How To Communicate Like A Boss
There are a million and more ways to lead a team – but the one thing every great boss has in common is this: good communication.
Good communicators can relay their thoughts, opinions, ideas and instructions with confidence, and without the fear of any problems. Their verbal power is clear from the simple fact that their employees can easily listen to them, and obey with little to no rebuttal.
So how do you communicate like a boss? We’ve compiled some major points for you:
Listen Actively
Before you can be good at communicating, you need to be even better at listening.
Be an active listener in your work-place. Most of the times, simply being aware and attentive helps you notice everything being revealed to you; not only will you be able to better understand your employees’ problems, but will also have a better gauge of your workplace’s dynamic. This way, your approach of problem-solving and relaying orders will become a lot more efficient and easy. Furthermore, you’ll be able to satisfy your employees’ needs better.
Know What To Speak – And When
As a boss, you have to do a lot more than just pitch ideas and orders; you need to give a direction. For that, you need to be able to analyse the dynamic of your team, and know how to relay your ideas for optimum impact.
In order to improve your communication skills as a boss, you need to know your role – are you the mediator, the leader, or just the brains? The better you understand your own motive in a specific plan, the better will you be able to communicate your ideas in the right kind of convincing tone. Knowing your role is what strengthens your leadership, and employees acknowledge that.
Don’t Be Too Formal
A wrong perception is that the best boss is one who speaks the most flowery words. In reality, that just shows an air of pretentiousness that nobody likes.
The truth is that a good boss shouldn’t have too formal a vernacular. Leaders are great at connecting with their employees, no matter what their ranking may be. In order to feel more relatable and genuine, keep your language simple and easy to understand. Don’t lose yourself in formalities so much that you begin to look like a doormat; be respectful and honest, and don’t let your confidence falter.
Be To-The-Point
No employee likes a boss that speaks too much or not at all. If you want your idea or instruction to be convincing for your team, you need to be to-the-point. First describe the outcome you want, and then explain what made you come to that conclusion. This helps keep employees engaged with only pieces of information relevant to them – and this principle is a much better approach that overboarding them with an influx of information.
Keeping your speech simple, concise and meaningful helps make you look more authentic, and hence more believable. This is a skill all bosses should have, since this is what makes or breaks your authority in your professional life.
One other thing a boss should be efficient at is knowing their employees’ productivity levels. Instead of tracking them all individually – that too manually! – using an employee management system can do wonders. Fortunately, the one that’s popular in Pakistan is the one integrated in Oscar POS. For retail stores, you can analyse sales made by each employee; you can do the same for waiters if you own a restaurant. With a simple UI as that of Oscar, you’ll have a better idea of how well your employees perform out in the field; not only can you analyse your ideas in fruition, but you’ll also keep an eye on the less motivated employees, and deal with them through proper communication.
In the end, communication is what transforms a boss from an average one to a powerful one. After all, someone who can speak well is the one who can lead just as well.