Once we’ve come to terms with just how high the cost of poor communication can be and how any poor communication skills in our organizations add fuel to other fires that are killing our profitability, we have plenty of reason to address the lack of communication between our managers and employees. Let’s be honest, though: if doing it were as simple as saying it, would there be any need to discuss it here?

We’ve already worked through many of the effects of poor communication in the workplace, so I won’t hash them all out again now. What I will do, though, is suggest that I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone who wanted to communicate ineffectively with their team—or anyone else for that matter. All too often, I believe it simply boils down to not having the right tools for the job (or even knowing those tools exist)!

Most everyone I know is familiar with some variation of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Truthfully, our society would have much less crap going on if we all did a better job of following it. But while the Golden Rule may solve many of the issues we see in the headlines on any given day, breaking it may be just what we need to address the profitability killer of poor communication.

One evening several years ago, I received a text message from my son asking, “How do I get people to do what I tell them to do?” He was working second shift in a manufacturing facility at the time, and it was his first evening filling in as a backup lead for the assembly line he had been part of for a couple of years. I answered, “Call me tomorrow morning, because that’s not something I can answer in a text.”

When he called the following morning, the first thing I needed to know to have any hope of providing him with solid feedback was why he was asking: did he have team members who weren’t doing what they were required to do, or did he believe they were capable of accomplishing more? He was quick to explain that the line team was great! He said they were already the most productive on the shift, but he felt like they could do even better, and he wondered how he could bring that out in them.

As a dad, I still get excited all these years later when I think back to that conversation. The fact that Matt, in his early twenties at the time, saw more potential in his team and wanted to learn how he could bring it out in them was something I just haven’t seen very often. But getting the results he was hoping for from “having them do what he told them to” wouldn’t be as simple as making a blanket statement to them all at the beginning of the shift. Only a few of them would have responded positively to him if he had communicated with them how he wanted to be communicated with… Like me, Matt is pretty direct and to the point. He thrives on being challenged and will go out of his way to accomplish a task, especially if someone doesn’t think he can!

Matt could have taken that approach, but I’m positive the results wouldn’t have been anything close to what he hoped for. Instead, we discussed how he could break the Golden Rule with each team member and do unto them as they would want rather than how he would want. Because I knew each of the folks working with him, I was able to give him specific insight that helped him achieve the goal in his initial text message. I was also able to provide him with a simple approach for doing the same thing with anyone else moving forward. He was excited to put it into practice; it was just a matter of understanding how.

For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!