More is more: The power of over-communicating at your accounting firm

By keeping everyone—your team and clients—in the loop, you can ensure everyone is on the same page, aligned and working towards the same goal.

As the saying goes: "If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, take your team with you."

By clearly communicating frequently (even when there isn’t too much to say) to your team, you can go much further together than you could ever alone. And doing the same with your clients, will ensure you continue to earn their trust and strengthen your relationship.

Why it’s important to over-communicate at your accounting firm 

Keeping your team in the loop doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as communicating what was discussed during a client meeting (even if that meeting wasn’t particularly eventful).

You can do this in many different ways, including:

• Verbally during meetings (in-person or via Zoom)

• Within your practice management tool

• Via Slack or Microsoft Teams

If you are over-communicating with your team, they will be aware of what is expected of them and what your firm’s goals are. The left hand knows what the right hand is doing. This will help them to be more effective in their roles, work more effectively as a team, and it can even contribute to boosting staff morale.

Why you should avoid under-communicating at your accounting firm

Conversely, most problems occur because leaders under-communicate. A lack of communication results in team-wide misalignment, confusion, frustration, scope creep, missed deadlines—the list goes on.

Over-communication may seem like an extra hassle, but remember Pareto’s Principle: 80% of outcomes come from roughly 20% of effort. And extra communication falls into this 20% category.

Communication skills in accounting can be improved. This involves:

• Clearly understanding your current communication practices

• Deciding how and where you want your team to communicate

• Ensuring they have the soft skills required

• Ensuring your tech stack will enable your team to communicate correctly

Train your leaders to be better communicators

Some are better at communicating than others, but it can be learned through training. Are you putting sufficient time into your managers to train them to over-communicate or are you simply leaving it to chance?

Here are some resources to share with them to help improve how, where and how much they’re communicating with clients and team members:

• Accounting communication: How to improve your team’s communication for better client relationships

• Communication and meeting rhythms to drive the perfect client relationship

• How to solve the 5 main communication challenges of working remotely

• 10 tools for remote team collaboration