How to be More Reachable
Communication is key at every role at work. To communicate; we must give correct signals and be reachable.
Do you feel alone at work? Even if you are not a remote worker (home office) after pandemic, people feel lonely when they are doing their job. The rating of feeling loneliness is not few, according to research (Mind Tools Content Team, 2010) more than 60% of the people feel lonely while working. This situation is called as “silent enemy” in many articles. This is not just alienate people and mess up with their psychology, also reduce performance and staff commitment to work.
There is a two side of this story: People sometimes want to be alone or people are giving wrong signals and they be alone. Similarly as a manager, you might give wrong signals to team and they feel alone – disconnected from their manager. For both situation, this article will help you to understand deeper and take some actions to give/receive correct signals.
I was shocked when a colleague told me that I’m always busy and not reachable, shocking thing was that he is right. Busy schedule always give signal around you that you are busy! You might think that working means being busy… Well, think again.
Have Breaks
When I was running from meeting to meeting, I was missing breaks. Making my schedule full, without breaks makes me unreachable and also exhausted. Bad for me, bad for team. Instead; now I’m putting 15 min breaks after every event in my calendar. For example, after a meeting which finishes in 10.00, I start reading articles at 10.15 and have a break for 15 mins. I leave my door open, visit other rooms or take my tea from canteen* and have some quick chats. I could not explain how fruitful is that because when people see you just hanging around, they come up with ideas maybe they were thinking for a long time but not structured yet. When I set a meeting to listen an idea, it is official and people can be stressed. But during a break, they can speak up freely about an idea that is just a spark, not a structured one. Different from a presentation meeting, communication is in both ways so you develop an idea together.
* I cannot explain how good is to take your drink from canteen by yourself. You socialize, you walk and you have a break at the same time! WINWINWIN!
Tell Your Signals, Show You Are Reachable
You could explain this concept in meetings, and inform people about this issue. This could help a lot to understand each other and team collaboration skills. You might tell your signals, maybe even office code? For example; listening music with headphones means that you don’t want to be disturbed. Or you can select some hours for productivity (alone time) and some hours for open to chat. This will also create a professional environment for focused discussions about the job – not for chit-chat.
Empathy is very important here. Sometimes above given barriers need to be stretched depending on morale of the team.
When I was managing. R&D team for my company, I put a no-work hour on Fridays. 1 hour break with drinks from company started OK, a bit fun but was not fruitful as networking POW. I guess people felt stressed or they try to show-off with bringing topic to work eventually. Also some people are really buzz-killer so if you bring everyone on table at the same time, it could be dull.
Teach networking
Well, that’s something that you don’t learn in academy, not even in your first job probably. My suggestion is to start with a frank compliment. Maybe a past memory of you two, like: “I remember you did perfect job when we were on project X”. Starting positive always helps. If you didn’t work together before, you can compliment about how they look or how they act. I like to promote people’s experience or skills. Sometimes If I know them, I ask about their hobbies or previous topics that we chatted before.
After that you can start to listen. They will open up about their problems, these are the things that they most focused and spend time on (unfortunately). Don’t shoot solutions our your memories about how you handled a similar situation. Just listen… If they need suggestions, they will ask for it.
You could also bring chat topic to a hypothetical problem or solution about a problem with unlimited resources. That open up people really good and create excellent ideas. Then networking starts to be more fun.
Reach out
In Stephen R. Covey’s famous book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, chapter of relations is fully focused to tell us about how relation is like a bank. You’ve to invest first to get money later.
Office activities are great ways to remove barriers between you and your co-workers. If your company have some activity clubs, encourage them and being a leader and joining them is good way to get-together. You’ll also be supporting your company and the culture it’s trying to create. In our factory, we have breaks for cigarette smoking. Most of the people socialize (unfortunately) during this hours! Maybe companies need to take further actions to bring people together more.
Key rule here is: don’t wait! If you are waiting from someone else to come to you, you are networking wrong. Even you are a senior leader, you should connect and network effectively. Don’t make assumptions about other people, like they are busy etc. Just go and chat!
A general comment to this article is that communication is %70 percent listening, so try to listen more. Always...
References:
Mind Tools Content Team. (2010). 8 Ways to Beat Loneliness in the Workplace: Preventing People From Feeling Isolated. Mindtools.com. https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/loneliness-at-work.htm
