If you could address any of the communication or interpersonal issues at your workplace, what would it be? Would you tell your gossipy co-worker to keep her mouth shut? Would you tell your belligerent boss that you hear just fine and he doesn’t need to yell? Or, would you teach someone the difference between “your” and “you’re”?
I’m working on a professional communications training program for work, and although I’m surrounded by research right now, I’d love to hear personal accounts. If you could address anything in your workplace, what would it be? Some topics include:
Proper Business Writing
Professional Conversations
Interacting with Customers
Interpersonal Relationships
This course will cover basic communication from proper writing to appropriate conversations. I’d love to hear some stories of when you’ve encountered someone unprofessional in the workplace. Feel free to comment anonymously if you’d like to protect the (not-so) innocent.
The Giardino Journey 
I have many stories that uncover this in more detail. I had to learn how to communicate with an unexperienced manager who had a more experienced person reporting to her. It was delicate and called for much intervention to help bring the Manager up to speed on what that experienced employee needed to feel satisfied in her position and valued. I decided to do Strength Finders with my team to help pull out their strengths. I then met with each employee and their manager’s to help create more compatibility between their current job duties and their strengths. It was a challenge but the interaction between the team and their managers helped everyone realize how we could work as a more efficient team by changing things up and pulling from their strengths. After 3 months we met again to re evaluate the changes we had made and looked at what was working and what might need tweaking. We made changes again and in 3 more months looked at it again. I remember being very careful not to make the experienced Manager feel like she wasn’t qualified to manager the more experienced employee. It was helpful to brainstorm with the Strength Finders program to have that manager realize that you needed to make sure you were giving each employee what they needed in their respective roles. Overall everyone learned that you can learn from each other no matter how much you think you know or don’t know.
Salli