Communicate Effectively for Enhanced Effectiveness
I was talking to a client about keeping her focus time free of distractions, and she told me that every time she tried to focus at home, her wife kept interrupting her during the time she’d set aside.
I asked if her wife knew that was the focus time. She didn’t, and adding it to the shared household calendar solved the problem.
Another time I was on a Zoom call where we had breakout rooms, and I talked a bit about what I do. One of the other participants said that she had to keep her phone next to her in case her kids called. I asked how old the kids were, and she told me they were adults.
If you want to be able to work on your business, have time for your employees and clients, and still have a life that you enjoy and find fulfilling, being able to communicate well is critical.
In fact, when potential clients come to me with concerns about how they can implement LaserBrainⓇ in their own businesses, a lot of their fears can be mitigated just by knowing what and how to communicate. (And no, AI is not going to solve this problem for you.)
June is, among other things, Effective Communications Month, so let’s go!
To be effective and efficient in your business, you need regular focus time
You get more done faster when you work on one thing at a time. When your attention is fully aimed at one problem to be solved, or issue to be resolved, you get it done faster.
Focus is what helps you complete tasks and achieve your goals.
When you think you’re multitasking, in actual fact you’re just dividing your attention between your tasks. Every time you change tasks – for example, answering an email and then working on your marketing plan – your brain gets tired. Trying to multitask wears it out even faster.
Because your attention is divided, you take longer to get everything done. That’s part of the reason why you’re so busy throughout the day but don’t feel like you accomplished anything.
Scheduling a regular focus time at least every week, if not every day, has several benefits that make you more effective.
People will learn that you’re not available during that time
If you are so tied to your emails and/or social platforms that you have a hard time turning off notifications during the day, you can schedule that time to disable your notifications so you don’t have to manually turn them off
Brains get trained through repetition, so when you consistently keep that time for focus, your brain will learn to get down to business fast
Here are the foundations for focus time where you achieve your goals:
At least one hour of time blocked on the calendar at least every week; trying to cram this into random fifteen-minute increments here and there doesn’t let you get much done
No notifications of any kind during this time: that’s zero, zilch, nada, nothing, none, zip; no social media, no email, no phone calls, no one walking into your office
Strong boundaries around this focus time; it doesn’t work if no one knows that this time is set aside for a specific purpose
Let everyone know that there are no interruptions during this time: staff, clients, vendors, parents, kids, butlers, maids, pool boys, nosy neighbors, etc.
If you have young children or elderly parents that you’re caring for, there might be emergencies where people have to get in touch with you. But that still doesn’t mean you have to be able to see and touch your phone at all times.
You can set your phone to DND but change those settings to allow favorite contacts to ring through. If your spouse or adult children are in your favorites, make sure they know not to call during focus time unless it’s an actual emergency.
Effective communication will not scare away clients
You’re worried that if you don’t respond right away, people will be upset with you. That’s usually only if you don’t explain what you’re doing ahead of time.
That’s right: communication!
When I was a financial planner, I would often get emails from clients on Friday afternoon. They didn’t expect me to respond or run the plan (which I certainly wasn’t going to do late on Friday afternoon). They were just clearing their own desks before the weekend.
How many times when you send an email do you need an immediate response? How often are you clearing off your own desk, so the recipient doesn’t need to respond right away? How often are your emails status updates? How many emails are you checking to make sure the recipient got your email?
When you think about your own emails, what percentage of them do you need an answer right away? Because it’s probably not all that often on a day to day basis.
Sometimes you do need rapid answers, but I’ll bet it’s when you’re working on a project or something where both you and the recipient are aware you’re on a deadline. I bet you don’t often email people out of the blue and expect an immediate response.
So if you don’t need all or even most of your emails responded to right away, why do you think everyone else is so different from you? Why is it so important that you have to personally respond to every single email when it comes in?
Why are you letting everyone else’s agenda come first before yours?
I mean, to be fair, a lot of that is female conditioning. We women here in the US are supposed to put every single person ahead of ourselves lest we be accused of being selfish.
But didn’t you start your business because you wanted to help people in some way? In the way that you’re best at? If you’re not helping people in your zone of genius because you’re answering emails instead, then you won’t have the impact you want to have.
I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty, by the way! I just want you to see that constantly attending to others' needs even when you don’t mean to (for example, by attending to an email right away instead of doing your work) disempowers you and gets in the way of your own purpose.
A simple autoresponder email that lets the sender know you received it will probably suffice for a lot of people emailing you. You can also mention your email policy (response within 48 hours or during the time that you check emails, for example.)
You do not need to be a superhero to be productive and achieve your goals
I’ll be honest here, I’m not great at either asking for or accepting help. I don’t have any employees at the moment, and I rely on a lot of systems and processes to carry some of the load.
But if you have employees or are planning on hiring in the near future, you really have to be able to communicate and make it easy for people to communicate with you.
This does NOT mean that you have to be available to them every single second of the workday…
…But you do need to let them know when you’re not available (focus time).
This does NOT mean that you can’t close your office door from time to time…
…But you do need to let them know you’re working on something important.
This does NOT mean that you must talk to your staff the exact second they want to talk to you, if they’re interrupting your work…
…But being able to talk to your people about more than just work shows them that you care, so if they’re not actually interrupting it might be a good idea to go ahead and chat!
This also does NOT mean that you should be emailing them whenever you happen to think about them “because they know they don’t have to pay attention to it”. No, they don’t know, and you’re freaking them out by sending emails at weird times. Stop that! Schedule your emails to go out during the workday.
Treat your people like human beings (this goes for how you treat yourself as well!)
Recap (tl;dr):
Effective communication can help you get more $hit done without pissing everyone off.
Need help with putting these ideas into practice? I’ve got a 3-month program with your name on it. Click here to schedule your free business productivity consultation.
Photo by Stellan Johansson on Unsplash.