3 Easy Ways to Fix Communication Problems

I’m tired.

I’m tired of all this talk of “communication problems.” That’s the old fallback. “My manager doesn’t communicate enough,” or “My leaders have issues with communication.”

What is that? What the hell is “communication” and what does it have to do with anything?

“Communication” is the Problem

Herein is the issue: “Communication” is a moniker. Team members use it for something they don’t know how to name; something that’s hard to define. They don’t feel that we communicated with them and that’s the problem. You could tell them things all day long, but they don’t get it because they don’t feel it.

Ask them to define for you what “better communication” would look or sound like? Most would give you a vague answer: “They should tell us more about things happening.” They don’t know. They just know something isn’t working right. And they have learned to blame it on communication. But that’s not the problem.

So, what is it that team members are looking for? When they say that a company or department needs to communicate better, what are they saying?

Transparency Isn’t the Solution

I’ve heard team members talk about “letting people know what’s up” or “keeping them in the loop.”

Transparency is often a “fall guy” for this kind of flimflam response from team members. They’ll say, “we need more transparency.” So, a manager should somehow help every person to see every meeting? Or, involve every team member in every communication that happens within an organization? Not likely. And not realistic.

It isn’t possible to get people in a room, video the whole thing (every single blasted time), and then give it to the masses. We’d have reality television going on in every office, every meeting room, at every conversation, all the time.

Lack of Structure is to Blame

Communication isn’t the issue. The issue is structure.

I learned this lesson not too long ago when I had someone training one of my teams. Their training consisted of taking them through several different parts of a workflow. They did it step-by-step through the process with the required tools. By the end, the team members had been “trained.”

But these team members didn’t feel they learned anything. They heard a lot of noise coming out of the trainer’s mouth. And he did some stuff up on a projector screen. But he never communicated with them that they were learning something. In the end, team members said, “We don’t know how to do this.” The trainer responded, “But I’ve told them 15 times.”

But something that trainers often forget is a simple principle of training. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. In other words, you have to give some structure to a training. A structure that is both a framework and a context for that framework.

Trainers who don’t couch their training in a consistent framework will lose the learner’s minds. When a learner doesn’t know where to focus, and doesn’t know to focus there, they are like Dug the dog from Pixar’s “Up.” Squirrel!

Training without context doesn’t give you the “Why” behind the training. Simple tasks even need the “why” and the greater scope: Why the hell am I learning this? Where does it fit in the big picture? How do the pieces fit together?

Take this thought to “communication problems.”

3 Steps to Proper Communication

Framework

A proper communications strategy will incorporate a consistent framework. Try giving your team members a consistent method for communicating messages. If they know they can count on getting messages every day at 10 am, then they will know when you are communicating. If you do it everyday at 10 am, they have a greater idea that they are learning something. And, if they know they are supposed to learn something from it, they will be more likely to. Especially since you’ve told them you’re going to communicate. You’ve communicated. And you’ve told them what you’ve communicated.

Context

Also, proper communications will give a broader scope why. You will answer where the communication fits in the scheme of things. You will answer why it is communicated and, if it has to do with a change, why that change is happening. The content has more meaning this way. So, the content is “meaningful” to the person receiving the communication.

Useful

You have to communicate something of use to the individual. And part of that “why” needs to address why it is important to them to know it. They have such a barrage of information coming at them that someone needs to help them navigate what is important versus what is less important. Sometimes you just have to let them know that in comparison to the whole. Tell them you are communicating something useful and why and they will want to learn it.

With these three strategies, I hope you help your team members feel that you communicate well.

If you have any other thoughts that you would like to add, feel free to comment below. And good luck to helping your teams feel “better communication.”

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