Thursday, August 17, 2006

Do You Communicate?

Communication is more than just speaking and expressing your views. Proper communication aims at eliciting a response from the audience. Communications is a complicated subject in the marketing context. Yet, in the daily work life, communication has gained far prominence. Communication is different from mere interactions. You have interactions with different key people- customers, superiors, peers, and subordinates. It is necessary to formulate strategies to communicate effectively to each of these key groups. Same rules cannot be applied to all the key persons.

Customers
Communication with customers is the most daunting task. Keeping aside the communication done in the form of advertising and marketing, there are many more situations where people need to continuously communicate with customers. Customer service representatives are trained with the procedures on how to deal with the various types of customers. Not all customers are polite and happy. You cannot take for granted a polite customer who might turn hostile if he is not satisfied with your reception. The most important attribute while communicating with customers is to listen. Listening is an important skill that has to be greatly developed while speaking to customers. You need to be empathetic with the customers as the situation demands and speak in the language of the customer while trying to either elicit a response from him or solving his problem. Every company has its own culture. As a representative of the company, you need to reflect the culture of the company while speaking in the language of the customer. Enormous literature is available to suggest how to deal with different types of customers.

Superiors
Handling superiors sometimes seems to be difficult than handling customers. There are many toxic bosses who know very little about the work and hate to listen to your advice. There is a polite way in which you can put across your point to your manager or boss. However, the rapport has to be established from the beginning. Speak less with your boss and speak with confidence. Learn not to hurt your manager's ego as you suggest alternative. Put it effectively and let it seem to the boss that it is his own idea. In this way, you can establish a receptive relation with your boss. Your boss would love to discuss problems with you and come up with solutions every time a problem occurs. Your communication with the boss influences your relationship with the boss. Avoid saying the word - No - to your boss and learn to speak positively even if you are not willing to accept his orders. Explain issues in such a way that the boss is convinced that you are very interested to carry out a particular task but resources do not permit to. Similarly, if you are ready to take responsibility for your boss's mistakes, you are advantage. However, remember the blurring line that you should not cross. It is again a problem if your boss takes all the credit and dumps failures on you.

Peers and Subordinates
Communicating with peers and subordinates is very important as it reflects your ability to lead the team in the future. Let your words show support and your eagerness to help your colleagues always. Be polite and try to address each and every person in your team. If you are comfortably acquainted with all your team members, you are always at an advantage. Be the first one to communicate good messages and congratulate every tem mate for your success. Express the fact that your success would not have been possible without their cooperation. The same rules apply for communicating with subordinates. Learn to gage the personality of the subordinates and apply different styles of leadership to get the work done. Focus on showing equal respect to all the colleagues through your words.

Learn to develop a unique communication style that stays in sync with your amicable personality to make your day cheerful and better relationships with all the stakeholders.

Love Your Job

Follow your dreams - this is easier said than done. Most people cannot do the work that they want to do. However, they hardly realize the fact that they lose on both ends. Neither are they able to do something that their heart is at nor are they happy in what they are doing. If you are not happy with your current job, it can lead to job dissatisfaction and ultimately to depression and distress. There are different approaches that can be followed to add spice and color to the otherwise monotonous life.

1. Firstly, analyze your job and your personality and attitude. If your personality is not in tune with the job or its requirements, it is better to consider changing your career path. Diversions in career paths used to be taboo once, but are widely accepted now and people like to taste different waters in their career graph. However, changing your career path is not the only solution.

2. Avoid looking at your job as a complicated mess and your company as a mere commercial complex made of people who work only for money. Man is a social animal and hence requires interaction with people. Some interactions often develop into relationships. It is this human factor that you can use to your advantage. Build relationships with similar minded people in your organization. Increasing your network of contacts can help you in many ways. Their suggestions can make your job easy or the associations can make team work more interesting. Some friends might even help you with new contacts to change your career path. Research points out the fact that healthy relationships at work increase the motivation to work by some degrees.

3. Identify the parts of your job that you really like to do. Break your job into smaller tasks and set challenges for yourself or enter into small competition with your co-workers to add spice to your job. Fill your work life with adventure so that you mind is concentrated most of the day and you can add more value to the existing job. This assures enhanced competence and increased recognition in return.

4. Supplement your work life with your favorite pastimes. Fill your day with activities that really ignite your passions and such activities can balance the stress levels and regain your competence at work. Some people try to learn new areas or technologies along with their job to increase their chances of getting promoted. This helps regain lost control as you try to prove yourself in your current job as well as showcase the fact that you are well-geared to assume the next responsibility.

5. Experts suggest taking frequent breaks from work as a viable alternative when you begin to hate your work. Plan your vacations months in advance and prepare everything in place so that there is no room for work during your vacation time. Let your vacation remain free from the clutches of work and spend quality time with your family members. This helps rejuvenate your energies and you might start loving your job as soon as you come back from the vacation.

It is a cycle of de-motivation if you loathe your daily schedule. Your performance tends to deteriorate and you get bad marks in your appraisal. This influences the impression in the mind of the superior. If your superior begins to reprimand you for declining performance you will hate your job more and the cycle continues. You need to break the chain in the initial stage itself and start loving your job. Be prepared for the worst and put in the best of your efforts in your job and you are assured of scaling new heights.