Dealing with Change
                                                                           
                                                             By JJ Reich 

Committed employees with lower absentee and turnover rates.

Suppliers that trust you and find ways to help you run your business better.

Customers that choose your business again and again, as well as recommend you, your products and services everyday to their friends, family and neighbors.

Would any of these 3 things help you run your business better?

Of course they would.  What all of these things have in common is that they are built around strong relationships between the business (owner) and it's stakeholders - employees, suppliers and customers. 

That's right, in essence, owning a business is about building and maintaining relationships.  No question about it.  And whether you are talking about building and maintaining long term relationships with your employees, your customers or, your suppliers, if you can't do it consistently, you will not survive long.  That may sound simple, but you don't build "relationships" that work over night.  Strong, mutually beneficial relationships require time and open communications between the parties involved. 

Unfortunately, very few small business owners really understand this idea.  And it's their lack of understanding of this concept that consistently costs them their business, and often their happiness and sanity along the way.

So how does open communication help build the relationships critical to business success?

There are many ways that it does, but I just want to discuss three very basic ways right here:

   - Open communication builds trust.  Trust is the foundation of enduring relationships - without it, no relationship can provide a mutually beneficial, long term environment.  And the building block to creating that trust is open communications. 
   - Open communications builds alignment of thought - shared vision.  We're not just talking about one way communication from business owner to stakeholder, sharing ideas and vision.  Real communication is two-way.  The more both sides are able to feel their ideas and opinions are valued in the process, the more they will align themselves with the decisions and direction of the business. 
   - Open communications helps alleviate fear.  As many of my clients have heard me say, most emotional responses (regardless of how they are presented under stress) are built from fear.  And the natural enemy of fear is education.  So the more information you share with the stakeholders involved in your business, the less fearful of the unknown they will be - and the more likely you will have them on your side rather than fighting against you, every step of the way. 

Learning to communicate is a life long journey.  Every situation and every relationship is a little different.  But if you can do a couple small things well, then you will very quickly become a strong communicator and build relationships like you didn't think were possible. 

So now you know why, let me give you a couple small things you can do right now to make a difference:

Watch and listen more than you talk:  Many business owners think they know everything. They think they have all the solutions (or the solutions don't exist).  They know what their employees should be doing, what their customers need and / or want, and of course they know what they need from their suppliers. 

But stop and think - didn't you also know every thing when you were a teenager?  And haven't you started to realize as you have "matured" that you didn't.  And if you would have just listened a bit more to those around you, who knows what would have happened. 

Remember, we were given two eyes and two ears
and only one mouth for a reason -
so we would listen twice as much as we talk.

Open up and allow yourself to be vulnerable:  Vulnerability doesn't make you weak - it makes you a human and in the eyes of your team, it makes you more trustworthy.  You can't do everything!  If you could, you wouldn't need anyone to begin with.  People want to be apart of something bigger than themselves - but they also want to know that their participation matters.  If you want your staff, your suppliers and your customers to believe in your vision when you share it and to commit to it, let them know that you can't do it alone.  Tell them that you need them - that you need a strong team that will help the business become what it is truly capable of becoming. 

Share everything about your business you possibly can:  Whether it be with your employees, your suppliers, or your customers, most people are surprised how much sharing knowledge comes back to them.  They are surprised at how it returns in commitment and loyalty as well as money in the pocket.  The more people can understand how they fit into the big picture of your business, the more they will do what they can to make your vision a reality. 

Become of student of communication:  If you learn nothing else from reading this article, then learn that there is more to communicating than meets the eye.  They say that of all communications, 70% of it is listening.  And of all the basic forms of communicating, nearly everyone has had countless hours of training in reading, writing and speaking (all the way through school), but less than 1% of the population has any formal training in listening.  Recommended reading on the subject includes:  Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson , How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie , and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey .