To effectively communicate I occasionally have conversations with our team leaders about two critical components of teamwork – communication and structure. Recently, I had the opportunity to see effective communication at work…
One evening our office sent out a carefully drafted email to several thousand prospective students. Within hours, students began responding to the email resulting in three straight days of record applications. I was reminded of several principles of communication that are critically important to any organization seeking to accomplish its mission and vision…
The Power of Communication
- Communicate regularly. If you are consistently providing the marketplace valuable information, they’ll want to hear from you.
- Communicate using multiple venues. Consider email, Twitter, Facebook, the web, phone calls, printed matter, mailing, etc. Some people relate better to electronic communication while others appreciate face-to-face interaction or phone calls.
- Always have a call to action. Some believe that communication without a call to action is useless. Are you simply adding to the noise or is your message bold and compelling?
If you want to accomplish your mission, lead your team to communicate effectively. It works.
Question: What’s one tip that you would add to this list? Share in the comments.
Tom Dixon says
I think the multiple venue thing is getting harder and harder – first Facebook, then Twitter, now Google + seems to really be gaining steam…and now snail mails is about 90% junk, so a lot of that gets ignored where in the past it wasn’t.
Michael Nichols says
I agree Tom. It’s becoming more and more important that we are aware of and ahead of these trends. Thanks for connecting, my friend. Happy New Year!
Michael Nichols says
So true, David – and training key spokespersons is an important part of message consistency. Thanks for sharing!