lifestyle brand marketers

We all get frustrated at some point in our working lives. The same could be said for our personal lives too I’m sure, but let’s focus on the former.

Workplace frustration usually comes as a result of a lack of communication. Every time a client raises the issue of corporate in-fighting, where staff members are at each other’s throats, I always find that communication breakdown is the cause and this is mostly avoidable.

When communications between staff members breaks down, we find all kinds of issues come about. When we view the issues in mediation sessions, the fighting parties often realise that the issues aren’t actually problems with the other person at all. Rather, by exploring the issues, the fighting parties realise that they are really just venting their frustrations about a lack of communication (and all the resulting problems that inevitably come from such a cyclic breakdown) by convincing themselves to dislike some attribute (or many attributes) of the other person. To an outside observer, their behaviour and attitudes can look anything from awkwardness to hatred. These ‘symptoms’ of frustration are most often expressed to third parties, behind the back of the other person. We worked out a year ago that this is mostly due to the fact that deep down, the parties know the issue isn’t with the person, rather than with their behaviour that resulted in the communication breakdown. Again, this is avoidable.

So why do we avoid this and how can we stop our staff from letting communication breakdowns disrupt their productivity?

The first thing to recognise is that no matter how hard anybody tries, there is always the potential for a communication breakdown between staff. We are all ‘only human’ and everything that we know of the world, as humans, is reliant on moods, emotions, perceptions, imagination, history and experience. With so many variables, it will be impossible to fully prevent this kind of frustration in the workplace. However, it can and should be minimised as follows:

• Have an ‘open door’ policy which allows your staff, no matter their position in the company, to come to you with their concerns. If you ‘open the door’ and instigate the flow of communication about any issue, you immediately have more than just one upper hand on the situation.
• Develop a keen ear for what’s being said on the grapevine and ‘nip’ any problems ‘in the bud’ as soon as they are cause enough for concern.
• Remind your staff regularly that communication in the workplace is important. If they cannot complete a project on time, or are struggling with an aspect of it, they should be encourage to openly ask for assistance or backup and to communicate these delays to everyone along the production-value chain that delays will affect. This includes colleagues in the same department.
• Have regular staff sessions, say a few times a year, where staff are enabled and empowered to make suggestions on how to improve communications in your company with a view to avoiding pitfalls and problems that they themselves have experienced that year. Then implement these suggestions. It really isn’t hard to get the wheels turning if someone else has already told you the needed outcome.
• If you’re a huge firm, get an intranet page for every staff member to use daily. This is the best way for your company leaders to communicate downwards. It also avoids the kind of misunderstandings that a semi-regular company eNewsletter can bring.
• Outrightly ask your staff to be kind to one-another. Teach them that most of their frustration comes from either disorganisation or a communication breakdown with another person.
• You should also work on a number of strategies with your executive team that are designed to establish collaborative working experiences throughout your firm, rather than a singular or unitary working environment where everyone feels alone and ultimately responsible for stuff-ups. -Daniel Jess, Senior Partner.