Another Communication Post..but this one is worth the read.

How many of you struggle with communicating with your adult leaders, parents, staff, students? I am sure that most of your hands went up..actually you probably didn't actually raise your hand while reading this blog, but you might have done a little nod. Maybe even some of you yelled out in your office, "You betcha!" I am sure of all the things you could have yelled out the chances are it was, "You betcha!" Anyways, we as humans, as leaders, as ministers have the ongoing struggle of comminicating.

The number one thing about communicating is that we know what we need to communicate. I am not going to go into depth on this blog, you can go hide out in an office or starbucks somewhere and figure that one out. Maybe it would be a great idea to ask your Pastor what he believes is the most important thing for you to communicate. If you agree then you better start working on it. If you disagree then you need to spend some time with your pastor and communicate what you believe you need to communicate.

Today we are going to look at another aspect of communication. It is actually the mindset of communication. One of our biggest hurdles in communicating effectively is that we don't have the right mindset about communication and what a leader needs to do in communication.

Oftentimes we give out 7 different ways of what we are trying to do from an event, to leading a meeting, to how you want something to be organized and it still doesn't look or work the way you expected. And even sometimes after you have sent out emails, made phone calls and gave the ol' Open door policy to your leaders and students they still don't know what your thinking.

The answer to this is nailed down to 1 major understanding about who you are as a leader. If you have an event, have a meeting, or whatever it is and the people who are on your team are struggling to know what was or is going on.... "It is your fault!" You see even if you sent out emails, did the phone tree, sent a singing telegram, and yelled it from your announcements during youth group, if they don't get what your saying you failed as a communicator. I know this one hurts. We all do it. We think that if we give 7 different ways for people to know what it is that we are doing that if they don't get the answers it was b/c they didn't put out the effort and do it. Even though your correct that they had 7 chances to know what your were doing you have to remember the goal. Is the goal to provide communication or is your goal to actually communicate? If it is to provide communication then all you need to do is provide communication. But if your goal is to communicate and there for make things less frustrating and more effective then instead of just providing communication you need to make sure that you do everything you can that every person your trying to reach gets that communication and understands it.

So the next time you have adult leaders who say, "I didn't know we had a meeting." Please, I mean, Please don't say, "Well, I sent out an email, and I announced it at the last meeting, you need to pay more attention." Instead say, "What can I do to make sure that you know when the next meeting is."

Hope this helps!!

In Christ,

Kevin Deming