By Linda Dulye, President and Founder, Dulye & Co. / The Dulye Leadership Experience

“Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.”

That was the overwhelming recommendation from a brainstorming session that I recently facilitated to canvas ideas for improving a professional organization that I actively participate in.  

The exercise was designed to give everyone a voice in solving a current challenge—how do we step up our members’ engagement? Akin to the workplace, the ideas gathered had a heavy communication bent and readily apply to work team engagement. Here’s a sampling:

• Do a better job of welcoming new members, visually and verbally
• Recognize members’ accomplishments
• Provide more opportunities for members to share about their work and interests
• Design meeting agendas with input from members 
• Add fun into our meetings 

Communication is the glue that boldly unites people—or divides them. Too little, it flares frustration. Done often, interactively and authentically, it connects and rallies. 

The act of ASKING for ideas to solve organizational or operational problems goes a long way. That seems so obvious, yet it is so often ignored. Establish a regular practice of posing this: How do we better engage you to…..? To participate in team meetings? Get involved on a special project? Improve the quality of our documentation? You fill in the blank.