Communication is Key!

I'd like to talk a little bit about communication within and for your business.

When you're running a business, most likely other people are involved in supporting you. Sometimes they are family members; sometimes those who support you are outside team members or subcontractors. In any case, communication regarding information is imperative to getting jobs/tasks completed properly and in the most productive manner.

As an entrepreneur, sometimes it's hard to remember that we live, breathe, and sleep our businesses our dreams but the people who are supporting us, again, family or subcontractors, don't live in that same world, so sometimes we'll be talking to them and we'll either be using lingo they're not familiar with, or we give them half of the information they actually need to complete the task. This in turn can result in multiple emails going back and forth, or even worse, a job or task completed incorrectly.

Being an entrepreneur myself in addition to running a virtual assistant company, I see this happening over and over and over. When I see this happening, I work really closely with my clients, in both Strategies for Small Businesses or VA-a-GoGo, the importance of being clear about their intended results for a task or project that they're assigning out.

Communicate It in order to See It!

I remind them that a full description of the details needs to be relayed to the person completing the tasks associated with the project so that everything can be completed in the best manner possible.

I encourage clients to create a task board. Some of them might be using project managers like Asana, Trello, Monday, or Teamwork and so on. There are a lot of task trackers out there that can be used easily BUT might not be used properly or consistently. If they are not presently using a project managing tracking platform, I suggest they utilize a Google doc or a Google sheet per event or task so that all of the details can be laid out there and their expectations for completion are clear and evident.

I also encourage team members for those clients to step up and ask questions for clarity and not jump the gun if they're not sure. I would rather have questions answered and clarity at the beginning than a messed-up task we have to go back and fix at the end. Communication from the team member or subcontractor is just as important in your business as well and you should welcome this.

Build strong communication between your team 
to set up a WIN!

As an entrepreneur, strong lines of communication with your team creates a win win situation because the team feels more involved; they have the tools they need to do a task and a job well. It also allows for collaboration where they invest in coming back to you, the entrepreneur, with suggestions and ideas to make things better because they're not struggling through getting their tasks done.

If you feel that your business would benefit by having a quick consultation regarding communication with your team and how to improve the situation, we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a line in the question box below and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Here's to your success!