Your Guide to Effective Communication

It's in the everyday communication moments that make or break organizational teams...It’s in these moments where people choose to stay or quit or… to take your advice or not… on a multitude of decisions that we each make every day.

It’s also my belief and my experience that tells me how mastering your leadership and communication skills is the BEST way to develop yourself as a professional; enabling you to increase the contributions you are able to make in your career, your community and with your key relationships.

In the work I do with my clients every day, whether that is one-on-one coaching with a CEO or a group training communication class, I see first hand just how much the majority of people struggle with communication, which negatively impacts their overall leadership. And most of this really comes down to a lack of preparedness.

Most research says that we spend about 70-80% of our day communicating, when the majority of leaders aren’t at all comfortable with firing someone, or how to give someone negative feedback, for example. So many professionals aren’t sure of how to even kick off a meeting or a conference call. In most cases, employees are promoted due to experience and tenure, but lack the proper people and leadership skills necessary to develop and coach others. This is a significant challenge facing companies today, because:  

If you’re not a good listener – how can you coach a direct report effectively? You can’t.

If you don’t have presence - the ability to command people’s attention– how can you get people to listen to you or to create influence?   You won’t.

If leaders aren’t very good at de-escalating conflict, then employees won’t stay. 

When we don’t get these key communication moments right, we’re creating misaligned leaders and employees.disengagement, lower morale in the culture, more turnover and less retention...everything that we want to protect against so that we can create loyalty within our workplace AND with our customers.

So much of my work over the years has been focused on what I call…’conversation prep’ moments. My clients come to me with a situation... maybe they need to address an underperforming employee, or follow up on a communication moment that they got wrong. Or, they need to get to the bottom of something and they come to me for help in thinking through and planning out how that conversation should go to have the best possible outcome. The process that I walk each of them through really boils down to the following steps:

LAPD + R

1. Listen (Begin, middle and End!)
2. Assess the situation
3. Prepare for the next interaction
4. Deliver – the manner in which the message is sent
5. Receive the feedback and evaluate our outcomes

This model is what allows leaders to RESPOND, rather than REACT. And it's this content that is transforming the culture for all of my clients.

It's my mission to help and positively impact as many leaders and employees as I can with these critical leadership skills so that teams thrive, companies grow and communities and families benefit.  My team and I are accepting consultations now to explore training engagements beginning this September. To book yours, text "consult" to 330-301-6611, or send an email to [email protected] with "consult" in the subject line and we will get you on the schedule.

Here's to the power of your potential!

www.stevenscoaching.com