Many of us grew up with the age-old adage of “don’t judge a book by its cover.” We were taught to see past the surface level and look for beauty beyond skin deep. However, our initial judgments often ignore pleasantries when evaluating first impressions. It is part of why dress codes are important in the corporate world. Effective, honest, clear workplace communication helps managers better understand employees and look beyond initial perceptions.
It takes less time to gauge others by how they look than by what they can contribute, but we all know looks can be deceiving. In the workplace, we need to remember that critical evaluation beyond appearances is more than just an issue of manners; it is vital to company success. We might judge others on perceptions but ultimately reality brings results.
The differences between perception and reality can lead to problems of employee efficiency. More efficient employees might find themselves wasting time just to log the same number of hours as their colleagues. What people notice drives us more than realistically evaluating what we have accomplished.
It appears that hours-based productivity as a remnant of the industrial age is ineffective in motivating modern professionals. Playing the game of watching the clock to judge when it is time to quit working conflicts with the specific demands of each task or project. Long meetings are an example of when more is actually less. After too long, attention spans begin to waiver and a meeting can dwindle into unproductivity. It is best to use agendas and assign individual tasks with specific deadlines. It is also good to keep meetings as short as possible to keep everyone engaged.
Taking a more regimented approach to structuring meetings requires increased communication. Leaders have to plan ahead, communicate with employees before the meeting, and follow up with individuals after the meeting. Following this sort of communication process will help keep perceptions in check with reality.
Sometimes efficiency comes from looking for big ideas, not the intricate details such as reading long articles and reports. Communicate to your employees the purpose behind what you send them to read. Employees should also ask questions about materials and determine their relevancy.
When you want to judge an employee’s workplace efficiency, look for objective measures of success. These can help managers move beyond their perceptions. Many managers prefer certain employees simply because they worked long hours, but they often had little to show for all of their time spent at the office. Workplace communication should occur on multiple levels, including knowing how to best manage each employee. Managers need to recognize potential and help employees to fulfill that potential through support, encouragement, coaching, and training.
Even if you choose to pursue results over hours, you still run the risk of perception overruling the reality of your efficiency as an employee. Communication drives employee performance. Managers and employees should work together to define efficiency by ranking tasks and taking objective measures to determine the particular priorities of their projects. Efficiency is not the same as being quick. An efficient employee may still have to work overtime on some projects.
Assessments can help take some of the guesswork out of communicating with employees. The projects employees produce should be the real test of their effectiveness. Workplace communication takes more effort than relying on only our perceptions. We run the risk of destroying employee efficiency if we forget the lessons we learned as children to look beyond the surface.
Effective and successful managers are excellent communicators because they have learned what motivates their team members, what concerns them, what particular skills they have, what areas where improvement could be made and are then able to mentor employees or offer them appropriate training opportunities to enhance the skills they have and gain new ones. They have learned this because they are excellent active listeners, accountable for what they do and encourage employees to ask questions and contribute ideas that will make projects more efficient and everyone more productive. When they manage in this way their team will be better able to complete projects on time in an efficient and creative manner and all common goals can be achieved as well. In addition, modelling this sort of behaviour encourages the rest of the team to be honest and clear in their communication with each other and that makes teamwork easier and high performance will be more likely.
Nice job Sandy. Communication is most effective when a connection is made between the parties. This requires deep listening, empathy and trust.