Authentic communication determines your career altitude

Communication is the key to any successful relationship, whether it is personal or professional. Although we communicate with a large number of people daily, not all of our relationships are meaningful and positive. Let’s explore how we could make a few simple changes in our communication skills for improving our relationships and positively impacting our career trajectory.?

?

Assess your openness?

Your attitude could influence the way others perceive whether you are approachable or unapproachable and whether others could feel comfortable or uncomfortable to bring up certain topics. Managers, executives, and CXOs could become?effective leaders?by learning how to?improve workplace conditions. If you are in a hierarchically higher position than the person with whom you are conversing, then be aware of the risk of destabilizing the communication flow.?

?

Are you open to letting your direct reports fully speak what’s on their mind???

?

Do you encourage them to share their thoughts, opinions, and inputs???

?

Not everyone has the skills and courage to speak the truth, and it's up to you to encourage your team members to communicate authentically with you. By creating a genuine rapport with your team members, you will be able to elevate the bonding with them and in turn, encourage them to do the same with their coworkers.?

?

Use the power of empathetic listening?

A good leadership trait is to be empathetic in listening and gathering the input of your team members. While empathetic listening is a critical leadership skill, it does not mean that you have to agree to everything that’s said by your team members. If you are endlessly forgiving and understanding, your employees will adopt an anything-goes attitude. Of course, it would help if you don’t become obnoxiously aggressive in your verbal sparring.??

?

By?developing an authentic approach?when communicating with your team, you can boost your leadership effectiveness. It would be best to learn how to give constructive feedback from a balanced and objective standpoint.??

?

Develop radical candor?

Communicating about the reality in a situation creates an authentic work environment. Maintaining integrity and candor actually champions the importance of?wellness in the workplace.??

Be honest and sincere?when sharing your perspective about workplace issues and how to get to the heart of the matter in order to solve them. It takes a lot of courage to realize when a relationship has run its course in personal or professional settings and whether it is time for you to sever the ties.?

?

Holding others accountable?

When one of your team members makes a mistake, instead of directing blame, view it as an opportunity to ask for their truth and their perspective on what caused the mistake to happen. Whereas, if the person making the mistake uses?evasive language to frame the mistake as an accident, then you must drive the importance of accountability. It is the key ingredient for improvement or progress from a shortcoming or failure. Taking responsibility in the workplace is vital for?performance improvement. Affirm to your coworkers that?it is all right to ‘fail fast & fail small’ as long as they learn from the mistake/ shortcoming and strive not to repeat it.?