Importance of Communication Skills: Apply the S.U.C.C.E.S.s Formula On Your Team

Most businesses underestimate the importance of communication skills when it comes to building effective teams.

Most of these businesses get caught up in the trap of "there's work to be done." As the parable of the two woodcutters goes, the guy who takes the time to sit and sharpen his saw regularly always out produces the guy who keeps chopping despite the fact his ax is no longer cutting.

Improving Your Communication Skills is the Sharpening Stone

Not only is what you communicate important, how you communicate is essential too.

If you have a business you must educate your employees the process of doing their job, you must also train and retrain people on how to do their jobs better. This all harkens back to the importance of communication skills.

Whether you have a business with 30 or more people, or it's just you, performance is dependent on how effectively you initiate a process to produce desired results.

To do this you must audit your communication religiously: how did you talk to a prospective customer, how did they respond, how did the meeting get off-track, what is producing results, where are the weak spots.

Only through an effective auditing process and swift implementation of change can you produce consistent desired results in your business. To make this happen you must be consistent in the manner you train your staff, have them audit their own communications, and provide feedback on what is working and what isn't.

Develop Your Team's Communication Skills

One of the most powerful formulas I've found for expressing ideas effectively is Chip and Dan Heath's "Made To Stick". They developed an acronym for the process of communicating ideas that stick in the minds of listeners. The SUCCESs process stands for:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Using this simple framework, you can help others see the importance of communication skills in your business. As you train your team on the various ways on applying this SUCCESs formula to audit communication you will see rapid improvement in retention and expression of information.

Effective communication naturally becomes simpler. Clarity replaces confusion as people deliver and respond to clear messages in concrete language.

A Single Act That Naturally Holds People Accountable For Their Actions

People live up to what they write down. One of the most powerful processes you can implement personally or on your team is the skill of writing things down.

Not only will this allow people to see their ideas on paper and give them the ability to clarify them in concrete language. The simple process of writing things down helps people hold themselves accountable for their own actions. When they write down their goals, their "to do" lists, their ideas people become about 50% more accountable to remain loyal to what they've written.

Emphasizing and accepting the importance of communication skills and giving people the proper tools to gain them is one of the most influential aspects of running and a productive, self-regulated, cohesive team.

As your team moves forward, sending and receiving simple, clear, powerful messages and becomes adept at writing things down you will see significant progress in the way the team performs.