There’s Levels To This: Communication 201

One of my favorite songs on communication (or talking) is by the GREAT Tevin Campbell. His classic 1993 hit had alot of singing and wanting to talk to someone for a minute (LOL)!

But on a serious note, Communication will be your one of your superpower skills in 2024.

We’ve seen the stats:

Poor communication has led to $1 Trillion in waste (Source) 🤯.

Burnout is a side-effect of lack of clear communication 🔥.

Context Switching is exhausting when work is not centralized and conversations are all over the place.

So why am I focusing on communication?

1. Projects are becoming more complex.

2. The culture of work is now more than ever focused on global, hybrid, and remote team models

3. Senior leaders are focusing on driving organizational change through measuring efficiency, KPIs, and how the work is getting done.

4. Collaboration is the new currency communication.

5. Tech Stack challenges still persist as organizations and tools continue to seek the best apps to communicate efficiently.

So where do you fit into the picture?

(Yes, you! I’m staring at your reading this screen - LOL 👀)

Communication - Conflict Resolution

Let’s tackle this one because conflict is going to happen. I hear a lot of chatter about reducing and eliminating conflict.

It’s really about navigating through conflict to resolve any roadblocks that could impede your projects or team’s culture.

In 2024, you will hear A LOT about improving team culture.

Here are few questions to ask yourself:

🫱🏾 Do you know your current team’s culture?

🫱🏾 What are your teams attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors?

There are two specific points I want us all to consider (include me!) on navigating conflict.

1. The Power of the Pulse Check: I believe that intentionally checking in with team members (not just a scheduled 1:1 meeting) will build trust and allow the walls vulnerability to come down to allow honesty and true reflection about what’s been happening within the team and project.

2. Listen to Understand not to respond: Listening as a strategy. As ProjectLeaders, we are looked upon to solve all the things. In the solving of things, we often overlook that power of listening. On a personal note, I have fallen into this habit. There is an issue and my natural inclination is to solve it. Bottom Line. That’s it. And rather than looking to come to an immediate resolution within 5 seconds, I have learned overtime to slow down, listen to understand. Ask follow up questions.

Communication - Project Tasks & Workflows

Let this be the year of reducing messenger/slack pings. One of the costs of disorganization is attributed to the lack of centralizing information and context-switching.

I cannot tell you how many times that I’ve been interrupted to find a word doc or email or PDF for a team member.

Once I’m digging through the trenches of a shared drive and resume back to my normal activity, I have to think again, “What was I working on?”

I’m a BIG fan of empowering team members to find the right information in the right spot so they can complete the next step in a task.

Organizing information seems like a snoozefest 😴 right? But this snoozefest will become your partyfest 🥳 once you think through how information flows through your team.

As you examine your day to day communications, ask yourself:

“What questions are people asking?”

“Where are people getting delayed in finding information?”

These 2 questions will help you in your journey to streamlining your workflows.

Additionally,  context-switching is a time-killer. Why? When you jump from meeting to meeting, email to email, and slack channel to slack to channel, you can get confused as to what’s what and what to do next.

The first step into getting free from context-switching is ensuring that you decide which apps will hold key conversations about project tasks and updates. It’s you and your team being disciplined enough to share information consistently about the work.

I remember working with a client and their team on setting up ClickUp. After setting up their workflows, we had a strategy session on best practices on where to place questions, comments, and conversations about tasks.

I got a call from the client about 2 weeks after we finished and he told me, “Ashley, I’m having trouble with getting real-time updates on the project.” I put my investigative hat on to figure out why this issue was occurring. I logged inside of their platform to observe how they were using ClickUp and noticed that no one was updating the tasks or using the comment/conversation feature to tag or update their team members.

In some cases, the work was getting done and in other cases, the work wasn’t getting updated for team members to assist if there was an issue.

Remember, your systems are only as strong as your workflows.

Communication - Handling Change/Resilience/Adaptability

John Maxwell has this powerful quote, “People don’t naturally resist change, they resist being changed.”
YIKES! That made me LEAP.

Okay, let’s talk about how change is necessary and the ability to adapt to new practices, systems, and processes requires your mindset to change.

Change can be hard and challenging.

When it comes to improving processes, workflows, and systems, this is why people are central to the process.

A key factor for your success as a Project Leader is how you handle change. It’s how you receive information that changes the trajectory of your project.

What happens when the funding is cut suddenly?

What happens when a staff member leaves a company?

How do you move forward?

So, what now?

3 Core Action Steps to Take:

1. Conduct a pulse check with your team members to build trust and create an honest environment for conflict resolution.

2. Streamline your workflows by centralizing information and reducing context-switching to enhance productivity.

3. Embrace change and cultivate an adaptable mindset to handle unexpected situations and steer your project in the right direction.

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The Daily Practice

You know that saying, practice makes perfect. I didn’t think much of it when I was younger.

I thought it really only applied to those who competed in sports and were serious about their craft. After all, when I was in the 9th grade, I happily placed my basketball in the corner and said, “This isn’t my journey.” Sometimes, you just know? right?!

As I started to mature and dive deeply into my gifting and talents, I soon understood the principle of “honing your crafting,” and “sharpening your skill set.”

Why? Because you can’t afford to rely on your last win or victory. The same can be said for the applause on your last project. Yes, it’s great that your project lead to great success (ie - made thousands, millions, changed the trajectory of the business; solved a pressing need or problem)

Another reason why skills-building is necessary, is because companies and businesses are solving complex needs.

Your skillset requires daily practice. A daily sharpening. A daily commitment.

What does this mean exactly?

• Reading books and articles on Project Management concepts

  • I’m not a huge reader of books. I will read articles all the day long. Shout out to the Reader app.

  • In this season, I am reading, “Managing Multiple Projects,”by Elizabeth Harrin. From my career to business to community building activities, this is a necessary book!

• Keeping current on the Project Management trends

  • I typically perform a google search of Project Management trends, follow people on Linkedin, and read emails from popular productivity and PM software blogs.

• Joining mastermind or membership groups with other project leaders

  • Recently, I joined Digital Project Manager community group and applied to sign up for their new Product Community which will be launched pretty soon. Speaking of product, it’s been an area that I’ve been doing some self-study on for a while now. I like learning about it and it challenges my current way of approaching projects. I am apart of the Product Makers Community as well. I stay connected with product leaders on Linkedin as well.

• Studying past projects including lessons learned for process improvement efforts.

  • This is so critical and a new practice that I am adopting. Specifically, writing down my own personal notes and insights from past projects. This needs to be formalized ASAP, so I can record this likely in Coda, and set aside time to write, reflect, and take action.

Need a thought partner for your current or next project?