Informal communication

- Most of the energy and project communication is about formal communication. You can find plenty of courses on improving your business writing or presentation skills. But the majority of your communication will be informal. Informal communication is delivered in two ways. There is informal written communication and informal verbal communication. A good way to think about informal communication is all of your communication that's not prepared. In today's projects, you'll mostly receive informal messages as email. It's informal but it kind of arrives in a non-standard format and it's casually written. A classic informal message is notice, something like, there's cake in the kitchen, or the 10 a.m. meeting is canceled. A project manager will often receive dozens or hundreds of these messages each day. It's almost as if someone is tapping you on your shoulder. This short, informal, written communication is how you'll usually interact with your team. But you'll also have a lot of informal verbal communication. Although it's not as popular as email, these chats will still take up a good chunk of your day. They're usually cubical discussions or feedback after formal meetings. Like formal communication, these informal chats come with several assumptions. The fact that it's informal usually means that it's easier to ask questions. You're not as worried about interrupting. This is the real strength of informal communication. It's usually much easier to get the unfiltered information that you need. Sometimes, the presenter will say something that's incorrect at a formal presentation. But it can be rude to correct the presenter during a formal presentation. So most of that will be clarified with a small chat after the formal event. When I was a project manager, the program manager would have a slide presentation each month on how each project fit into the larger portfolio. The meeting was a formal, verbal presentation. The program manager would prepare remarks and then deliver them to the group. Because it was a large audience, you could never ask any questions. Instead, each project manager would add several small, informal chats, to clarify parts of the presentation. Some project managers do this by standing close to their team. Then they can easily see when someone's available for a quick chat. Other project managers will do something called MBWA. That's an acronym for management by walking around. These project managers walk around and encourage team members to have spontaneous chats. Project managers know that having a lot of these chats will fill in some of the gaps from informal reports and presentations. Another thing project managers can do is make sure that you're accessible for chats with your stakeholders. They'll usually tell you more informally than they would share in a formal report. Finally, make sure that you're seen as friendly and interested in solving problems. This is a common theme throughout all communication challenges. If your team, your stakeholders see you as unfriendly, then they'll be less likely to have these quick chats. You won't be able to get by with just formal communication. If you skip these chats and depend only on formal reports, then you'll always be partly in the dark.