Communication: The most difficult business skill |
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| Most people want to create value for their organisations or businesses. People focus a lot on trimming costs, reorganising the supply chain, understanding human resources and working out an optimal remuneration. But one of the big value creators for a business is effective communication. Any communication used to build partnerships, intellectual resources, to promote an idea, a product, service, or an organisation – eventually adds to the bottom line. And thus effective communication becomes critical.
Thankfully there are solutions, and here are four guidelines for effective communication. 1) Technology isn’t Communication While modern technology has made an indelible impact on society, at its essence the information based organisation, does not actually require advanced “information technology”. What it really requires is the willingness to ask - who requires what information, where and when? This question is not technology dependent, but work, execution and structure related. Technology needs to be used to facilitate this process and to ensure that the right information reaches the right set of people in the organisation. Once this takes place, effective communication can then take place within the organisation and flatter structures could be set up. In fact management layers and positions whose main duty has been to report rather than do, can then be scrapped. Unfortunately in today’s frantic technology age, most people confuse the two and believe the right technology will facilitate communication, while countless examples show it’s actually the other way around – effective communication, will bring out the right technology mix for your organisation. 2) Communication is Perception The best that someone can do while writing or speaking is make it possible or impossible for a recipient to...perceive. Perception is not based on logic, but on experience. For example if you say to someone “I like you a lot” but say it with your back toward them and a growl in your voice, he or she will not pay attention to your words, but to how they are said. They will perceive you are not sincere, no matter what message your words are meant to convey. In short, the effective communicator will ask not just what am I trying to say, but how will it be understood by the person I am communicating with? In all communication the first question should be – is this communication within the recipient’s range of perception? Can he or she receive it? 3) Communication can’t just go in one direction What is the key to good communication? Listening. And what is the first thing you need to do when communicating? Listen. Having spent a number of years working with large corporations and their internal structure and communications and watching communication downward from management to employees, from superior to the subordinate; I have concluded that communications are practically impossible if they are based on downward relationship. The harder you try to say something to your underling, the more likely he or she will mis-hear it. More likely that person will hear what he or she expects to hear rather than what is being said. As Dr. Stephen Covey points out as the fifth habit in his international bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Often asking the correct questions can change the flavour of the communication. “What are the contributions for which this organisation and I, your superior, should hold you accountable? What should we expect from you? What is the best utilisation of your knowledge and your ability?”. By listening to the person’s answer you will then know what he or she can or cannot perceive or hear. And then communication becomes possible. 4) If you don’t learn to communicate well, you don’t get to do anything that’s fun The problem with modern organisations is that no one knows what the other person is doing. In the past farmers knew what most farmers did and industrial workers knew what other factory workers did...no one needed to explain. But now, no one knows what others do even in the same organisation. Everybody you work with needs to know your priorities. If you don’t ask and you don’t tell others, your peers are quite likely to guess incorrectly. And as a result when you don’t communicate you are quite likely NOT to get the things you are good at. You may have to do someone else’s job or fix someone else’s mistake. Thus you may not get the work you actually enjoy doing and what makes you go to work each day. As we look at communication it’s important to note that communication and information are totally different. Communication is what happens when we transmit – through writing, talking or whatever – information to someone else. In the early days information had to be handled and transmitted by people and so the problem was how to get “communication” and “bias” out of the way. Today, suddenly we are in the situation in which information is largely impersonal and therefore without any communications content. The more we automate information handling, the more we have to create opportunities for effective direct communications. |
At the same time one of the biggest hurdles in daily business is miscommunication. As the management guru Peter Drucker pointed out many years ago “the communications gap within institutions and between groups in society has been widening steadily – to the point where it threatens to become an unbridgeable gulf of total misunderstanding”.
