PR ES I DEN T’S COLUM N
DOMENIC LAURIA Vizmeg Landscape, Inc.
DON’T OVERLOOK THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION While the value of possessing strong communication skills isn’t something that can be measured in numbers, the importance of these skills in our personal and professional lives cannot be overlooked. Effective communicators possess a certain skillset that helps them achieve what they want to with stunning efficiency. In this article, I want to discuss a few items I’ve found – through study and research – that have helped me to improve my abilities as a communicator. To begin, I’ve always looked at improving my communication skills as one of the many steps required to achieve the level of success that I strive for. I have found that by refining these skills I’ve improved myself as a leader, a manager, a husband, a father, and as a person. That being said, much of the research I’ve done – intentional and unintentional – I can relate back to the importance of communication. One recurring theme that I have come across is the importance of simplicity in communication. Personally, I struggled with this in the past as I prepared plans at work, sometimes making things more complex than they needed to be. In my head, being
overly-detailed with my plan seemed like a no-brainer. It would make things so simple that everything would just fall into place. Not necessarily. What I started to notice was that sometimes my guys truly didn’t understand my plan, even when they were telling me they did. At first, it was easy to put the blame on them. How could they not understand my plan? Why would they say they understood it, if they don’t? I worked diligently to think through every… single… variable. As it turns out, I realized the issue laid with me. I was making the plans too complex, and therefore harder to be communicated. And in the end, continued on page 6 The Growing Concern | June 2020 | 3
