Envisioning a contentious work environment is enough to make you want to remain passive. Perhaps you are an employee who has issues you’d like to articulate, or maybe you are a manager who wants to both learn and educate about methods for more effective communication methods. Regardless of your position at your job, supportive communication examples can help you to create a more amicable atmosphere at work. This way, the entire team will feel comfortable enough to articulate concerns on the go and improve the company.

1. Ask for Feedback

Encouraging positive communications in the workplace often starts with the managers. If you have a leadership position in your company, craft an environment that encourages feedback. Supportive communication examples can come from you. Ask your employees for feedback.

Some employees may have trepidation about articulating their concerns to you. Therefore, you can start an anonymous platform for doing so. For example, you may leave a box near the entrance to the building so that employees can leave you their suggestions. On the other hand, incorporating supportive communication examples into your business should foster honesty and openness.

2. Listen Fully

One of the most important supportive communication examples is to listen fully to your colleagues. Encourage them to do the same for one another. When you hear an idea with which you disagree, you may feel an urgent need to voice your opinions.

However, wait until the other person is finished talking. When you are constantly cutting other individuals off from finishing their articulation of ideas, you add to a hostile environment as opposed to fostering an open one.

3. Think before Responding

You may also have an inclination to immediately respond, especially when you disagree with the person speaking. Imagine how you would feel if everyone you spoke, someone disagreed with you right away and did not even think about your ideas. Before you respond to comments, take the time to really evaluate what the individual is saying. While you might still disagree, you are at least providing yourself with the time to consider the other perspective. In other words, you may see why the person feels that way.

4. Host Workshops

People often do not communicate well with one another. Most of the reasons behind this have something to do with a lack of understanding of how to do it. In fact, some of your colleagues or employees may not even realize that an issue exists with communication in the workplace.

By hosting a workshop, you are not directly sitting down with individuals and stating that they have struggles with communication. Instead, you are letting the entire staff know how important strong communication skills are and provide them with supportive communication examples.

The workshop should not follow the style of a lecture. You are then sending the message that the staff members’ ideas don’t matter. Instead, make sure you organize the event as an interactive session.

5. Create Role-Playing Activities

Putting the team members into actual scenarios that they might encounter can help the whole staff to strengthen their communication skills. For example, you might have employees pick pieces of paper from a jar in the assignment of roles. Then, they have to act out how they would respond in those scenarios.

While you do want to select scenarios that emulate situations that actually happen in the workplace, you also don’t want employees to start mocking one another. Exercise caution in the examples that you choose for the role-playing activities.

6. Provide Evaluations

Let your employees know that you’re going to start placing more of an emphasis on communication. When you inform team members that this focus is universal, they are less likely to feel as though certain individuals have been singled-out for critique. Schedule evaluations with each team member.

During these conversations, you can articulate what your concerns are. However, you should also ask individuals what it is that they would like to work on in terms of communication. You can provide supportive communication examples that are relevant to their personal goals.

7. Practice Politeness

Acting in a polite manner to your fellow employees can help a great deal in having more positive communications. You can keep your work and social lives separate while still exuding a respectful demeanor.

When people feel as though you do respect them, you can often find that more fruitful conversations come into existence. Instead of having a heated debate about policies at the office, you can engage in a useful conversation about how to incorporate multiple ideas into new regulations.

8. Establish Policies

If you find that employees are communicating in argumentative manners, you should set policies. While you don’t want to sound as though you are constantly policing the ways in which people speak to one another, you must understand that some situations are truly serious.

For example, you must have policies in place to protect employees if disagreements rise to the level of harassment, physical abuse or other such problems. Also, you can provide general guidelines for useful methods in communicating with one another.

9. Offer Readings

Creating workshops and providing guidelines allow you to model supportive communication examples and set regulations. However, you can also show employees that these ideas exist in the larger world outside of your workplace. Providing reading material for employees to engage with as a part of their workday can help them to understand the true importance of communicating properly.

10. Encourage Connections

When employees feel intimidated by a colleague or feel that a particular person is difficult to approach, communication may fail. Encouraging employees to know one another better can help.

For example, you can bring ice-breaker activities into workshops and meetings. Also, you may want to take the staff out for lunch or for a corporate-bonding activity. As employees start to better see one another as human beings, communications may improve overall.

Final Word

Communicating with other people in a positive manner at the workplace is pivotal. In fact, when you implement these changes, you may notice that the overall climate of your business changes. Moreover, a harmonious corporal environment can generate even more growth.