My work involves change management & communicating/training the change to different teams. I communicated to my manager for 5 months that I struggle with the communication part of my role. We’ve had large amount of role outs over the past year and updates have been constant. Their directive was to delegate. I have a large team so this advice seemed sound. However, in my quarterly review I was told I need to improve my communication across teams. Feeling duped. Would you feel the same?

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I know this is slightly counterintuitive. However, I would try to figure out where you may be lacking when it comes to communication and then relay that to your manager so that your manager can assist you accordingly. I would also work on having a schedule where you meet with your team members on a regular basis to ensure that everyone is on the same page and then follow up with an email with an outline of what you discussed.

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I see! I’ve been there before and I’m sure plenty others have been there too. If these scenarios were fairly recent, I would acknowledge the initial reaction and just say hey, I understand that there is some uneasiness regarding these projects, however these are the reasons as to why these projects will have a positive impact in the long run and then from there, try to put forth examples as to what they’ve already completed will relate to these new tasks so it doesn’t seem so daunting. People are creatures of habit naturally, so sometimes it will feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle when it comes to instilling some kind of change or introducing a new project.

It would help to know more about which part of the communication you found challenging prior to delegation.

We're you struggling to communicate the details of the changes to the teams, or were you struggling to stay on top of the communications because there were so many? Or maybe that you handled the initial communication well but struggled with follow ups.

Because even if you delegated the communications but were struggling to communicate the details in a way the team understands, it doesn't help the situation it just adds a middle man. If it was just struggling to stay on top of it, same thing because you are still having to stay on top of it to have your team communicate. So delegation can be a solution for some communication struggles, but isn't a great solution for others. Seems like your manager should have worked through the specifics with you better and given better feedback.

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The part I found challenging as being in constant meetings to relay information. It felt like the only way to get things across clearly was if I met with people one and one or in a very small groups to ensure the “why” was covered. My group is responsible for process changes across departments and building the training to support it.
Now I’ve delegated certain communications to be relayed through my assistant managers, and since I work in a virtual space, I also set up a observable Trello board that outlines current and future projects , initiatives, and sprint releases. however, it always seems as if there are one or two team members who feel they don’t know what’s going on. As I’m walking through this, I feel as if this is leaning towards follow up of understanding?

Are you following up on what you delegate? Is the communication being sent out on your behalf by the person you delegated it to, or does it look like it was their initiative?

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I would say it’s in the middle. I try my best to always have a soft handoff when I pass my projects on for my asst. managers to handle. I’ll let the team member know that the asst. manager will be reaching out to talk about a certain topic for a new project that’s coming. I do follow up with the asst. manager once a week.

Okay yeah, idk the specifics of your industry, but follow ups are always tricky to manage especially when people trickle out saying they don't know what's happening.

When I've handled trainings/implementations in the past I found it helpful to do the initial meeting, have sign off sheets/attendance tracked by an assistant, so we can follow up with people who didnt show up and make sure they got the info. I would also schedule a review for 1 or 2 weeks out to see what parts of the new systems are working/not working or what they needed extra help understanding. I'd send an email immediately after the initial meeting asking them to send me any questions they may have about the topic for the review meeting, usually using a simple Google/Microsoft Form so they can submit questions anonymously and it would keep it all organized for me. Then resend the form a few days before the review. Then I built those Q&As into the review.

It seems like a lot of steps but it helped mitigate the one on one's to catch people up because they knew a review was coming so they were okay with waiting, and they'd submit their questions instead of scheduling a meeting with me. It also made it more efficient becasue before that i would find that the same question would be asked over and over which meant i didnt cover it very well initially, so it gave me a chance to rethink the approach.

You seem to have a good team behind yo, so whatever solution you come up with, check their feedback and see what they think would make it easier. they may have some great ideas.

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to everyone and say thank you! I’ve taken all of your suggestions into consideration and built out a new communication plan for my team that I will be implementing immediately. Thank you for reflecting with me and helping me see different perspectives. I’ll continue to follow up here a month or so from now to give an update on how everything is going.

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