Your team is watching you all the time. They observe you because you have power over them – in the same way that farmers watch the sky, looking for clues about the weather.
How is the company doing? It shows on your face when you walk in the door. You are communicating verbally and non-verbally all day long, whether you're aware of it or not!
But watching goes both ways. Right now, in 2021, watching your team may be the most important thing you can do. How is everyone feeling? Taking in new information about the year ahead? Coping with challenges? Embracing hopes?
You can and should observe your employees when you
communicate with them. This is the best way to see how your message is being received. Just looking around the Zoom (or the room!) after you drop your new strategy on your senior team will tell you what you need to know. Are they shifting nervously in their chairs? Suddenly super interested in their phones? Finding any way to avoid eye contact with you? That's a bad sign. Are their eyes bright with enthusiasm, are they sitting straighter in their chairs, leaning forward to nod assent? Asking lots of questions? Watch. Learn. Adjust.
When you're presenting to the larger team, watch them the same way you'd watch a reporter in an interview – are they fidgeting? Looking confused or panicked? Looking right at you and drinking in every word? Probably all of the above if it's a typical group.
Keep watching as you encourage Q&A.
Rolling out your 2021 strategy across the company? Ask your team leads to keep watching as they have their own meetings with their teams about the new strategy. At every level of your organization, keep communicating, keep converting, keep watching, keep adjusting.
Great communicators embrace being both the watcher and the watched!
“This was really useful to me,” said a happy media training participant.
If you’d like great results, schedule a conversation with me! It’s easy! Reach me at inquiries@poseycorp.com.
Your business must scale, and you must scale with it. Great communicators create the change they want to see in the world. poseycorp helps innovators build powerful messages and the skill to deliver them so they can break through the noise and be heard! Lisa Poulson, poseycorp’s principal, is expert at helping innovators scale by becoming great communicators.
Do you wish everyone around you had great communication skills? Share this link with them so they can learn too!
Yeah, this book has nothing to do with communications advice, but this gorgeously observed novel about baseball is a stunner. You can observe a lot just by watching.
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