Expert Tips on How to Improve Communication Skills
97% of workers believe communication impacts tasks daily. But 63% of millennials feel their employers are not helping them develop better habits and soft skills, including those involving communication.
Furthermore, 86% of employees and executives cite the lack of effective collaboration and communication as the main causes for workplace failures.
However, the good news is studies have concluded good communication skills can boost productivity by 25%.
The takeaway?
Now is an ideal time to engage your employees in communication soft skills training to help them master the habits of highly effective team members. This is especially true for employees who have performance issues and the opposite, employees being given more responsibility.
Effective communication is not something most people have at birth. Instead, it's something leaders must encourage their people to engage, learn, and master.
Too many leaders assume their people have great communication skills. And they believe the way they communicate is wonderful, when often it is not.
Failing to devote time and resources to helping your teams improve communication skills hurts morale, productivity, your company culture, and your bottom line.
Do not let this happen to your company. Instead, read on to learn how to facilitate better communication in your workplace. As well as some tips on how to be a better communicator yourself.
Talk About the Value of Good Communication
The first step you can take to improve professional communication skills is to talk about it with your teams.
Opening a dialogue about the importance of effective communication brings the topic front of mind. It also stimulates team members to start evaluating communication in the workplace and identifying ways to improve it.
Employees might feel the negative effects of poor workplace communication. However, this doesn't mean they are actively trying to take steps to improve it. Too often, employees only complain about how others communicate poorly, and fail to realize their communication soft skills need work too.
When your leaders start the conversation, it gets everyone thinking.
This also requires leaders to be more self-aware of their communication style. Leaders set the standard through their behaviors, not their words. Leaders must be intentional role models for proactive, respectful communication.
Everyone benefits from learning how to improve communication soft skills and habits. This is especially true for people in higher positions. In fact, research on active listening reveals that higher-level managers have significantly worse listening skills than lower and mid-level managers.
This should be a major concern.
Invite Suggestions and Critiques
Besides bringing up the topic, you can also invite suggestions and critiques. This can stimulate a dialogue around the topic and enhance collaboration about how to improve communication skills.
Done correctly collaboration can also flip the script from finger-pointing to an open, safe, respectful discussion.
Even if you feel your communication skills are “fine,” take time to assess, and lead your team in communication skill training. A leader who actively leads the training often learns more than the participants by preparing for the training sessions and facilitating the discussions. Often these leaders become more self-aware of their good or bad communication habits.
This is important because as a leader, you are a role model. Employees develop their communication standards based on their leader’s example.
If employees feel communication from management is poor, inviting them to voice critiques can be a great starting point. The employees experiencing poor communication might also have some valuable suggestions for improvement.
Raise Awareness Around the Importance of Active Listening
Speaking of listening skills, this is an important area to increase awareness, especially in the areas of deep listening and active listening.
Active listening is one of the most imperative soft skills related to communication. No matter how well someone is communicating, if the other person is not listening, the interaction is not very effective.
Unfortunately, most of us are not great listeners.
We spend roughly 45% of our time during communication listening. However, the majority of people struggle to retain focus while listening. Research shows that most adults only have an efficiency rate of 25% when listening. This means we miss 75 percent of what we hear.
This is a double-edged blade. First, ineffective listening means less information is being exchanged. This often leads to mistakes and misunderstandings.
Second, not listening to what someone says can trigger conflict. Most people can sense non-verbally whether the other person is listening to them.
If they feel this isn't happening, it can make the speaker feel unheard, not valued, and disrespected.
On the other hand, active listening can transform interactions. It can make them more effective, stimulating, meaningful, and collaborative. Great active listeners help people bond more on a team and enable groups to avoid more mistakes.
Discuss the topic of active listening from an inclusive angle. Being inclusive rather than blaming an individual or group is a common struggle. Instead of calling people out, try discussing communication weaknesses from the perspective of "we're all in this together, and how can we leverage better listening skills to achieve more?"
Also, build on your people’s strongest, most positive communication habits. Do not just focus on the weaknesses. Take a balanced approach.
Talk About the Value of Constructive Confrontation
Another vital soft skill for effective communication is constructive confrontation.
Unfortunately, confrontation has a largely negative connotation. However, being able to constructively confront others is important in the workplace.
Constructive confrontation could be as simple as feeling comfortable saying "no." It also could be approaching someone about a thorny issue at work to consider solutions that are better for all parties.
The first priority of constructive confrontation is to retain or improve the relationship.
The second priority is to solve the communication problem. This takes intentionality, wisdom, respect, empathy, openness, and honesty.
Creating an environment where people can safely experience constructive confrontation helps team members find their voice. It also enhances collaboration around developing improved communication skills.
Facilitate Soft Skill Development for Your Teams
You can, and should, take steps on your own to open conversations on how to improve communication skills. However, you can also implement structured training on soft skills.
You probably lack the time or knowledge to train employees from the ground up on the best communication habits in the workplace.
Training programs from third party companies can provide ongoing education for your employees on various soft skills. This takes some of the work off your shoulders. It also provides a structured learning model.
Here at Habitly, all of our soft skill courses include training on strengthening communication skills that improve relationships and increase productivity.
Our process is designed to engage employees in interesting trainings to constantly develop and master communication habits that improve relationships, eliminate mistakes, and make work easier.
Completing quality training like this gets everyone on the same page. It also strengthens everyone’s positive communication habits while inspiring them to be more intentional in their communications.
There is a lot you can do in-house to reinforce the communication soft skill standards which are consistent with your company culture. However, established training like Habitly that has been developed by experts and refined for over 15 years takes your teams to the next level.
Use Team Building Activities
Team building activities can be a great way to enable teams to break the ice and build comradery. It also gives them an opportunity to practice the communication habits they have chosen to master from their training.
Have teams work together in a fun, informal environment. This takes the pressure off. It also fosters interpersonal relationships and familiarity. Both of which are important for effective communication and collaboration.
Support Personal Development
Most concepts around good communication in the workplace are pretty simple to understand. However, personal limitations can prevent us from practicing it.
For instance, it's easy to understand that constructive confrontation is valuable. Otherwise, people easily slip into patterns of avoiding conflict or participating in hostile confrontation.
In many cases, learning how to be a better communicator requires deeper self-work.
For instance, if someone has mild anger issues, personal development can help them practice constructive rather than negative confrontation.
Alternatively, maybe a team member has been verbally, emotionally, or physically abused. This may convince them to instinctively avoid confrontation.
Or they may avoid confrontation simply because they are introverted or less aggressive. Never judge someone negatively or make assumptions about their life experience based on their tendency to avoid confrontation. Great communicators avoid assumptions, based on what other say and how they behave.
Personal development might empower some to voice their concerns in more productive ways, including something as simple as saying, “no.” They can learn how to communicate their key points and supporting data, even to the point of comfortably disagreeing.
Personal development is, well, personal. However, there are quick, simple ways for companies to support employee personal development.
To start, evaluate your company culture. Identify where it supports self-development and connect those values or objectives to your communication soft skill training goals. You can also do things like:
Allow your people 1-4 hours weekly to use a training service, like Habitly. The service tracks the courses they complete, tests their knowledge, and rewards them with points to recognize their growth.
Start a reading club on personal growth.
Start a Slack or other app group for discussions on personal growth.
Provide mentoring programs.
Encourage openness around mental health struggles.
These are just a few of the things you can implement to support personal growth in your organization. Brainstorm your own ideas.
Foster a Positive Mindset
Recent research shows happy employees can be up to 12% more productive. We think the productivity gain of gratitude can be even higher. We guarantee a positive work environment fuels more open communication.
Picture this: You walk into the office and Jim gives you a high five and asks you how it's going. Later, you and Jim are due to work on a project together. Throughout the morning you are shooting across messages on Teams, brainstorming ideas.
Alternatively, imagine if you walked in that morning and Jim simply grunted. Or ignored you completely. Would you feel inspired to hit him up on MS Teams with an idea?
The is a very simple example of how a positive work culture can affect communication. However, it shows one of the values when your people develop positive communication habits.
Employees typically take their cues from the top down. So do not expect team members to foster a positive workplace attitude if your leaders and overall company culture lacks the habits you want your employees to develop.
Keep the Conversation Around Communication Going
Last but not least, keep the conversation around positive, effective communication going. You can do this through:
Friendly emails containing communication tips.
Recognizing someone who demonstrated great communication skills.
Asking people to share any breakthroughs they have had in communication.
Asking team members to make suggestions for streamlining and improving communication methods/channels/etc.
Offering refresher courses.
Organizing communication-related games - they are fun but reinforce the communication soft skills you want your people to master as habits.
This is by no means a comprehensive list. Get creative, and keep your team focused on great communication.
Improve Communication With Habitly
Let’s return to our initial four points about communication in the workplace:
#1 - 97% of workers believe communication impacts daily tasks.
#2 - 63% of millennials feel their employers are not helping them develop better habits and soft skills, including those involving communication.
#3 - Poor communication is THE #1 REASON employees state work is not delivered on time.
#4 - Studies have concluded good communication skills can boost productivity by 20-25%.
Training, reinforcement, and recognition are the most powerful ways to improve communication soft skills.
The first step to establishing more positive, professional communication standards in your organization is to subscribe to cost effective soft skills training that build the best habits in your people.
Habitly is the only soft skills development platform that offers you animated, humorous episodes that are typically 4-minutes or less; full-courses with individual lessons, exams, and points for completion; and importantly, Habit Builders. The Habit Builders are guides, links, sample documents, and more to help you more easily implement what you learn on Habitly.
Consider our pricing to get the ball rolling.
