The quality of your communication is the response you get

Last Monday our new nanny sent me a text message to say she wouldn’t be coming in on her first day in her new job…Communication!

Last Monday our new nanny sent me a text message to say she wouldn’t be coming in on her first day in her new job. I started off feeling understanding of her personal circumstances and as the days and week rolled along I became increasingly frustrated at the lack of personal contact. All communication from her was via text, and my frustration grew with each passing day.

I started to wonder, is this a Gen Y thing! This started to dominate my thinking and conversations. I gathered stories from friends and clients of Gen Y’s missing in action from their workplace and communicating by text. As you can guess, none of this was helping my situation. I was getting more and more annoyed by the minute.

It got me thinking about expectations and how not communicating our expectations almost always leads to hell. In my personal and professional life past and present the times I get into most trouble is when I don’t communicate clearly.

What responses are you getting, and is it the response you want? If not, change the way you communicate (I know it’s much easier to blame everyone else for not getting us!)

A good place to start is with agreements. In our business relationships what agreements do we need to make to ensure that our expectations are clearly communicated and agreed on?

Designing how we work together with our teams, clients and nannies is vital in setting the foundation for our relationships both professionally and personally. What are the conditions that need to be in place for you to work effectively with your team?

Below are some questions to help you with designing your relationships.

What needs to be at the heart of our relationship for it to be effective?

What are the obstacles or potential obstacles?

What might I do that would really p… you off?

What are the logistics that we need to agree on?

What are our commitments to each other and our work?

What is our primary focus?

What are our values? Where do they align?

How will we reward and celebrate our successes?

How do we allocate work and responsibilities?

How do we make requests with each other?

How do I communicate when you haven’t done what you said you would?

Once these agreements are set, type them up and sign them, and most importantly honour your agreements. For anyone thinking they haven’t got time to do this, you haven’t got time not to!

And remember now may be a good time to also redesign existing relationships in your business.

Enjoy

Pollyanna