The most important competence for a manager is communication skills. He devotes the majority of his time to communicating with his employees. Moreover, without the appropriate techniques, it can lead to conflicts in the team and reduce the management efficiency.
No clarity in communication
This is probably the most common mistake. Its main cause is the unclear actions of the manager himself.
If a manager has given a task without specifying all the details of its implementation, it will be difficult to accomplish it.
How to avoid problems
- Do not assume that the employee must understand you from the word go. First of all, it is your responsibility to acquaint him with your vision.
- Always be clear about what you want to get.
- All wording should be specific to avoid ambiguity, and quantitative and qualitative criteria if possible. Don’t just “Make a report,” but “Make a comparative earnings report for the first and second quarter of this year.”
- Always be clear about how the employee understood you. Don’t ask the question, “Do you understand?” This is almost always answered affirmatively by everyone. Instead, better ask the employee, “Please repeat what you understood, what you need to do/what we agreed upon.” Next, make sure the employee hasn’t missed any important points. Repeat if necessary.
Communication imbalance
This problem is often not taken seriously until they encounter it in practice. After all, if there is not enough communication, employees feel neglected. The other extreme is when a manager communicates too much with his subordinates. At some point, employees become tired of it, irritated, and conflicted.
How to avoid the problem?
Try to find the golden mean in communication with each of the employees.
Remember that some of them need more communication, while others need less. To do this, agree on the amount of communication with your employees, especially in terms of supervision and feedback.
Inappropriate communication style
Strange as it may seem, this mistake is often made not only by beginners but also by experienced managers. It happens that a manager moves to a new place of work and automatically brings with him a familiar style of management and communication, while the team has already formed its own.
How to avoid the problem?
Before establishing a certain style of communication with employees, be sure to analyze
- What style is already established in the team;
- How it corresponds to the style adopted at the company level;
- How much does it contribute to effective management?
Unsupervised feedback
Feedback is one of the components of the communication process. It is thanks to feedback that two-way communication is possible when we do not just send a message to the person we are talking to, but also receive a reaction to it. Unfortunately, in many companies, there is no culture of feedback.
How to avoid the problem?
Provide employees with feedback in different formats regularly, (i.e. conduct survey, questionnaire, or just send email to text) at different stages of supervision.
Establish a format for feedback and ask for it periodically. This format should be as comfortable as possible for both parties.
Don’t just listen to feedback from employees, but analyze it and use it to further improve communications.
Conclusion
There are many more problems in communications. But even more importantly, an effective manager is not one who does not make mistakes, but recognizes mistakes in time and finds effective ways to solve them. And this is only possible if one constantly improves one’s managerial competence.
