For Annette Tarver, getting
her point across isn’t the
most important part of communication.
“It’s all about listening and
really seeking to understand
what the issues and challenges
are,” says Tarver, president of
Blackwell Consulting Services
of Ohio LLC, an information
technology and management
consultancy.
To open up the lines of communication, Tarver develops
one-on-one relationships with
her employees at the company,
which posted 2007 revenue of
about $6.5 million and employs
more than 50 people.
Smart Business spoke with
Tarver about how to develop
one-on-one relationships with
your employees and how to be
a better communicator.
Q. How do you develop
one-on-one relationships
with employees?
We start through our hiring
process and have an on-boarding process that we think is
pretty comprehensive. It
includes a lot of things that
would be considered touch
points for the individuals, the
things that matter to them.
We try to stay connected on
those touch points throughout
their employment, things like
what their passions are, and we
try to match those to volunteer
opportunities that they can participate in. Some people are
engaged with sports through
their kids, and we try to do
things that support their activities inside and outside the office.
Community involvement and
volunteerism is one of our core
values. So, we try to match
them up along those lines, as well, to some things that they’re
passionate about that they can
add value to in a community
service setting.
Q. What advice would you
give to someone who wants
to be a better communicator?
I think communication is
learned. I don’t think it is something that comes naturally for
everybody.
There’s some people who can
communicate very easily. They’re
gregarious — it’s a personality
thing where they are comfortable doing it. People who
are uncomfortable doing
it — I know a lot of leaders that this is not a skill
they have developed.
One of the easiest ways
to do it is to do something that is very benign
and nonpersonal and
nonconfrontational. One
of the things that we do,
as we find articles of
interest … we send them
out to people saying, ‘I
read this in such and
such a publication, and I
thought it might be of
interest to you.’
It’s the idea of sharing
some information, doing
a little knowledge transfer and just say, ‘I’d be
interested in hearing your comments about it, or know what
you think about this,’ and open
up that dialogue.
Then it allows the other person — they may not be comfortable, either … it allows them
to have an opportunity to read
over the materials and then say,
‘Thanks for sending it to me; it
was great. I thought the points
that they made might be applicable to something we are
doing at such and such a client,’
or ‘I’m going to use these techniques in something I’m doing
external to the office.’
I find that to be very helpful.
People appreciate getting information from you and the fact
that you are thinking about
some of the things they might
be doing and ways you can
apply best practices to that.
