by Natalie Edwards

Communication is the number one issue that businesses strive to improve. What is effective communication? Listen to Mike talk about how the the 7 C's can help you communicate in your business to improve the culture in your workplace.

Welcome back. We're here with Mike to discuss effective communication and how this contributes to business success. Mike, how often would you find communication to be an issue with businesses you've worked with?

 

Oh, fabulous. Thanks for the question, Andy. I find that communication is the number one issue that comes up. Whenever we do team days with companies, or we go in-house and do in-house training, and I say to people, what do you want to get out of this training? Inevitably, communication is going to come up multiple times. People realize that they're not great at it, and that it's often if they could just improve their communication, it would be the secret to improving everything and therefore improving the success of a business.

 

So we often get people to define what you understand by communication. Is really interesting. People often go, uh, it's about talking to people. You go, OK, if I talk to you, does that mean I'm an effective communicator? People go, uh, no, you've got to listen. I go, great. So I'm listening, and you're talking, am I an effective communicator? People go, no. And we keep going around like this until finally somebody goes, it's about understanding. And so when we talk about communication, when we're talking about effective communication is the understanding between two or more people.

 

And with engineering companies, I often use the seven seas of communication. When you can be clear, and concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete, and courteous, and you can tick all of those off. You know you're going to have communicated effectively. But a tip for people when they're working, in the busyness of the day, because obviously not going to sit there going, OK, there's that, did I do that? Did I do that? Is to actually go great, if I'm talking with you and I suspect that maybe I haven't communicated well, is to take ownership for communication. And to go, to make sure I have been clear, would you please tell me what you heard me say? Or to make sure I've been clear, can you tell me what you're about to go and do? And by checking in with somebody else. It's a great way of making sure that the way you're communicating is effective. But effective communication is more than just the talking. It's the words you use in and around the company. Language defines culture, and culture creates language.

 

And so the two of them are interconnected very strongly. And so the way we communicate, it's not just talking backwards and forwards. It's going to impact how you answer your phones. The greetings you give to your customers. The way that you have your meetings around a table. All of those will be essential in getting a culture a people feel they can succeed. So when we start to look at what's gone wrong with businesses or what's gone wrong on a project, inevitably what you will find is that there's been miscommunication. And sometimes people can go into a witch hunt. And I really encourage businesses not to do witch hunting, but rather to go look at any challenge that you've had, any mistake, any problem, and go, OK, great, we've just had a learning opportunity people. And what have we learned from that?

 

And so when we can go, what do we learn. And how will we make sure we don't repeat that again? That can be a really powerful way for teams to not be afraid to take risks, not be afraid to do something new, but also to realize that we don't want to be making the same mistake over and over again. And with miscommunication, you then start to illuminate how that's happened. And that can be done in all sorts of different ways. Many engineering businesses will use dashboards or whiteboards. And you can put messages up on those. So people can track what they're doing. I mentioned beforehand that people like to win. And so communication is there, do you have a scoreboard in the company to know we're on track, we're not on track? It affects all elements of a business, and putting a lot of focus and emphasis on getting your communication to the highest possible level is what makes for highly effective teams.

 

Very good, Mike. So we certainly find communication here at your mark. Especially, as a growing business, is something we continuously need to work on. The thing is, change is often easier said than done, right?

 

Absolutely, Andy. The fear of change is what stops a lot of businesses moving forward and fear breeds fear, and so learning how to manage change and remove the fear out of that becomes a key element in any business's success.

 

That's great. And that's what leads us on to our final episode. EP6: The Success Mindset with Mike Clark - Approaching Change.