As a manager, promoting better communication practices among your team is one of your top priorities. Improving communication increases employee engagement, collaboration, and productivity. This leads to greater job satisfaction, employee morale, and retention.
Your team communicates in different ways based on their goals. Working to improve these communication practices helps build a high-performing team.
Discover some methods to improve communication practices among your team.
Types of Communication
You may need to improve communication practices in one or more of these areas:
- Verbal communication may occur in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing. This is the best method for team members to share their thoughts.
- Nonverbal communication involves body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. Because most communication is nonverbal, team members must pay attention to the nonverbal cues they give and receive.
- Written communication includes email, messaging, project management tools, surveys, and reviews. Effective writing is required to provide directions or feedback.
- Visual communication is important to share information and promote understanding. This includes using slides or videos during training or team meetings to present a message.
- Listening is used to gather, process, and retrieve the information shared. This shows engagement in the discussion.
Strategies to Improve Communication Practices
The following actions promote communication, collaboration, and productivity among your team:
- Resolve conflicts in a fast, direct, respectful manner. This minimizes issues and promotes collaboration.
- Promote engagement through weekly team meetings. Let your employees share what they are working on, exchange ideas, and provide input. Show you value and support each employee’s contributions.
- Encourage bottom-up communication through team meetings, one-on-one conversations, and surveys. This supports your team in sharing their ideas and perspectives and feeling ownership of projects. It also elevates trust and employee morale.
- Prioritize transparency by being honest about business performance, sharing company information as soon as possible, and providing constructive feedback in real time. This minimizes miscommunication and related issues. It also increases motivation by showing your employees are valued team members.
- Hold one-on-one meetings to check in on your team, address issues, and answer questions. Let your employees speak openly and honestly. Provide support when needed. This increases productivity and trust.
- Provide constructive feedback to improve performance. Specify what each employee is doing well and how they can do better. This increases engagement, productivity, and performance.
Get Help from Staffing Professionals
See how THE RIGHT STAFF can help your St. Paul organization improve its communication practices. Learn more today!
