Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about what you can do to improve the communications in your business and how to motivate staff.

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Transcript

These days there are so many ways for us all to stay in touch, so why do so many business owners and company directors confide in me that they need to improve communications amongst their staff?

It’s precisely BECAUSE there are so many ways to communicate that we’re in danger of forgetting how to interact face to face. I’ll explain.

In an environment where co-workers email the person sat next to them it can be hard to get your staff to talk to one another. Equally if important company announcements are communicated through a note pinned to the notice board without any explanation, you can hardly blame staff for gossiping or for being less than enthusiastic.

The first step to improving communication is to acknowledge that there is a problem and that it needs to be addressed. Communication is not the responsibility of the Marketing department or the HR Manager – it’s the responsibility of the senior management team. Without buy-in from the top, communications will simply not improve so your directors need to take ownership of this and they need to lead by example.

So the next step is to arrange a ‘closed door session’ for your senior management team where you come together and thrash out what needs to change. Have a frank and honest discussion about what’s working and what’s not and develop some practical solutions. If management meetings have lapsed or are missed by certain people, of course communication is going to suffer. When you have your ‘closed door session’ you might need to bring in an external facilitator or one of your non-executive directors to chair the meeting to ensure everyone feels heard and there’s a balanced discussion. Make sure everyone has a full understanding of the business plan and the company goals for the next few months. This will save people pulling in different directions or failing to prioritise projects crucial to other departments’ meeting their goals.

Then and only then, talk about how you’re going to cascade this through to the various teams working under the senior management team. Your senior team need to lead by example and put any past differences behind them. Some of them will already be good communicators, so find out what they do and see whether the others can learn from them. In the spirit of team-working encourage them to spend more time together, to have a quick weekly catch-up or even grab coffee or lunch together.

Now, for those people in your company who have been labelled as ‘difficult’ we need to get realistic. Most of the time, it’s because there’s a personality clash or where people have a different set of values when it comes to working. For example, this could mean that a particular manager might value adherence to deadlines higher then precision but they have a team member who believes it’s better to miss a deadline to get things right first time. There are going to be disagreements unless they have a frank discussion about working practices.

By keeping the channels of communication open it’s easier to nip any disagreements in the bud. It’s also easier to make sure everyone’s pulling in the right direction, because nothing is going to wreck your business faster than having a company where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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