I think I spend a good majority of my day at work trying to communicate properly to everyone around me that "needs to know" something. It's exhausting! Then I get home and I have to make sure I've communicated to my family, to my kids, to my kids' teachers, to my friends. Half the things I need to remember to do involves communication. Did I remember to call the doctor's office to make my annual appointment? Did I tell Doug when my next book club meeting is to make sure we don't have any scheduling conflicts? Did I remember to tell the kids to take a shower before bedtime? I guess those are the easy communication tasks that I need to do. All I need to do is remember and then I can accomplish them easily. But there are other communication tasks that I find very challenging.
Today at work I was following up on an action I had. Someone responded to me that they weren't sure why I was taking the action. They thought it was their action to take. I realized that I had either misunderstood what was communicated to me, or maybe I wasn't being clear with others in what I was trying to accomplish. Business moves at such a fast pace these days. I get lost between the e-mails, voicemails, texts and meetings. I probably rely far too much on e-mail communication and not enough on verbal communication. I need to pick up the phone more and just talk to people to better understand what they expect from me and communicate what I expect from them. I'm trying to do that more, but still it's not enough.
I think I mentally ask myself about 20 times a day whether or not I have properly communicated something to the proper person. No matter how often I check myself on that, I find myself missing someone in the communication. Sometimes it is because I didn't even think that a certain person would need to know what I know. As a manager, I know a lot about what is going on in the business at the big picture level. I hear about some of the big decisions that are made by management. Sometimes I forget that the professionals that work for me, wouldn't know the same things I know. I have to think hard each week about what I know that might be interesting to my employees. I don't think managers think about this enough. We "forget" that not everyone knows what we know or hears what we hear. We can be better managers if we just focus on improving our communication channels and demonstrate that we truly have an open door policy for dialogue.
Last night I watched "The Apprentice" and found the show was being interrupted by a very important message from the President. I thought about how important communication is in our lives today. Immediately I went on my computer, which was already on my lap, and started searching for what the President's speech was going to be about. With a few clicks on the keyboard, I had googled "what is the president's press conference about?" and I found enough sites that already had people speculating about the topic. Amazingly enough, when I filtered beyond the people saying "zombies" or "aliens" there were many people saying that Osama Bin Laden was dead. Through the complex network of communication that is now at my fingertips, I was able to find the truth within minutes. It took another 15 minutes for Chuck Todd to come on NBC to talk about Osama Bin Laden and verify the rumors on the Internet. But as I sat and watched the T.V., I also read news websites and watched Facebook for a multitude of news facts and opinions. Is that communication at its best, or are we overwhelmed with too many inputs? I tend to feel a sense of comfort by having so many sources of information at my fingertips. So for now, I'm satisfied with the new means of communication.
It's definitely a different world out there today. As I turn 40 in a couple weeks I realize that I might start to shun these types of changes in a few years. It really takes a lot of energy to keep up with things now given how fast information flies by us. I hope that no matter what the Internet and Facebook evolve into, that there will never be a substitute for approaching someone face to face to have a good old conversation.
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