Building Relationships Through Communication: Adapting Your Style for Better Client and Team Connections

Have you ever wondered why, when you are trying to explain something to a team member or client, they don’t seem to be understanding you? Or perhaps why you and a client just don’t seem to be on the same page?

With more than 25 years in the industry, accountant turned business advisor, strategist and coach and self-confessed “closet psychologist”, Simonne Liley has seen first-hand a lot of the communication challenges faced by bookkeepers and accountants as they grow their client base and their teams.

Through the Core Leadership Institute, Simonne now helps accountants and business advisors learn new strategies for dealing with challenging relationships.

Having these strategies is key, she says, for important moments such as onboarding new clients or team members, or working through change.

In many cases, Simonne says, when you meet resistance from clients or team members, it’s not because they don’t want to do what you want; it’s a comprehension problem or a communication breakdown.

Why Communication Breaks Down – Damanging Relationships

“The same words are spoken to everybody in the team and every one of them will have a different interpretation of it based on their experience, their memories and their triggers”, she says.

“We receive a lot of information every second, and to be able to process that in this beautiful brain of ours, we use a process of delete, distort, and generalise. And how we delete, distort, and generalise is based on all of our default programming.

“So, for example, if someone is feeling like they’re not good enough, they’re battling imposter syndrome, then it’s possible that they will get stuck in step two or three because they have a fear of failing, of getting it wrong.”

When these situations happen. Simonne says it’s vital to be able to regulate your own emotions and look at the situation clearly.

“It’s super easy to get defensive, especially when we’re people who deeply care about what we deliver and deeply care about our clients. When someone challenges you, it would be very easy to take that on board as a personal attack”, she says. “When you are emotionally regulated healthily, then you’re able to sit with that and go ‘what’s really going on here?’ ‘Is there something for me to take on board here?’”

It’s also important to take into account how the other person is reacting.

“It’s not just how we talk, it’s also about body language”, Simonne says.

“If you think about silence, there’s a lot being said in silence. Or you might get an oversharer who’s going to share a lot of things. Think about them as a full balloon that needs to get all the air out – the quicker you lock in and listen, the faster that balloon will dissipate”.

Catering To Different Learning Styles

Another good technique is to offer information in several different ways.

“We’ve got to consider that what’s right for one isn’t right for another. You have different styles like visual, auditory or kinesthetic. It’s about making sure the information is absorbed effectively”.

How do you do that?

For visual learners, use images alongside words to help them lock in ideas. For example, she says, if you are explaining to a client how using an accountant frees up time, you might show a picture of a beach and tell a story about having time to lie on the beach. That helps them connect the visual with the idea of having more time.

You could also record videos of you completing tasks so they have visual clues to follow, as well as step-by-step instructions.

For people who learn in a hands-on way, you might print out the notes for them so they have the tactile experience of holding the paper notes in their hands. It’s also important for this style of learner to be able to have a go. So if, for example, you were teaching a new accounting software, you wouldn’t simply show them, you’d get them to do the work while you talked them through the steps.

“When we open up our language with a focus on different personality types and possibilities, we’re then more likely to get cohesion in the team and more ownership of implementation of the changes”, she says.

Words That Can Hold Us Back From Building Strong Relationships

While Simonne may be a big advocate for a range of communication styles, there are two words she’d like to eradicate from everyone’s business vocabulary. Those are ‘but’ and ‘just’.

“Using ‘but’ can really disrupt our brain and make us disconnect”, she says. “We do this often as leaders, when we are explaining something to our team. You explain or describe something and then use the word ‘but’ and it confuses our boundaries and we often forget what came before”.

“And ‘just’ is very minimising. I’ve heard these things a million times over – ‘I’m just a bookkeeper’ or ‘It’s just payroll’. You might think it’s just a word, but if you’re using that to describe yourself or describe a strategy, it’s just minimising and we don’t want to do that”.

So, next time you are communicating with a client, colleague or team member, see if you catch yourself using either of those words, and make an effort to adjust them. You might find it makes a difference to your mindset as well as those around you.

If you’d like to delve deeper into developing your leadership skills, you can find out more at the Core Leadership Institute.