Corporate communication is a crucial element in the success of business operations. A big challenge when it comes to internal communication within an organization is communicating with top-level management.
While business communication tools help save time, energy, and money, they can only be half the equation. After all, your boss or manager is their own person, with their own thoughts, emotions, and preferred ways of working. That being said, it’s best to learn how to communicate with your boss. This is not about stroking egos or trying to put out fires; it is about you both, as professionals, learning how to communicate effectively and professionally with one another so you can both do your roles to your best abilities.
What does bad communication look like?
Before we dive in, it would help to understand what bad communication looks like when talking to your boss. Bad leadership can unfortunately hinder professional development and damage relationships within a team. Effective communication is crucial for conveying goals, expectations, and feedback. When leaders fail in this aspect, it leads to misunderstandings, decreased productivity, and low morale.
Ineffective communication often involves a lack of transparency about decisions and changes, leaving employees feeling uninformed and undervalued. When a boss doesn’t communicate openly, it erodes trust and creates an atmosphere of uncertainty. This negatively impacts the team’s ability to align with the organization’s objectives.
Furthermore, poor communication can undermine a boss’s confidence in their leadership abilities. When leaders struggle to articulate their vision, their credibility diminishes. They might resort to micromanagement as a result of their own communication shortcomings, stifling employees’ growth and autonomy.
Addressing bad leadership communication requires a willingness to listen, provide constructive feedback, and adapt communication styles to different situations. It’s essential to create an environment where open dialogue is encouraged, ensuring that all team members feel heard and understood.
Here are 10 tips on how to communicate with your boss at work.
1. Keep things clear
You can’t get a chat with your boss whenever you might want or need. Managers and leadership may be pulled in a thousand directions and they may have to go and speak to clients, stakeholders, or even their own managers.
You need to create a paper trail between the two of you so everything you agree on is written down somewhere. Sometimes, you may not be able to grab more than a minute of their time for a quick face-to-face conversation. Write up what was discussed and email it, or stick it in a note in a chat between you two. Keep a conversation flowing between the two of you with lots of signposts so that you can always follow and refer back to your thoughts.
2. Come armed with solutions
Corporate communication is no longer just from the top down. The more problems you can try and solve independently without going to your boss, the more likely you are going to gain respect and build trust. You can demonstrate soft skills like problem-solving or responsibility by proactively providing solutions to issues.
Many times, management wants to step in and help, but they might lack the time or resources to do so. Can you solve the issue without them? Most of the time, they should have enough trust in you to let you do so. Need their approval? Come to them armed with workable solutions and paths forward so they have all the information they need to make a quick and easy decision.
3. Respect their time and yours
Managers may only be able to give you a small portion of their day. While a meeting might be the most important event on your calendar for the day, it might be just one thing on a long list for your boss. There should be a mutual understanding between the two of you that any time spent together is to be effective and productive.
When you come together, ensure that you have an agenda of items you wish to discuss. Your boss will appreciate it if you share this agenda with them ahead of time. If they give you one, you should communicate any changes you wish to make to it. Come to your meetings prepared so that discussion can go ahead and you can reach conclusions and solutions quickly and easily. When either party has to spend half the time allocated re-explaining the issue and blockers, it can cause frustrations that block healthy discussions and solutions from being reached.
4. Practice your body language
Body language can be just as important for communication as our words can be. When communicating with your boss, ensure your body language reflects your commitment to a good discussion. Simple measures like sitting up straight, facing them, and actively listening to what they are saying will make all the difference.
The same can be said for video calls. Your focus should always be kept on your device’s screen; try not to let your gaze wander away to somewhere else in the room. Keep your attention focused on the other participants in the meeting rather than your own video, as difficult as that might be!
Your body language can set the tone for an interaction before it begins. If you approach your boss with high shoulders and a tense face, they will expect you to bring them a major problem or bad news. While you shouldn’t need to approach them with a smile on your face and other false positivity, be aware of how your reactions might change the outcome of a conversation.
5. Know the best channels for communication
Very likely, your boss has a certain approach or communication style that they prefer. Knowing this preferred style can be key for effective internal communications. Some bosses may like to communicate over a Zoom call rather than by email or vice versa. Some may even like updates in person, even if that means you need to commit to one-minute “walk and talks” as they go between major meetings.
Knowing what your boss likes, or prefers, will help you better communicate with them. Rather than insist on using email, sometimes picking up the phone would work best for them. Show your willingness to work with them in this area. They will appreciate it.
6. Keep it professional
You don’t have to think of a boss as a best friend to be on the same page in the workplace. You also don’t need to be friends with your boss to have a more personal conversation. Asking how their weekend went or how they’re handling a certain situation doesn’t require a close bond; it requires a genuine interest.
Everyone appreciates a person who shows concern. Just as you would expect your boss to show an interest in your personal life, so will your boss appreciate when you show interest in theirs.
7. Ask for feedback or help
To improve communication, you often need to ensure that it keeps flowing at all times. One of the easiest ways to do so is to ask for feedback. When you are doing a fine job, you may not be recognized for it. However, don’t be overly comfortable when your manager is not on your back, as they may also be a disengaged boss.
Ask for feedback. This will help you find out if you are doing a good job or where you can improve. And it doesn’t always have to be negative feedback. Ask what you did well and why it was appreciated. Ask what you can improve on. Be specific.
This kind of feedback not only gives you a more focused approach at work but also gives you an idea of what your boss expects.
8. Offer to help
Between corporate meetings, responding to emails, and taking phone calls, your boss is likely to be one of the busiest people in the organization. If you get through your own tasks, step up and ask where you can help out. There is probably something you can take on that will help to relieve some of the pressure on them.
Offering to help also shows you can take on responsibility and take initiative. It also helps you to gain new skills and experiences you might not see with your typical job description or workload. If there is an opportunity open for you on a project you normally wouldn’t get to help with, you can gain experience in this new era while proving yourself to be a flexible and valuable member of the team.
9. Be accountable
We all want praise and recognition at work when it is due, but rarely do we want to be blamed for something we did wrong. Being accountable will enable you to take on responsibility for decisions and actions in the organization, and it helps you grow as a professional.
Accountability also helps us to be confident in our decisions. If something goes wrong, we are comfortable stepping up and admitting that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Trying to avoid accountability and ignore or dismiss the problem can only lead to it worsening as it is not addressed or mitigated early.
Your boss is likely also looking for people to delegate work to. If you are happy to step in and take on a role with new responsibilities, it says a lot about you and your own leadership qualities.
10. Keep the energy up!
No one enjoys working in a team that is constantly pessimistic. When someone sucks all the joy out of a room, an energy vampire if you will, it can leave the team unmotivated and your boss unsure as to how to raise spirits. Keep the energy up as best you can, even in those difficult times.
At the same time, don’t pretend or be overly performative. Just as people don’t want to be around pessimists, they also don’t want to be around someone aggressively happy who demands jokes and laughter all the time. Establishing a rapport among the team and with your boss is crucial, but you also need to learn when and how to use motivation to get everyone to move forward.
Create a platform for your effective internal communication
Good communication doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You can’t snap your fingers, produce results, and get everyone talking the way they should.
Effective corporate communication is a skill that everyone should master. By learning how to communicate with your boss, and working to improve communication at work, your overall communication efforts will reflect well on everyone in the company.
However, you need to ensure that you also put the work in to create a good foundation for effective communication to thrive. Axero is that foundation.
Our social intranet platform creates safe spaces for your workforce to come together, socialize, and communicate well. Knowledge management is easily maintained and can be updated in a few clicks, chat functions allow for easy discussions, and integrations with calendars and other apps allow a team to know where each other stands in just a few clicks.
To communicate effectively, be it with your boss or another member of your team, you need a good home base to start from. Book a demo with Axero and find out how we can help transform your internal communications today.
