Facilities Check List
Practical, step-by-step guides for the busy FM
July 2001
Last month’s column discussed skills supervisors need to send effective messages. This month, we will look at the skills supervisors need as message receivers.
Supervisors receive as many messages as they send. Thus, supervisors must possess or develop communication skills that allow them to be effective message receivers. In particular, they must pay attention, be good listeners, and be empathetic.
Pay Attention
Because of their multiple roles and tasks, supervisors are often overloaded and forced to think about several things at once. Torn in many different directions, they sometimes do not pay sufficient attention to the messages they receive.
To be effective, however, supervisors should pay attention to all messages, no matter how busy they are. When discussing a project with an employee, an effective supervisor focuses on the project and not on an upcoming meeting with the boss. Similarly, supervisors should focus their attention on understanding messages they are reading. They should not be sidetracked into thinking about other issues.
Be Good Listeners
Like most people, supervisors often like to hear themselves talk. Part of being a good communicator, however, is being a good listener. Supervisors can do several things to be good listeners:
- Refrain from interrupting senders in the middle of a message. Interruptions can cause senders to lose their train of thought and may allow the listeners to jump to erroneous conclusions based on incomplete information.
- Maintain good eye contact to help them focus on the message and convey to listeners that they are paying attention.
- After receiving a message, ask questions to clarify points of ambiguity or confusion. Summarize the points that are important, complex, or open to alternative interpretations to ensure proper feedback needed for successful communication.
Be Empathetic
Empathy, which is the ability to understand another person’s point of view, positively influences the communication process. Empathy requires supervisors to put themselves in the speaker’s shoes.
As receivers, supervisors are empathetic when they try to understand how the sender feels and try to interpret a message from the sender’s point of view. Notice that empathy demands both knowledge of the speaker or sender and flexibility by supervisors when they are receiving a message. Supervisors must suspend their own thoughts and feelings and adjust what they see and feel to their speaker’s world. In that way, supervisors can increase the likelihood that they will interpret the message in the way the sender intended.
By displaying empathy, supervisors establish the groundwork for creating an atmosphere of trust and understanding, which is important to effective communications.
This installment of FM Check List is adapted from BOMI Institute’s Administration (www.bomi-edu.org/12121.html), course in BOMI Institute’s Systems Maintenance Administrator (SMA) program.
