By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker

From childhood, we are told to “use our words,” and once we have a grasp on the finer points of how those words fit into sentences, the world of easy communication seems to open right up. It seems simple to give voice to thoughts and exchange them with others. Why, then, do we have to look so hard to find good communicators?

I have yet to meet someone who self-identifies as a bad communicator. Yet some incident of miscommunication occurs almost every day, small or large, sometimes with catastrophic results. Statistically, we cannot all be as good as we claim.

In the high-stress world of entrepreneurship, communication is especially important. There are plenty of elements to this difficult process that we cannot control: markets, customers, the weather. We can get anxious and irritable trying to hit the moving target of client needs in a changing world. But we control our communication. When we communicate with our colleagues and clients, we need to take pains to make sure we are clarifying and edifying, not further muddying the waters.

So what’s the single biggest mistake we make in communication? We assume.

We think people already know what’s expected of them, and what values are important to us. We credit them with psychic abilities and deep interest in us. This credit comes with responsibility, though: we feel justified in our anger when others don’t meet the expectations, or follow different values. But really, we never told them what we wanted. How can we be mad when they don’t give us what we expected?

I am a huge proponent of articulating expectations, big and small. I’m not saying we need to articulate basic universal truths every time we have a conversation. Yes, the sky is still blue, gravity still pulls down, and water is wet. When we started USI, we started by articulating our values, the highest good we could set for ourselves as a guide in all future decision-making.

Every time a new person came on board, we told them about our values, intentionally and overtly. We didn’t assume they’d just get it as they went along – values and expectations are too important for that kind of assumption. Every time we gained a new client, we sat down and talked through exactly what our relationship would look like. We shone a light on every nitty-gritty bit, so no assumptions could lurk in dark corners, waiting to trip us up in the future.

What does all this articulation get us, other than the warm and fuzzy feeling of a job well done? It gets us time, productivity, and less frustration in the long run.

When you know what’s expected of you, as a colleague or client, you know exactly when you’re not going to meet the expectation. You can come up with alternatives for making up the shortfall, or solutions to the problems stopping you from accomplishing your goals, or revisions to the expectations that are more reasonable. Some of those ideas may allow the whole company to pivot before a problem really develops.

The alternative is to be blindsided by someone’s anger that you didn’t expect and don’t have an answer for. Not only does the recovery from a confrontation slow productivity, but it can also breed resentment over time. It’s not fair to expect people to read minds. Working hard at what you thought was the right thing, only to be chastised and told your efforts were a waste, hurts. A little time at the beginning of a job or project can prevent that hurt, and yield productive results.

Less explosive, but still negative, is the outcome where you find out you have been working at cross purposes with someone because you each had a different concept of what you were working toward. That’s like having two horses pulling a cart in two different directions at once. They don’t have to be pulling in opposite directions to cost a lot of forward momentum. Communication at the outset keeps everyone’s strength harnessed together.

There are so many surprises that can come from outside, why create more inside? Give your colleagues the gift of understanding and certainty, and your whole company will benefit.

Ed McLaughlin is currently co-writing the book “The Purpose Is Profit: Secrets of a Successful Entrepreneur from Startup to Exit” with Wyn Lydecker and Paul McLaughlin.

Copyright © 2014 by Ed McLaughlin All rights reserved.