3 Tips to Improve Your Communication Skills
To young entrepreneurs in LATAM.
My wife and I have advised digital entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized business owners (SMEs) in Venezuela, Peru, and Chile.
A typical entrepreneur in our region is creative, not averse to risk, a lover of innovation, and ambitious, all qualities required to succeed in a business concern. They might need better organizational skills and structure, which comes with experience. Larger organizations deal with this issue by offering formal and on-the-job training to their employees.
Digital entrepreneurship (startups) and some SMEs operate with flat organizations, their founders and owners with limited business experience, and a functional structure where responsibilities, business plans, and strategies need additional details and sometimes coherence.
Effective communication between the founders, owners, and their organization is of the essence. The lack of structure, a robust strategy, and a disruptive value proposal require continuous trial and error that can lead to unnecessary and costly wear and tear. A good communication strategy can partially compensate for the lack of experience or the degree of typical uncertainty of startups and SMEs.
Effective communication between the founders, owners, and their organization is of the essence. The lack of structure, a robust strategy, and a disruptive value proposal require continuous trial and error that can lead to unnecessary and costly wear and tear.
From our experience with more than one hundred startups and SMEs in the region, we would like to offer the following recommendations:
Empathize with your fellow workers.
As mentioned above, A digital venture with a disruptive proposal is less predictable, and this is a continuous generator of anxiety and stress in the organization and its founders. In the case of SMEs, this situation might occur in generational changes when the incumbent has ambitious plans but lacks experience. Introducing a new business model to accelerate the company’s growth or new innovative products or services creates a lot of pressure on the organization.
Founders and owners of startups and SMEs must accept this reality and act accordingly. In these circumstances, managers incur errors more frequently than in a mature company. Making mistakes is part of a learning curve for a startup founder or an SME owner with aggressive plans to scale their businesses. Those responsible for this type of organization need to realize risks and uncertainty, which requires continuous adjustments, where errors occur regardless of the dedication and will of personnel.
The empathy of the founder of a startup or owner of an SME must begin with themselves. Once sensitized to accept the additional risk due to the nature of the business, they must consequently manage their human, financial, and relational resources.
Empathizing means putting ourselves in the situation of the person with whom we have a relationship as a supervisor, partner, or colleague. Understand the limitations that the position under your responsibility entails and act accordingly.
Making mistakes is part of a learning curve for a startup funder or an SME owner with aggressive plans to scale their businesses.
Show evidence of presence in your communications with others.
We face situations of different nature, urgency, and priority. In an environment of high uncertainty and risk, we’ll do best if we stay calm and pay attention when managing matters. For this, we need to be clear about the importance and urgency of pending issues before taking them to those responsible in the organization. Our colleagues, supervisees, and partners perceive this, which motivates them to act responsibly and diligently. Otherwise, when we miss details that lead to objective decision-making, they lose interest, which results in less effective management by those to whom we have delegated responsibilities in the organization.
Being present during meetings and when communicating with others requires training our minds: take breaks to listen to music, meditate, and walk outdoors (avoid connecting to social networks, which can only increase anxiety). When we resume our work routine, we will be ready to concentrate on the new topics.
We continually face situations of different nature, urgency, and priority. In an environment of high uncertainty and risk, we’ll do best if we stay calm and pay attention when managing matters.
Stay focused on the goals you are pursuing.
Communication in business, whether one-on-one or as a team, must pursue an objective.
One can schedule extramural interaction activities to discuss general topics and promote an open organizational environment. In these spaces, the founder or business owner can open themselves to questions and answers from the participants.
However, when we call a meeting to decide on an action plan, one must avoid generalization, improvisation, speculation, and value judgments. We must focus our communication on the objectives and explain them clearly and concisely.
Data comes to support business leaders to avoid redundancy or dealing with unrelated topics. In one of my previous articles, I recommended dashboards to track progress objectively. During meetings to review or follow up on a plan, we must rely on data to focus the discussion and gain efficiency and effectiveness.
We work in an environment of great uncertainty, so we must be willing to change or adjust plans with the required frequency, with decisions based on the available data.
In LATAM, we pay attention to collateral aspects and tend to focus communication on the How before agreeing on the Why and What. We should spend a reasonable amount of time on why the meeting was called and its objective, and avoid refraining from rambling on unrelated matters.
