Best Practices of Effective Project Communicators

To better understand these communication principles and to improve your communication abilities, let's review the common, best practices used by effective project communicators. We'll look at general communications management, status reports, conducting meetings, interpersonal skills, and the best use for the common communication media.

General Communications Management

First, let's review the best practices of general project communications management.

tip

Responsibility for project communications is an excellent project management apprentice opportunity.

Communications Options

Now, more than ever, there are many communication media available to your project. To best manage project communications, you need to understand the strengths and limits of each option, so that you use the medium that is most appropriate for the type of relationship you have with the targeted audience and for the content of the message. The right choices can improve project productivity, facilitate open communications, and build stronger stakeholder relationships. The wrong choices create misperceptions, confusion, and weaker stakeholder relationships.

tip

Set up voice mail and email distribution lists to streamline communicating with project team members and project stakeholders.

To assist your communications decision-making, let's review the best uses and important notes for the common communication options. This summary is captured in Table 17.1.

Table 17.1. Summary of Project Communication Options

Communication Option

Best Use(s)

Important Notes

Face-to-Face

Best method to start business relationships and to earn trust;

Best for sensitive, interpersonal, ordifficult messages

Richest, most efficient method;

Only way to do business in manycultures;

"Showing up" demonstrates commitment

Video-conferencing

Best substitute for face-to-face meetings

Not always available;

Make sure technology works in advance

Direct audio (telephone)

When interactive conversation is needed;

When visual communication is not needed;

When urgency is important;

When privacy is important

If placed on speaker phone, assume there are others in the room

Voice mail

Short messages;

When common message needs to be sent to multiple people;

When targeted stakeholder is auditory-oriented or is inundated with email

If lengthy message, summarize message content up-front;

Avoid for controversial or sensitive communications;

Make sure stakeholder checks voice mail regularly

Electronic mail

When common message needs to be sent to multiple people;

When supporting documentsare needed;

When targeted stakeholder is visually oriented or prefers email communications;

When communication recordis needed

If lengthy message, summarize message content up-front;

Avoid for controversial or sensitive communications;

Make sure stakeholder checks email regularly;

Use subject line wisely;

Be cognizant of the size of attachments sent

Instant Messaging

For daily interactions of project team;

For virtual project teams;

Can use IM conferencing to provide a record of meeting collaboration

Helps to build community and project team intimacy;

Not appropriate for formal work relationships;

Keeps the office quieter;

Monitor privacy and confidentiality concerns

Audio conferencing

When group collaboration is needed and face-to-face meeting isnot possible

More social presence than email or IM;

Allows participants to "multitask" and "do other things"; fullattention is an issue;

Not as effective at building trust among participants;

Most systems all conference to be recorded

Web conferencing with audio

When group collaboration is needed and face-to-face meeting is not possible;

When data or presentation needsto be shared;

Virtual training sessions

Same challenges as audio conferencing;

Invest more prep time on tech-nology readiness and training;

Able to record questions;

Record and make available for later access

 

Status Reporting

The best status reporting practices of effective project communicators include

tip

Send project documents as PDF files to reduce potential conflicts with software tools, minimize the size of email attachments, and to protect communication content.

caution

Avoid using any recorded media (email, voice mail) for negative, sensitive, or controversial communications.

Then provide details in the appendix section. This format should allow you to provide one status report that will meet the needs of most, if not all, of your key stakeholders.

Meetings

The best meeting practices of effective project communicators include the following:

tip

Establishing and building stakeholder relationships is a higher priority than enforcing a strict meeting protocol.

 

Interpersonal Skills

The next set of best practices are likely the most important because they impact the quality of all your project communicationsthe formal and the more frequent day-to-day interpersonal communications that occur between the project team and the project stakeholders. The following list notes the key interpersonal skills demonstrated by effective communicators.

The Absolute Minimum

At this point, you should have a solid understanding of the following:

  • Effective communications are important to managing perceptions, managing expectations, managing the project team, reducing conflicts and overcoming any project management gap in other areas.

  • The five Cs of effective communications are clarity, conciseness, courteous, consistency, and compelling.

  • The most important communication skill is listening.

  • The three most powerful communication techniques are also the simplest: Give it your full attention, use your manners, and follow through.

  • The most important mindset trait for effective communications is taking responsibility for understanding.

  • Check out meeting collaboration tools such as MindManager at mindjet.com to streamline your meeting management processes.

The map in Figure 17.2 summarizes the main points we reviewed in this chapter.

Figure 17.2. Overview of managing project communications.

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