How do you communicate with your staff?

A friend of mine has a beautiful house outside of Geelong. It sits on an acre, has an orchard and chooks in the backyard and started off life as a church. It was while looking out at this view and drinking wine on a hot day recently, that I had a major insight into management issues.

My friend, a lawyer that specialises in Corporate Governance, was talking about the different modes that a board can communicate to management in. Paraphrasing, they were:

• Encouraging: Letting staff know you think they are doing a great job, or trying to motivate them.
• Suggesting: Letting staff know of some options that they may want to look into.
• Coordinating: Helping staff act in the way that you want them to act.
• Controlling: Making sure staff do exactly what you want.

This framework also works for senior management speaking to junior management, or junior management speaking to staff. It’s not just a board level issue, its an issue throughout business and in fact anywhere there is a hierarchy, including inside families.

The number one problem he asserted was not so much poor quality communication, but a misunderstanding of the mode of communication.

All too often you see staff members getting ticked off, as they believe they are being ridden and have no flexibility, when in reality they are just getting suggestions. Alternatively I see managers getting stressed about staff not taking direction.

A friend of mine has recently taken over a business unit of a large corporate, and in the absence of a clear, public instruction from above about the new arrangements, is now finding life difficult as his new staff members don’t actually see him as the boss. He’s just someone from head office who is loaned in a couple of hours a week to help them improve themselves.

What made it fascinating was the conversation occurred while I watched the chooks quickly sort out their “pecking order” and who was boss. No nonsense, quickly done, everybody happy.

Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded: Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club and Flinders Pacific. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Vietnam and is the sole Australian representative of the City of London for Foreign Direct Investment. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve.