Gears For Careers

Communicate purposefully

How would you rate the quality of your communication with your superiors? Are you reactive and the recipient of their manager’s information? If you are not proactive, it’s time to build a communication plan. Here are a couple of things to consider in developing your plan.

Take control of how others perceive you: To achieve this you need to consider what will best strengthen your reputation. There is no way you can have total control over perceptions of you but you should not leave it all completely to chance. Decide what you want to be known for and purposefully communicate and behave in a way that fosters this. Drop attitudes and actions that create negative impressions. When people have known what to expect from you and those expectations are good based on what they see, know and hear, your credibility will increase.

Make a list of those you want to know about your work: Ask yourself who or which groups you need to have a strong, open, ongoing communication with. A list of all of such stakeholders would typically include your boss, your peers, your boss’s peers, your staff, people your boss listens to. All the individuals and groups that depend on you or whose work is connected to yours should also make the list.

Know what they need and how best to provide it: For each stakeholder, think about what they do, what their priorities are, how your work is connected to theirs, what they need from you, what you would like them to get to know about your work and what the right communication with them is. Don’t go on some self promotion drive by sending unsolicited reports on how you are doing.  Use a combination of informal discussions, brief emails and concise regular reporting that contain meaningful information specific. Your aim shouldn’t be to be impressive but to be useful and informative. Give them information on what they most care about.

Tune out third party noise: Detach from ‘noise’ that interferes with genuine communication with your stakeholders, in particular other people’s negative opinion of your stakeholders which they don’t hesitate to share with you. It’s important to build your important work relationships on the basis of your own experience. This will help you set the tone for appropriate information flows and ongoing interaction and to test any preconceived ideas of them you may have.

Now take action: Develop your personal communication plan.

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