Communications – Keep Your Team in the Loop
Continuing to flesh out the three pillars of business, this segment will communicate the necessity of excellent communications. Without exceptional communications, no business will survive, much less thrive.
Defining the verb communicate…
- to convey knowledge of or information about: to make known.
- to reveal by clear signs.
In this digital age of email and social media, more and more information is requested and required to be communicated, never less. Be prepared to write more reports, send more images, shoot more video,s and have more conference calls and Zoom/Teams meetings. As the RE industry grows, expect the demand for more information to only grow and expand. It’s just the nature of the best.
Most of the things I have listed above are external communications with customers, vendors, landlords and the like. These are important no doubt, but there is another type of communications required that helps you build a great company and team, and that’s internal communications. Keeping your organization in the loop.
If you are like me, you are wearing multiple hats in the day-to-day operation of your business. You think about hundreds of different things every day, and often we think just because we have thought it, we have communicated it. Usually, that means we have not even come close to sharing these critical ideas with the people who will make them happen, so as the EntreLeadership teams says…a thought without communications is only that…a thought. And since no one can read your thoughts, how are they supposed to act intelligently on them?
So bottom line is this…become very intentional about communicating to your team. Let them see you, hear from you and receive emails from you sharing those ideas, next steps, plans, dreams and what the future looks like. Don’t assume they get it because they are all assuming the worst without clear, direct information from you. And assumptions of any kind are never good for morale and keeping key people over the long term.
I won’t make this a litany of “do’s and don’ts”; plenty of resources are available with ideas you can try. What works for REIG may well not be a good fit for your team, so do some research, dig in to the details, and start trying to be more open, honest, and forthcoming about the business. Yes, share not only the good but the bad and the ugly too. You will be surprised at how your team rallies behind you when the chips are down and the going is tough. The key is to communicate, for that matter, over-communicate, and watch your employees gel into a cohesive team, all bonded with a shared and common goal just because you told them the facts consistently!
Since I mentioned one of the resources we use here, check into a great book by Dave Ramsey called EntreLeadership. 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches. It’s available wherever books are sold and has an entire chapter (10) covering the topic of communications. It’s good reading, and you will find it quite helpful as you learn to open up and communicate with your team.
Until next time,
Keith
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Keith Davis is the president of Renewable Energy Integration Group (REIG), a Charlotte, NC based firm focused on all things control, data acquisition and SCADA in the commercial, industrial, and utility solar PV marketplace. He and his team are innovators and leaders in the industry and provide professional hardware, robust monitoring software and service beyond the expected. We take the complexity out of solar data!
