Are You Communicating with Intention?

Effective Communication

Effective Communication is the key to a high performing team and company. Being intentional with your communication as a business owner and leader is critical to your success. Sure, you can find businesses with positive net income without regards to being intentional with their communication and culture, however they have a host of issues they deal with. Those businesses aren't usually enjoyable and their culture is lacking deep trust. They sure don't provide the freedom from chaos and overwhelm we desire. 

COMMUNICATION PROCESS 

This is the communication process outlined in the episode. Look at the flow of this process. It starts on the left side with the speaker having a thought which is encoded. The message then travels through the environment to the listener. The listener then has to decode it and interpret it through their filters into their thoughts. The process continues through the feedback loop and around it goes. 

This process happens so effortlessly and so quickly. We don't give it the attention we should at times. As business owners and leaders, we must slow down and be intentional about how we are facilitating this process in our daily communication habits. Yes, we get into habits and even ruts in how we communicate. We need to focus on them so we can develop good habits. 

Intentional Communication

We need to communicate intentionally in different ways and styles depending on to whom we are trying to convey a message. The environment, the mood , the subject matter and many other variables, also have an impact on the process. We need to be aware of all of these factors and how they may enhance or derail our intended message. 

Remember the three key parts of communication from the episode?

• Words 
• Tonality
• Body Language

The words we use are important, however they are only 7% of the message. For example, as you are reading this, you are mostly getting factual information. You do not know my mood nor can you see my body language. If I were speaking to you via phone you would hear my tonality and understand my mood better. That makes up 38% of the message. So what does that say about body language? It makes up 55% of our communication. Can you see how important face to face meetings are? We convey the majority of our message in our non-verbal communication. That is important to remember. 

If you have an important message to convey, it stands to reason that it should be done face to face, if at all possible. It is our responsibility as an owner and leader to respect others by giving them the best delivery of the message as possible. It's also wise, because we have a greater chance of being understood.

Remember, this also applies to receiving messages. We owe it to the person communicating with us to be an engaged listener by looking at them and providing feedback, so we can fully receive their message. To do so, we need to receive each portion of the message; the words, tone and non-verbal signals. 

Challenge

Let's challenge each other to be the best communicators possible. Let's focus this week on being intentional in delivering our messages and engaged in our listening. Slow things down a bit in your busyness to place the emphasis on your communication process that it deserves. It will benefit you, your team and ultimately the results of your business. You will also begin to build more trust in your organization. 

Enjoy the Journey!