The foundation of 1-on-1 Management™ is that critical employee development tasks like establishing expectations, creating career goals, and performance recognition (among many other things) are all done best one-on-one. I read an article this week by Carol Kinsey Goman, an executive coach and author who made this interesting observation:

“In this fast-paced, techno-charged era of email, blogs, wikis and IMs, one universal truth remains: Face-to-face is still the most preferred, productive and powerful communication medium.”

I wholeheartedly agree. The fact is, despite all the electronic tools available to us, another universal truth is that the vast majority of problems in the workplace are created by poor communication. In many cases, we have attempted to solve or address our communication issues by using those electronic tools, but, in most cases, email and IMs seem to make the problems even worse.

As a manager, you would do well to listen to Ms. Goman. While face-to-face communication can still be done badly, the odds of communicating effectively are far greater when you can observe body language and tonality, ask clarifying questions, and explore details. Even if an employee (or your boss) is a poor communicator, you can take up the slack by listening carefully and asking good questions.

That is actually one of the most common questions I receive: “How can I improve my boss’s communication with me?” Here are a couple of ideas:

• When the boss (or an employee) uses email in a situation that is critical, requires clarification, or may lead to misunderstanding, don’t respond with email. Instead, opt for a face-to-face meeting. Once you clarify details, follow-up with an email that confirms those details.
• When appropriate, ask the boss, “What are your expectations for this (project, assignment, or task)?”
• If you boss loves to have things done a certain way, ask “Do you have any advice or recommendations for this (project, assignment, task)?” If you get some specific directions that conflict with how you might proceed, you have the opportunity to say something like, “My first thought was to (proceed a certain way)…what are your thoughts?”

The chances that your boss will change in his/her management style are fairly remote unless he/she is committed to improvement as a manager. However, my experience is that micro-managers crave information and actually would prefer to communicate more effectively (for their own benefit, usually) even if they are not very good at it.

Take the lead and improve the communication from your end. The truth is, your boss might begin to catch on.

Tagged as: Boss, email, Expectations