We are told from a young age that communication is key. This couldn’t be more true. As I continue to develop as a young professional, the importance of clear and effective communication becomes more apparent. I began to develop my communication skills in my youth. I participapated in a two week Leadership Experience and Adventure Program (LEAP) at the Sorrento Centre. The content included the importance of communication and conflict resolution. I wasn’t nearly as interested in this as I was in going to the beach. If I am being totally honest, I don’t remember much of the content from my time as a participant of LEAP.
The next summer I returned to the Sorrento Centre as a part of the summer youth staff. I would be spending the summer living together in community. This meant fifteen teenage girls sharing a loft. Good communication and conflict resolution was necessary. Again, being a teenager, I wasn’t very interested in sitting in a portable listening to the leadership team discuss “I feel” statements. The learning from this came from experience I gained living with the other girls.
The importance of clear communication was never something I gave much thought to learn more about until I entered my first long term relationship. My partner at the time and I had different communication styles. After completing my diploma in Sport Event Management, we moved to Edmonton together. We had no family, friends or network when we arrived. We fought endlessly and couldn’t figure out why. We both felt we weren’t being heard. During this time, I started working for lululemon. The training they provided during on boarding was holistic and once again included communication and conflict resolution. They stressed the importance of direct feedback. This meant telling our colleagues exactly what we meant as opposed to the ever popular “compliment sandwich”. We practiced using direct feedback to help elevate each other because we care about our colleagues personal and professional development. We did a session on radical candor and discussed how this allows us to challenge each other while still showing that we care. This training was intended to help educators connect effectively with our colleagues and guests. I found this training especially useful in my relationship. I learned to be direct and say what I really meant instead of avoiding conflict until I couldn’t handle what was upsetting me any longer. This was effective because I was able to express my feelings before I became overwhelmed by them. My colleagues recommended I do some research about communicating in relationships. Enter Gary Chapman’s “The five love languages” quiz. It turns out we had different love languages and weren’t effectively communicating with each other in a way that we both felt understood. The “I-feel” statements were reintroduced into my life. My love language was words of affirmation and quality time whereas my partner’s was acts of service. I learned that his way of expressing he cared was by doing the dishes and maintaining our home. When I discovered this was how also how he liked to be shown affection, our conflict lessened.
The culture at lululemon was driven by goal setting. One of my goals were to take on a leadership role and put my education to use. An opportunity came up for me to return to the Sorrento Centre as Children and Youth Program Coordinator. In this role I was responsible for creating the children and youth program and staff training manual (1.1). I had become a part of the leadership team, creating and delivering training on the same “boring” topics, to a team of teenagers that I was once a part of. I kept this in mind when creating the Summer Youth Staff training manual. I developed an interactive training program that increased staff engagement. I learned that actively including staff in the learning process by giving them challenges to the opportunity to take on a leadership role increased engagement because they felt invested in the content. This included creating a scavenger hunt to identify different areas of the site, communication and leadership games, roleplaying with conflict resolution and guest speakers.
I received a position as a Program Enhancement Coordinator with The Centre for Learning@HOME (CFL) after my time at the Sorrento Centre. The CFL is a part of the Christ the Redeemer school board based in Okotoks. CFL is distance based learning and has students across the province of Alberta. My role as Program Enhancement Coordinator was to create a holistic program for the students to supplement their learning to meet the Alberta Education learning outcomes. This was my first experience communicating with external stakeholders. In my role as Program Enhancement coordinator I was responsible for communicating with representatives from various vendors. I connected with representatives to inquire about their services, if they would provide valuable learning experiences for our students and ensure the services they provided complied with school, board and provincial standards. I learned to alter my communication with different vendors. This made my communication more efficient in booking programs. I was also responsible for all mass email campaigns. These campaigns were send to approximately one thousand recipients. I learned that this content was more effective if it was relevant to the broader audience. Within this I curated content, collateral and marketing lists. Examples of campaigns included monthly newsletters, welcome letters and other messaging as required. The monthly newsletters included upcoming programming. I was able to track which methods were more effective by number of responses I received in program enrolment.
My current position requires a lot of communication not only within, but also broader TRU community; including alumni and friends of the institution. I am a part of a team of five within alumni and a team of twenty-four in advancement. Ensuring things are communicated efficiently to the appropriate team members is a part of my day to day role. Within the broader community of TRU, I have been responsible for creating, evaluating and content creation for events, social media and our monthly newsletter: TRU Connections (5.2). I connect with anywhere from twenty to thirty-five thousand + stakeholders in my communications. When I took on interim role as Events Coordinator I had to train my incumbent on the newsletter. I reviewed the process of creating the newsletter which includes; sourcing stories that highlight alumni and the institution, any messaging from our department and stakeholders, events and our access cards. I reviewed how to evaluate each campaign to determine what information was the most popular and how to maintain the email list. I evaluate these campaigns and review the performance. The Alumni Relations office is still quite new in our communication and we continuously strive for improvement. This often looks like evaluating click to open ratios, click trends and audience reach. I have learned that our audience responds well to stories regarding their fellow alumni and institution updates. I have learned that the alumni access card program often has the highest click to open ratio, which speaks to the success of the program.