Q. How can a leader learn to communicate more clearly?
One of the fundamentals is to make sure that you know that person has the understanding of what you are saying, maybe having somebody summarize or repeat in their own words — ‘This is what it is I understood to have heard.’
A good way is for somebody who is able to summarize this and tell me what it is that actually we want. ‘Where is the goal? What did we just communicate? How did we understand this?’
Or ask the question, ‘Where are we not clear in whatever was said?’ Sometimes you ask the question, ‘Who is not clear?’ People are concerned that they don’t want to sound ignorant, and they don’t ask the question.
It’s important to create an environment where nobody feels threatened. That’s … why you need to communicate with people, so that they feel they can communicate back to you and make it a very comfortable environment because people don’t ask for fear of sounding ignorant.
Q. How do you create an environment where people feel comfortable asking questions?
By being open yourself and allowing people to express themselves in terms of you asking for feedback and having them participate in the decision-making. Allow them to fail and don’t punish somebody when somebody fails, but try to see how can we prevent it from happening the next time. Or, ‘What went wrong; why did it happen?’ instead of giving the impression that, ‘Oh, my gosh. If I make a mistake, I’m going to be punished.’
Q. How has open communication benefited your company?
If you communicate openly … a lot people know what the general expectation is and people know what the general goal is and where are we going; that people feel it is important that I know this because my actions and my decisions are important to the organization.
With that, you have a certain automatic empowerment that makes you be a better person and makes you be a better member of the unit.
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