**Excellence in Professional Practice: Post #2: Communication**

YOU ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS ….. HOW YOU COMMUNICATE!!!!

Top down; bottom up; internal; external; embracing your stakeholders; old school; new school. Where do you start?

Face it, professional services starts and finishes with communication – written, oral, audio, visual, branding, PR, marketing and even body language has a big part to play.

It is trite in the extreme to start talking about Plain English – even though I am massive fan of making things understandable. No I am talking about style, content, sophistication and much more – pushing the boundaries like you have never pushed them before. Making communication the centre piece of your vision, strategy, recruitment, client engagement, staff meetings and stakeholder approval. In fact you need to tear up the (unwritten) rule book and lay it on the line.

When was the last time you asked your clients or referrers how they rated your communication? Oh I have seen a gazillion surveys where service was talked about as a generic but no survey rated language, WOW factor, authenticity, passion, emotion or “I care so much about you”.

This is not an undertaking that requires meeting after meeting; a committee here or forum there; and please don’t consider some nonsense focus group. Yuk!!

Just challenge everyone in your practice to communicate each day 100% better or more fantastically than they communicated yesterday and so on. No doubt lots of people will look for some sort of measurement tool (like Peter Drucker said: “If you can measure it you can manage it”) but I would implore you to focus not on the metrics but the WOW or the passion factor. Make it real, believable and let go of some of the messaging for a while.

For more on developing and innovating in professional practice and implementing social media, subscribe to the RSS Feed of my Blog. Follow me on Twitter at @0neLife, or @Ju_Summerhayes connect to me on LinkedIn, or friend me on Facebook. If I can help you or your practice, check out my coaching and consulting firm via LinkedIn, email me on juliansummerhayes@gmail.com or call me on 075888 15384.