What do you do if your communication skills are hindering your success in Information Systems?

1 Identify your communication style

One of the first steps to improve your communication skills is to understand your own communication style and preferences. How do you communicate your ideas, feedback, and expectations? How do you listen, ask questions, and respond to others? How do you handle conflict, criticism, and ambiguity? There are various tools and assessments that can help you identify your communication style, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the DiSC model, or the Communication Style Inventory. By knowing your communication style, you can recognize your strengths and weaknesses, and adapt your approach to different situations and audiences.

3 Be clear and concise

One of the common communication problems that IS professionals face is being too vague or too verbose. Vagueness can lead to misunderstandings, confusion, and errors, while verbosity can cause boredom, frustration, and loss of attention. To avoid these pitfalls, you need to be clear and concise in your communication. This means using simple, precise, and relevant words, avoiding jargon, acronyms, and technical terms that your audience may not understand, and providing enough details and examples to support your points. You also need to structure your communication logically, using headings, bullet points, and transitions to organize your ideas and highlight the main points.

4 Seek and provide feedback

Feedback is essential for any IS project or system, as it helps to ensure quality, accuracy, functionality, and user satisfaction. However, feedback can also be challenging to give and receive, as it may involve criticism, disagreement, or conflict. To handle feedback effectively, you need to be open-minded, respectful, and constructive. When seeking feedback, you need to ask specific, relevant, and actionable questions, listen actively and attentively, and thank the feedback giver for their input. When providing feedback, you need to focus on the facts and the goals, not the person or the emotions, use positive and negative feedback appropriately, and offer suggestions and solutions.

5 Collaborate and cooperate

IS projects and systems often require collaboration and cooperation among different teams, departments, or organizations. To collaborate and cooperate successfully, you need to communicate with respect, trust, and professionalism. You need to share information, ideas, and resources, and acknowledge the contributions and expertise of others. You also need to communicate your expectations, roles, and responsibilities clearly, and align them with the project or system objectives and requirements. Moreover, you need to communicate your progress, challenges, and achievements regularly, and report any issues or problems promptly.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?