How We Communicate Matters
When my husband and I were dating, his mother invited me to a family reunion. I think she knew at the time that we would get married, as he’d never brought a girl home to meet them before. I was the first! Obviously she was right, because here I am, celebrating 35 years of marriage with him!
Anyway, the family had planned for all the aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins from their very large family to gather for a 65th wedding anniversary for Dave’s grandparents. It was a pretty big deal!
I was 19 years old at the time and I remember arriving at the country club in a town I’d never been to and walking into a huge hall, seeing well over a hundred people - all family - mingling and laughing. I had never experienced anything like it.
If that wasn’t intimidating enough, I couldn’t understand a word that most of them were saying! You see, my husband is a first generation American. His parents and their families had immigrated from Russia and Ukraine. They spoke perfectly good broken English, but when they were with family, they spoke in the language they were most familiar and comfortable with, which to me sounded like gibberish. Talk about a deer in headlights!
Think back to the different jobs you’ve had in your life and how it felt each time you walked into a new environment. Not only do you have to learn where the kitchen, the bathroom, the office supplies and the conference room are, you’re learning names, titles, software, systems, and equipment and that’s just to name a few!
Then you have your first team meeting and you quickly find out that you are in a foreign land and have to quickly learn the new language!
Building strong communication skills with your team requires intentionality and time. But the return on your investment is well worth it!
According to research, good team communication has been shown to have a significant increase in productivity, employee retention, and profitability. Some statistics even show that effective communication can boost team productivity by 20-25%, generate 4.5 times higher talent retention, and result in a 21% increase in profitability. And a huge majority of workers - 90% - want to work in an organization that cultivates honest communication.
If you are willing to put the time and effort into knowing and understanding the different personalities, strengths and motivators of those you work with, you can break through the language barriers and see exponential growth, health and begin to flourish in your work relationships. Who doesn’t want that?
If you want to learn more about your communication style you can take our free Communication Code assessment.