Business Leader? 4 Ways To Increase Communication With Your Team

Good communication underlies every successful business, making it a priority for business owners and their managers. Regardless of whether your staff believes you have good or bad communication skills, you can find ways to improve. If you want to boost the productivity and efficiency of your organization, start by using the following four ways to improve communication with your team.

[tweetthis]Good #communication underlies every successful #business, & a priority for owners. @emmasturgis2[/tweetthis]

Have Daily Contact With Your Management Team

Business leaders have many roles to fill and can often become detached from their team’s daily operation. You might also want to keep your distance from your team to avoid being labeled as a micro manager. Regardless of the factors at play in your organization, you can communicate better with your team if you stay in touch with them.

 

Check in with your teams at least once a day to let them know that you’re interested in their personal and professional wellbeing. If you have a large organization or a distributed team, you can check in using a daily video or audio conference call. Keep your meetings short, but make sure you allow enough time for everyone to share news, status updates and operational issues.

 

Meet With Your Entire Labor Force Every Two Weeks

As a business leader, you need to maintain visibility throughout your organization. Organize bi-weekly meetings for your entire workforce, so you can share company news that affects them, encourage good communications, promote transparency and let everyone know that you care.

During each meeting, allow enough time to let everyone ask questions and supply you with other feedback. The way you speak and behave in front of your organization speaks volumes, so make sure you treat everyone with openness and respect. Demonstrate to everyone your commitment to promoting communications in every direction within your organization, not just from the top down.

 

Involve Other Stakeholders

Meet weekly with other stakeholders, including executives and investors and encourage everyone to speak their mind. Create a conduit where information can flow back and forth to them, so they can understand everything that’s going on in your organization. When every stakeholder can express their desires and concerns in light of realistic expectations, you’ll avoid misunderstandings that can waste time and money.

Make sure you have someone take notes at every meeting and share them with your entire team. When everyone in the company can see what the stakeholders talk about they’ll feel safe from hidden surprises and find ways to adjust their work to contribute to the overarching mission of your firm. Also, everyone can learn about future business decisions that affect them.

 

Use Tools To Simplify Communication

Many exciting tools exist that make team communication fast and easy, so try moving away from your dependence on email. Cloud-based project management tools give you and your team a way to collaborate on work and assign tasks while providing tools for almost instant interaction. Cloud-based tools work through web browsers and mobile apps, so you and your team members can always stay in touch, even when traveling or working from home.

Other tools, such as gamification software give your entire organization a way to interact on a professional and personal level. Gamification software helps bring fun to work, and breaks up the boring monotony of a work day by presenting tasks in a unique way. When you implement communication tools make sure you create and enforce mandatory policies for their use.

Using the above four ways to increase communication with your team will help you become an outstanding business leader recognized for developing an organization characterized by efficiency, loyalty and trust. As a result, your business will enjoy stability and an impressive bottom line.