The Case for a Communication Onboarding

We all know about employee onboarding—fill out the forms, get the handbook, watch the outdated training video with the bad stock music. But what if we treated communication the same way?

Hear me out: a communication onboarding.

Instead of waiting for miscommunication to pile up into resentment, you sit down at the start and openly explain how you communicate best. Both ways. Like a little orientation for your brain.

Here’s what that could look like:

• Preferred formats: Do you like written instructions? Quick verbal check-ins? Step-by-step SOPs? (Yes, this is me sneaking “write an SOP” into everything again.)

• Processing time: Do you need a beat to think before answering? Or would you rather hash things out live?

• Tone misunderstandings: Maybe your resting face looks bored even when you’re not. Maybe your blunt texts sound harsher than you mean. Calling that out ahead of time saves so much grief.

• Clarification style: How do you like people to ask if they’re confused? For me, “Can you explain that again?” feels collaborative. “That’s not what you said” feels like a courtroom.

The goal isn’t to dump your life story on day one. It’s just to give the people around you a quick guide to “how I work best, and how to work best with me.” Think of it as a user manual for your brain.

Because let’s be real, most conflict at work doesn’t come from what needs to be done. It comes from how it’s said, heard, and acted on. A communication onboarding won’t solve every problem, but it can cut down on the avoidable ones.

Imagine if instead of weeks of silent frustration, your boss already knew, “Oh, she’s not ignoring me, she just needs it written down.” Or your coworker already knew, “He’s not mad, he just texts like a robot.”

That’s the kind of foundation that makes real teamwork possible.