Do this to really figure out how good your communication skills are

How do you know your stakeholder relationships are strong? How do you know that your colleagues value your skills? How do you know that your communication skills are supporting your career and not creating stress – for yourselves and others?

And wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple way to check this out? Well, it turns out there is!

Welcome to the Power Audit. Here’s how you do it.

Write down 10 stakeholders that you communicate with the most. It could be a colleague on another team, or someone in a different division, or perhaps it’s somebody in another continent entirely.

Beside their name place a number between 1 – 10. This number reflects how much you rely on them to do your job.

Think about what this person does to support you in your role.

Are they the kind of person who’s calm and a harbour in tough times? Are they creative and come up with great ideas? Are they the person who has their finger on the pulse and knows office politics really well?

If this person is really important to you and someone you think would be tricky to replace, put a higher number beside them.

Then, flip the exercise.

Put another number beside each stakeholder that reflects the value you they receive from you. You could imagine it from their perspective.

Or you could be bold and ask them to grade you and then take it a stage further and arrange to meet up to explore their answers and how they consider you could up things from a 6 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10.

Heck, what would a 10 out of 10 look like to this person?

Let’s be ambitious here!

Done regularly, this exercise lets you check in on the temperatures of your key business relationships and gives you both an aerial view and a deeper dive into them.

It also lets you see who has power and influence in the relationships and if that’s in balance. Or if it’s not and somebody holds all of their cards.

It also lets you see where your stronger relationship are and if they are spread in an even way across your organisation or if they’re all on the one floor of the same building.

For example, are 2 of your 10 stakeholders scoring off the charts but everyone else is below a 4?

And are there common themes emerging? Do you have a reputation for being ahead of deadlines? Are you the person others contact for an update because of your clear, concise communication skills? Or are you the person that brings harmony to teamwork with your diplomacy, humour and kindess?

The Power Audit is a great way to measure and chart relationship building skills and see the strength of your network.

Try it out. And drop me a line if you’d like to strengthen your communication skills, confidence and career. I’d love to support you with that.