Clarifying Your Preferred Communication Style

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

Communication is challenging in today’s environment with both the diversity in the workforce and the culturally diverse patient populations served by health systems. Leaders often report in studies that there are significant differences among team members in values and beliefs about non-verbal behaviors, use of social networking and preferred methods of communication.

Most of us have a preferred method of how we like others to communicate with us. This could be text messages, emails or a phone call. This should be shared with staff. You should also talk with staff about the timeframe that you will be back in touch with them. Many organizations require staff to have email accounts, and ask their leaders to communicate using email because it establishes a record of conversations. If this is true in your organization, then you are expected to read and respond to your email.

When nurse leaders don’t respond to their email or phone messages, it is frustrating for staff and colleagues. It conveys a message that this is not a priority for the leader and does not promote a positive work environment. It can also impact how you are perceived as a leader in a very negative way. Sometimes, leaders don’t respond to requests because they don’t want to answer negatively but in many respects no answer is far worse than a negative answer. It exacerbates conflict. Leadership expert, Margaret Hefferman, has noted that how responsive you are to email in today’s environment often defines your leadership. She also notes that the following are important to consider:

Your response time to email or phone message is a non-verbal cue about your leadership behavior. Research shows that the longer you take to respond, the more negatively you are viewed as a leader.
Replying to email or other messages is simple politeness; ignoring them suggests that you don’t care about the issue or the person who wrote to you. It’s virtually impossible to have good working relationships if your silence contains, or even hints at, contempt.
How you deal with requests or messages says something fundamental about how reliable you are. And that translates into trust.
Reputations are comprised of many such apparently minor details. It’s easy to think that they don’t matter and, individually, they might not. But cumulatively your daily behavior is what people notice and like or dislike, trust or distrust.
You can actually build an excellent reputation and even fame by just being responsive to requests from others.
Thinking that no response is the new no is in fact passive aggressive and rude. Most people can handle rejection far better than not knowing.

Nurse leaders should make responsiveness to messages and requests a priority. Recognize that response time says volumes about your character. If you are busy, just acknowledge the email and let them know you will get back to them. If you miss an email, apologize and acknowledge it. Improving your email and phone etiquette will improve your leadership reputation in ways that you might not anticipate.

Read to Lead

Hefferman, M. (May 20th, 2013). How do leaders respond to email? CBS Moneywatch Blog