Staying Ahead of the Curve-Communicate

Our guest blogger is Pam Waits. Pam is an HR executive who is passionate about her work. She's very good at it! Pam is expanding her reach through writing and as you'll discover she's an excellent writer as well. Enjoy!

I love to read. Normally I read business books or fiction. But recently I took a detour and read Stan Romanek’s book entitled Messages: The World's Most Documented Extraterrestrial Contact Story.

In this book, Stan recounts his encounters of alien sightings, abductions, implants, and conspiracies. Understandably, Stan expresses fear over who the aliens are, what they want, and why they targeted him. There is no clear communication so he doesn’t understand what’s going on, let alone the rationale for what he is experiencing.

As I was reading his book, I thought that Stan’s story is very similar to many employees in today’s workplace:

· How many times have you felt that you didn’t know what was really going on?

· That you didn’t trust the messages that were being conveyed or the people who were communicating them?

· Have you ever learned important information about your company through the news or a customer and felt the company should have told you directly?

· You may not have personally experienced the feeling that you were being targeted, but I bet you know someone who has felt that way.

I doubt very many companies would take pride in comparing their workforce to Stan Romanek’s alien encounters.

So what can companies do to make sure employees don’t have a Stan Romanek encounter? Good communication! Sounds easy enough but is it? No! If it was easy, we wouldn’t talk about it so much.

I learned something early in my career that definitely helped me with communication and maybe it will help you, too. One of my former bosses asked a question in every staff meeting – “what rumors are you hearing?” The first few times he asked the question, no one was prepared. But we were a bright group and quickly started going out and talking to employees to see what was going on so we could report it to our boss. When the rumors were serious or pervasive enough, we would take action to address them. The simpler ones would be corrected on the spot – if they weren’t true. This practice helped us stay ahead of the curve.

If Stan had access to good information, he wouldn’t have been afraid, distrustful or suspicious and his book would likely have had a very different message. The same holds true for employees.

· Listen to your employees,

· Talk to them,

· Communicate information that you can, and

· Be honest with the information that you share.

It’s very easy to identify the need for good communication, but it’s not always easy to accomplish. Because we don’t listen as well as we should, important messages may have to be repeated.

Because we don’t listen as well as we should, important messages may have to be repeated. (Made you pay attention, didn’t it?)

With that in mind, I close with a quote from Robert McCloskey, an author and illustrator of children’s books:

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”