Communication Saves The Day When You Let It
When it comes to relationships of any kind whether it’s friendship, romantic, coworkers, acquaintances or any others: honesty, communication are two important things to have. Because if you don’t have them, you have nothing. And not only that, the relationship won’t last nor succeed in being healthy.
If you want to have a healthy relationship with anyone whether it’s a quick moment with anyone; like cashier to customer, or coworker to coworker or manager (short term employment); you must keep communication and honesty a priority.
Don’t just rely on them but be reliable for them. If they expect you to be at work for 89am, show up early and do your part and communicate any errors, mistakes or issues of any kind to your coworkers or manager.
In a situation where you are selling to a customer in store and they come to you giving you detailed info regarding the item they are looking for and include that they need to find the item (e.g, for a friends birthday gift), with the data been provided to you, you find the item.
If none is in stock in the specific size, colour and style, ask if they’d like for you to check other locations (e.g, Mississauga: Heartland, Square One) for the item as specified. And continue serving them and other customers as usual. But in a different scenario and platform such as online: that’s a whole different thing that is hard to manage with all the errors, mistakes, problems that can more easily arise.
For example, a customer sees one of your listings on Facebook Marketplace, and they automatically message you before even scrolling down to the details of the listed item; and they ask you questions about the item and pickup location when all that info is included in the details of the listing. How would you respond, handle that?
Would that be tricky for you to handle in a professional yet calm manner? Would you be able to handle it without letting your emotions take control of the situation?
If you have a mental illness, addiction or eating disorder or many; are you able to handle them during tough moments with customers when they lack enough communication including making false assumptions of things you said/messaged them?
Reminder: messages, emails, texts can easily be misinterpreted, misunderstood way too easily!
Here’s another scenario for you. You have been in a romantic relationship with someone and they rely on you to be available and last minute something comes up and you ditch their plans and attend the other one. You don’t communicate to them about canceling due to a last minute thing; and they wait and wait and eventually text you wondering where you are. You may or may not decide to reply back stating that last minute plans came up.
How would they feel? Have you ever been in the other person’s place before? If so, how did that make you feel? When you relied on someone and they didn’t pull their end of the weight in the relationship. Now imagine a scenario similar like this but in a professional setting: in store or online.
How would you handle that? Whether it’s about reliability or communication, or honesty or accuracy; how would you deal with them? Assumptions can be so hard to get around when the other person is the one making them. They can easily make fast and false assumptions and not have any thought or filter in their mind about thinking about these:
- Is that true?
- How does that make me feel?
- What needs to happen for me to NOT assume?
Here’s the link to the questions which the blogger of this blog post has real good things to say about assumptions and stories (3 sides of a story, not 2):
Assume: suppose to be the case, without proof.
