Communicating with Your Employees

Do you ever feel like your employees don t listen to you? Do you need to ask for a report more than once? Do you spend a lot of time preparing for a difficult conversation or a reprimand and then afterward regret what you said or how you said it? If so, you re not alone. Communication is a skill, but our training and education often don t prepare us adequately for the communicative challenges we face as managers and supervisors. If we re trained at all, we re usually trained to give presentations, but not how to field the questions afterward; much less how to reprimand or dismiss someone so that the outcome is as positive an experience as possible.

Some of the most well known managers and CEOs do not communicate effectively with their staff. Why is this? Communicating effectively in the employee-employer relationship is a specific skill with specific know-how. It takes a lot of practice and usually some trial and error. In addition, this is one skill that won t become obsolete as technology advances. There is no software (yet available) that will predict questions or complaints from staff, or have the exact set of statements, emotional manifestations, and intention necessary to communicate during an employee s performance evaluation, and will not predict or be able to manage the range of responses humans will make to that evaluation.

When we learn about communication, we practice it under optimal conditions, for the most part. But, there are a multitude of suboptimal conditions for the communicator, for the listener, and that are present in the environment, which must be dealt with in natural employee-supervisor relations. In the following pages, you will find out more details about how to avoid obstacles and how to optimize communicative situations with your staff.