Jun 24

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings…

Communication Skills No Comments »

The Guardian has recently highlighted our love-hate relationship with workplace meetings and offered some useful advice for making them work. Why do we so often walk away from meetings feeling that they have been a complete waste of time and effort? Why is it that so many of us dread the regular and seemingly interminable internal meetings that seem to be scheduled with alarming frequency? Meetings can be an important forum for sharing ideas and information, making decisions and building team relationships but they need careful consideration and planning in order to make them effective and efficient. If you are leading or even attending a meeting in the coming days or weeks, consider the following strategies and tips:

Meeting Neustockimages i Meetings, Meetings, Meetings…

© istockphoto.com/Neuxtockimages

Plan your meeting carefully – prepare and circulate an agenda a couple of days before hand if possible. The agenda should include not only your list of discussion points but also clear objectives for why the meeting is taking place

Stick to time – before or at the beginning of the meeting agree how long is needed for the meeting to meet its objectives. If you don’t need an hour don’t take an hour.

Leave smart phones outside – it might sound controversial but the meeting will be shorter and more effective if attendees are fully focused and don’t have half an eye on their emails.

Minimise visuals – if you do need to use a PowerPoint presentation or other visual aid, keep it short and sweet – and make sure it really is visual.

Lead from the front – if you are chairing or facilitating the meeting then make sure you do. It is important to allow everyone the opportunity to air their ideas and ask questions, but if you are chairing the meeting it is your job to manage the interruptions, digressions and ramblings to ensure the meeting finishes on time and achieves its objectives.

Take notes and summarise action points – you don’t have to do this yourself but make sure someone is responsible for the minutes which are summarised at the end and then circulated after the meeting. There is nothing worse than coming away from a meeting with no clear idea of what has been agreed or what you need to do.

With resources increasingly strained in many organisations, we need to make sure that meetings really make a difference. Training in Facilitating Meetings can provide frameworks and techniques for ensuring that meetings run smoothly and effectively.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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Dec 03

What does Good Communication Mean?

Communication Skills 1 Comment »

What does it really mean to have good communication skills? Any CV now will declare that the writer has excellent communication skills and many large organisations include communication in their brand values or competency frameworks. We cannot be successful at work if we lack the ability to communicate effectively with the people we work with.

Businessman making Presentation i What does Good Communication Mean?

© istockphoto.com/ Neustockimages

Have you ever had the experience of leaving a meeting feeling you have achieved what you wanted and got the outcomes you were hoping for, only to realise several days or weeks later that you had been misunderstood? The results or actions you thought you had agreed have not materialised and you realise that somewhere along the line communication broke down.

It is easy to surmise ‘they didn’t listen to me’ or ‘they didn’t actually want to do what I had asked them’ but sometimes we need to take a step back and think about our own communication style. Perhaps we have made certain assumptions without checking for understanding. Or maybe we have implicitly assumed that we are all thinking the same way. Our communication is only as good as the impact it achieves so we need to take at least some of the responsibility for the miscommunication. Nobody wants to patronise the people they are working with but we need to make sure our messages are transparent and explicit. Below are some tips to help you get your message across more effectively:

  • Summarise key actions at the end of your conversation or meeting
  • Check with individuals that they are comfortable with the tasks they have been assigned
  • Give people the opportunity to ask questions or clarify for themselves
  • Avoid using impersonal constructions such as ‘it would be good if someone could
  • Use ‘we’ and ‘us’ to create a sense of harmony and team cohesion

Good communication skills are fundamental for the success of any organisation. Clarifying and repeating ineffective messages wastes time and money and causes staff frustration and disengagement. Learning & Development departments are fully aware that good communication saves time and money. To this end, many companies now invest in business communication skills training courses and coaching. Popular programmes that many employees benefit from include include Influencing & Negotiating and Interpersonal Effectiveness courses.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2010

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