If you ask a business owner if they have a communication strategy, most will say that they do. A strategy where they can communicate directly with their customers and maintain their brand presence in the market in which they trade. What that business owner is describing is their external communication strategy, which connects with their external customers.
But there are two types of communication strategies. Firstly, the marketing strategy used to acquire new external customers and to retain current clients, and secondly the less commonly known one, the internal communication strategy.
An internal communication strategy is a strategy specifically focused around how you communicate with your internal customer, your employees. Something that is often neglected or not given much attention, but our team members also need to be acquired and retained, just like our external customers.
When building an internal communication strategy think about both quantity and quality.
QUANTITY
Quantity is based around how often you are communicating with your team and what communication media you are using. This is all dependant on the size of your business and how many team members you have.
This could be a combination of daily check-ins, weekly catch ups, monthly meetings, quarterly and yearly performance reviews. Telephone calls, group chats, face-to face, email or virtual. There are many ways to connect with your team members. Choose the number of times (quantity) and methods of communication that best suits your team.
How often are you connecting with your team? Is it enough?
However, the one that I am more interested in is the quality of your communication strategy.
QUALITY
You can be connecting with your team on a regular basis through a range of different methods, but the quality of the communication can be substandard or worse. How you communicate can be working against you.
How can you ensure that the quality of the communication is benefiting you, the team member and the business?
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Your approach – Before going into a communication session – think about your objectives or the outcomes. What do you want to achieve? Hopefully a positive outcome , so then focus on how you would achieve that.
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Your verbal communication – your tone, your pitch and your pace. When you want to get a message across, how you communicate is essential. A calm relaxed tone, varied pitch and even pace will be accepted far more readily than a monotone, fast paced or harsh tone.
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Your mindset – before communicating with your team members, get your “head right”. Make sure that you are in the right frame of mind. Being distracted or moody sends negative signals and can destroy your intended message.
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Your non-verbal communication – People can “pick up” on our moods, just by looking at our body language. Ensure that your body language is delivering the same message as your verbals. Be open, give eye-contact, smile, don’t close yourself off by folding your arms. If you can, avoid conducting meetings from behind your desk. Eliminate physical barriers , which can portray you as unapproachable and distant.
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“I’ve learnt that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou
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Participation – How much participation is there in a communication session? Who is doing all the talking?
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Ensure that your team member is actively involved in the discussion. Ask them their opinion about a situation. What would they recommend? When it comes to dealing with a team members transgression – ask them to clarify what happened and why they acted in a certain way and how they would like to resolve it. Empower your team members by involving them.
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Allow the team members to run their own communication sessions – set the agendas, boundaries and timeframes and let them take control.
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Be curious – ask more questions and actively listen to them. You may be pleasantly surprised to hear what your team members have to say, if you give them a chance.
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“Listen to understand, then to be understood” – Stephen Covey
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Time – Everyone is busy, everyone is trying to focus on and complete their most important tasks and actions. Don’t rob them of precious time, by holding a badly planned and facilitated meeting. It is disrespectful and unprofessional.
Ensure you think about the following:
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The meeting has an agenda – sent out by you or a team member
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The meetings always start and end on time
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People are held accountable for their actions within the meetings
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The meeting stays on point and focused
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So, the next time you think about your communication strategy, think further than your external clients – think about your internal team and the best way to communicate with them. Without your internal team operating well, your external customers will be negatively affected.
Nicole is a certified professional coach as well as a certified trainer, advanced assessor and coach mentor. Based in Auckland, she provides a range of coaching options, from individual business owner and management coaching, group and team coaching workshops to personal coaching. Her coaching practice is aligned to the ICF ethos and ethics. Need to hire a professional coach? Contact Nicole [email protected]
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