Communication

Open Channels of Communication

Creating a culture of open communication can be one of the best ways to achieve exceptional performance and success in your work. While working with my capstone group, we learned early on that although we were working towards the same goals, we were a heterogeneous group of people from diverse backgrounds, and we all had a distinct way of learning and communicating. Some of us had military experience and did not shy away from giving and receiving orders and feedback plainly in any circumstance; some of us were natural leaders and brought new ideas to every meeting; some of us had worked in our fields for several years prior to graduate school and preferred to communicate through emails and memos; still others were introverted and preferred to develop our thoughts to team leaders in a more personal setting than group meetings allowed. In order to make sure that everyone’s ideas were heard and that no one felt unnoticed, the group developed several techniques to ensure we always had an open channel of communication. This included several strategies: having multiple means of communicating with all members of the group (weekly group meetings, email, informal group chat, phone calls); regular one-on-one meetings with group leaders; smaller group meetings with members who were working on similar parts of the project; anonymous forms filled out before and after every group meeting to address topics one might not want to broach publicly; regular debriefs on internal assignments; informal social outings; sharing feedback that demonstrated value of individuals, and concern for their wellbeing. By providing a variety of channels in which a member of the group could feel comfortable sharing new ideas, updates, concerns, and questions, our capstone made productive use of every part of our team, which ultimately lead us to writing a final report we felt was triumphant and that we all contributed to.

Listening with Intent

When we listen to each other with the intent to understand, we begin to build relationships that are founded on meaningful communication. During my second semester of graduate school, I went through a series of personal tragedies that majorly impacted my performance in many aspects of life, including school. Although at the time I was not ready to speak about my problems, I did inform project groups and instructors that I was going through personal troubles that meant I wasn’t sure of my continued ability to commit to the full semester. Many of my professors and classmates reached out to offer their sympathies, and to offer their time in the case I needed someone to talk to. Most powerfully, two of my professors reached out to me and asked me to reconsider leaving school. They each met with me outside of class in order to understand what I was going through, and to make arrangements for continuing their classes with adjusted workloads or shifted due dates for assignments. For the rest of the semester, these two professors communicated regularly with me in a way that made me feel not only listened to, but truly heard. In turn, I was able to communicate what I needed to continue the semester without feeling like an imposition, or like I did not deserve the extra assistance. I strongly attribute my continued attendance at, and forthcoming graduation from, the Bush School to these two professors. By spending time listening to their students and their individual needs, professors are able to build a relationship with their students that are based on open and meaningful communication. I will now be able to take this experience of listening with the purpose of understanding others to develop my communication skills not only in school, but in the workplace and with friends.

Communicating Beyond Words

An important part of meaningful communication is being able to adjust your message in a way that your audience will find useful. By the end of my first year at the Bush School, I had become familiar with writing detailed reports on a subject and giving an oral presentation about it. My second year, I began working with Dr. J. Bullock on marketing and increasing the viewership of his podcast, Bush School Uncorked. I was tasked with analyzing previous years’ spending on advertising and its impact on viewership, creating a new marketing strategy, and projecting how this new strategy would increase viewership with our allotted advertising budget. I began writing reports on these tasks, but soon found that it was difficult and lengthy to describe trends in viewership, advertisement suggestions, and large amounts of data without visual representation. Although I was not familiar with communication mediums beyond written reports, I began teaching myself to work with programs such as Google Data Studio, which provides tools to create visualizations of marketing analyses. I also learned how to use Microsoft Publisher to create graphics that could be used as advertisements on social media. While Dr. Bullock was satisfied with my initial written reports, he was ecstatic when our meetings began having new and modern ways of communicating ideas. It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I learned that when trying to communicate your message, it is often much more effective to have a picture than a thousand words.

Takeaways

My experiences at the Bush School have granted me a deeper understanding of the importance of effectively communicating. I have developed communication skills such as learning to listen with intent, communicating ideas with graphic design, and having open channels of discussion. My greatest takeaway from these experiences is that communication is more than speaking - it is a way to understand people, to build relationships and to substantiate your ideas efficiently and effectively.