Leadership: Communication

Hypocrisy alert! One of the things that my team is constantly telling me to work on is communication, so I feel hypocritical blogging about communication but I think good leaders communicate so here it goes:

Here is why communication matters:

Communication says that you matter. If I forget to tell you the things I needed to tell you or should have told you this communicates something. It communicates that you are not important enough for me to tell you what I need to tell you.

Communication lets everyone know where the team is at. If I very rarely communicate I run the risk of people getting off mission or just plain thinking that what they are doing does not matter to the rest of the team. I try to communicate once every two weeks to every volunteer that what they do is Important and how grateful Resolved as a church is for them helping out. I also remind them of where their contribution fits in at Resolved.

Communication shows I am willing to say what needs to be said. A person whom communicates is far more likely to have the hard conversation that no one likes having but we all know needs to happen

Communication allows the leader to hear how their people are going. If I do not talk with my people How can I be their leader/pastor? So I need to be communicating with them

Things I am trying to do to communicate more effectively:

Replying to every text, voice message, email, facemail, twitter message even if it is just replying with “Cool” or “I got it” or “Paul Liao is not part of the Christian Music scene he is the Christian Music scene!”

Writing a list at the start of the day of people I need to communicate with for that day and designating the best form of communication (email, phone call, face to face meeting, etc.) to communicate what needs to be communicated and then communicating!

Every phone call or meeting I have I write out what I want to say on piece of paper and if possible have it in front of me when I am having the phone conversation or the meeting. This is so that I do not miss out on anything I wanted to say or ask. Now I do not do this in pastoral situations where a person needs to chat. But in those situations I do write down what I want to talk about before hand (if there is anything) just so it stays in my head. I also write down anything I need to do after the meeting is done.

I pray before and after ever significant bit of communication. I tend to screw things up so I always ask for Gods help in leading me to say the right things especially when difficult things need to be said or talked about.

Have you got any tips for me on how to communicate better?