What Communication Barriers Do Your Managers Face? Take Our Quiz
Managers are crucial to employee engagement and retention, but too many obstacles can get in their way.
By Julie Baron and Tom Corfman
In the finale of the first season of Hulu’s hit show “The Bear,” about a family-owned Italian beef sandwich shop in Chicago, Sydney Adamu says, “I wanna cook for people and make them happy and give them the best bacon on earth.”
Let’s say you owned a restaurant, like Michael Jordan’s in Chicago, whose bacon Sydney loves. How would you know if your bacon is the best in the world? Or even if it’s consistently good? You’d ask.
Communications is kind of like that. You can say it’s effective, even world-class, but how do you really know? You have to ask the people who are most responsible for delivering it. Leaders? Nope. Communicators? Think again.
Managers. Your company cannot bring home the bacon without successful manager communications.
Yet too many managers face barriers to effective communication. So, we devised this quiz after Julie spoke to communicators during a recent Ragan Communications conference.
Have a go, and when you’re done, we’ll show you how to grade your answers.
The quiz
Answer each of these questions about communication barriers:
1. My managers receive little or no communication training?
□ Yes □ No I don’t know
2. The communication training they get is limited to performance reviews?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
3. My managers sometimes withhold information from their direct reports?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
4. My managers receive information at the same time as employees?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
5. My managers don’t know they are employees’ most trusted and preferred source of information?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
6. My managers often feel overwhelmed because they get too much information?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
7. And yet, sometimes my managers don’t get enough information?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
8. My managers don’t have enough time to communicate to their direct reports?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
9. Manager communications are siloed in different business units or departments, with each one communicating different messages?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
10. Information comes to managers from different parts of the organization, with no coordination or planning?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
11. Managers get little guidance on how to prioritize communications?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
12. My managers think communication isn’t their job. (i.e., senior leadership, human resources, corporate communications does that)?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
13. My managers aren’t held accountable for how well they communicate with their team?
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
14. My managers lack confidence in their communication abilities.
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
15. My managers don’t do a good job communicating back up the chain to leaders.
□ Yes □ No □ I don’t know
Count up the yeses. Like golf, the lower the score, the better. Here’s how to grade:
Number
of yeses
0-3 Your managers are pretty good, with a few things to work on. Your grade: A.
4-6 Your managers need help. It’s time for training and TLC. Your grade: B.
7-12 When was your last communications assessment? Your grade: C.
13-15 The good news: There’s nowhere to go but up. Your grade: D.
15+ No one’s ever gotten an F, but there’s always a first time.
Don’t knows
8+ If you don’t know the answer to more than half the questions, it’s time for a comms assessment.
Now that you’ve taken the quiz, let’s find the real answers. Give the quiz to some of your managers. Compare their answers with yours. If your managers give honest answers, your grade will likely come down.
If your grades are less than you hoped, don’t be discouraged. Like Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto in the first episode of “The Bear,” just say, “I’m going to fix this place.”
Then do it, with a lot more sensitivity than the hot-headed chef.
Julie Baron, a very good cook in her own right, is an affiliate consultant with Ragan Consulting Group and an expert in helping managers become great communicators. Senior Consultant Tom Corfman runs RCG’s Build Better Writers program. He was a business reporter and editor for more than 25 years with the Chicago Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business.
Contact our client team to learn more about how we can help you with your communications. Follow RCG on LinkedIn and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
