Effective Communications For Business Success
Effective communications is one of the most important elements for business success. When you think about your communications skills, you will want to make sure you are communicating in a way that continuously connects you with your team (and not just giving instructions and mandates). So what are some things to consider?
Our CEO and Founder, Jessica Chen, recently hosted a Soulcast Media | LIVE event on LinkedIn where she interviewed Dean Karrel, a career and executive coach, sales trainer, a LinkedIn Learning Instructor, and the author of the book Mastering the Basics: Simple Lessons For Achieving Success In Business.
They shared key tips and personal experiences on how to effectively communicate to achieve business success.
1. The Presence You Give
Communications is the vehicle that shows others who you are and what you think. Through communications, you can show that you are engaged and enthusiastic, or you can show that you are annoyed and disinterested. It’s really how you make others feel.
Smiling, nodding, and having energy are all non-verbal ways to show that you have personality and that you care. As humans, we want to connect with others who we perceive as understanding and open-minded.
In fact, if you want to elevate your executive presence, you will need to effectively communicate in all kinds of situations. Though video calls can be a bit more challenging to develop that executive presence, it’s possible!
2. Emotional Intelligence
Part of effectively communicating is having high emotional intelligence. The great news is, emotional intelligence can be learned and can grow!
Consider reaching out to someone who you think may need some help or encouragement. And not for any benefit of your own, but to communicate with them genuinely.
Emotional Intelligence can help you
- Be Self-Aware – Looking inward to understand how certain situations trigger your emotions
- Build Relationships – When you are self-aware you are better at understanding how your emotions impact your interactions with others.
- Become Socially Aware – Recognizing and understanding dynamics within relationships can help you become a better communicator.
3. Model Behavior
We’ve all had managers who weren’t the greatest or most supportive. Perhaps they were micro-managers who had to control everything, or they simply didn’t trust others to accomplish anything on their own. It’s no surprise that kind of environment was pretty stressful to work under.
The best leaders model the way.
Be the manager you want to have by modeling the way. Be clear in your expectations and clear with how you want things to be followed up with. Practice this with your manager. There’s no doubt they’ll be impressed. Have a plan or a strategy and always keep an open line for dialogue.
And, as more organizations embrace a mixture of remote and onsite work, consistent communications from leadership is even more critical. In this course, you’ll also learn how to intentionally manage and boost your visibility when working with remote teams.
4. Always Be Proactive
Mistakes. No one likes to make them, but above all, no one enjoys talking about them. But they happen. And the key to achieving success in business is to own those mistakes in the right way at the right time.
So when is the right time to address a mistake?
As soon as you can!
People do not want to be caught off guard, especially those in leadership. No one likes a surprise at the end of a project that should have been communicated days, weeks, or even months before.
Trying to fix a mistake haphazardly can often dig an even deeper hole. Communicating a mistake was made before it gets out of control, while difficult and oftentimes humiliating, can be the best thing you can possibly do.
It’s best to communicate the proceess.
How you approach the situation is important. Create the right environment so that the other person knows what this conversation will entail. This means not just adding it to the end of a conversation. Ask if the person has time to sit down and talk. Or say that you are worried about xyz and need a moment of their time.
This can help protect you as well when you are addressing your mistake or your concerns. Again, it’s better to share the process so others have a better understanding and have more context.
In fact, you will be respected more in the end if you own up to your mistakes. It’s okay to ask for help.
When you can effectively communicate, you are setting yourself up for business success!
If you would like to see the full LIVE version of Jessica and Dean’s conversation, check out Jessica’s Youtube Channel.
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Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways we can help you:
- Discover your communications style so you know where to start. Over 4,000 people have found theirs here.
- Attend our monthly communication workshop to build communications confidence (new topics: public speaking, advocating for yourself, building credibility, etc) here.
- Get your brand in front of 43k+ people by sponsoring our newsletter or Soulcast Media | LIVE LinkedIn events [contact: hello@soulcastmedia.com]
