile, or how you walk/stand/sit. If you are aware of the right body language, understanding people becomes much easier.

Some important points include:

-  Speech- It should be slow and easy to understand

-  Posture- Stand or walk with head straight and do not slouch

-  Eye Contact- Maintaining eye contact when speaking shows confidence

-  Tone- It should be moderate to convey your message appropriately

-  Hand & Arms- Gestures with hands are required for a purposeful talk. However, excessive hand movement should be avoided

Transparency with Your Team

Maintaining a clear communication and transparency at work helps to create a healthy relationship with your employees. However, how much openness or honesty should be maintained, it is debatable!

For leadership roles, it is vital to strike a balance between being too honest or open with your team and conceal your feelings with them. Either of the two situations affects the team spirit. For instance, a leader who avoids interactive sessions, healthy discussions, and shows aggressive approach, his team usually finds less or no opportunity to share any issues, and thus remain less motivated.

On the other hand, the downside of being too open also presents a weak leader. Sharing friendly jokes, having lunch together, or even discussing personal problems is fine, but never cross the limit by voicing your workplace challenges or gossips as it creates a lack of confidence in your team about the organization.

Hence, exercise caution and understand when it is acceptable and when it is not to share a particular thing with your employees. After all, you would never want your team to take you for granted.

One-on-one Discussion

One-on-one communication is one of the most effective ways to convey your message to your employees and make them understand it in a better way. However, when you are managing a large team, this form of communication is not always possible. Hence, apply this method when addressing an important issue, such as performance evaluation, constructive feedback, addressing employee conflicts, etc.

One-on-one discussion makes employees feel important and they get an equal opportunity to speak out their minds. When choosing this form of communication, it is vital to maintain the eye contact and listen actively to the other person.

Last Words

For any manager, keeping his employees to work harmoniously is vital to boost productivity. If communication in any way is blocked, it can ruin the entire efforts. Hence, you should keep your focus on maintaining effective ways of communication and lead a happy team!

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