Talking the Talk – For Learning & Performance

 

You need project workers to learn a lot in order to perform at optimum in your project. For example, a worker may possess useful knowledge and experience from previous projects at other organizations, but you have to make sure to fill any gaps in cultural differences, stakeholder preferences, organizational mores, standards, policies and project rules and process assets. It can be a long list.

Just dumping all this information workers at the beginning of a project is not adequate. What are the chances it will be absorbed fully and applied correctly when you need it, even if organized and accessible? Not good enough to maintain high performance and avoid project issues.

Material such as this must be learned by workers together, “processing” it in a special collective way. A new book describes how to be successful at doing this. Does it take some advanced social media feature? Must you engage a more sophisticated content management system module? Not necessarily. The title of the book gives a hint, but may be a letdown: Talk, Inc.

The message is not simply “talk it out.” There is a method to attaining effective discussions that lead to learning and improved performance. There are things you do first, so the things you do next will work. The book is actually written for leadership and enterprise-wide communications, I have used this summary to derive some tips you can use for your project communications.

Start with Intimacy . . . I was a bit concerned when I saw this particular term, but the explanation makes sense. Luckily, it did not include any awkward touching or special therapy-circle language. This is the first step to building a culture that supports information transfer.

• Promote being authentic in communications. Do it yourself by being open and honest.

• Support everyone being trustworthy in activities. Do what you can to do build trust between team members. Show your own trust in people.

• Incorporate the project team’s views in decisions and in learning within the project environment. Show that you listen. Ask questions to learn more and show better that you are an active listener. This will also be an example to others.

By doing the above, you will be laying the foundation for effective project communications, no matter what the media used. In my next post, we will look at the three other characteristics of an organization (or project) that has effective transfer of information, with plenty of tactics for you to use in your project.