How to Overcome the Issue of Communication

If you take a moment and look across any reputable business magazine or blog one common theme you will not have to go far to see is the issue of communication. It’s importance is invaluable to any organization and relationship, yet still, so many people do it inefficiently. Like most things, we often do not realize whether we have deployed effective communication until long after the interaction has taken place. This article is dedicated to eradicating this common mishap in your day-to-day interactions, for-e-ver.

The Natural Flaw of Human Thinking

It was my mentor John Maxwell that first opened my eyes to the importance of effective communication. As I write this sentence I can hear his voice, “Many people communicate, few people connect.” Without leaving interpretation to chance, what Maxwell is noting is the natural disposition of the human mind. Most people, especially executives, assume that we speak clear messages, because it is the voice we are so familiar with hearing (in our head). The reality is that there are hundreds of factors that determine whether a person actually connects with what you have stated versus just hearing you speak. When we couple the dynamics of communication with the fact that human attention spans are relatively short (and decreasing by the decade according to studies), we should be deploying a simple streamlined form of relaying information through out departments.

My greatest encouragement to you, is consistently seeking growth in the area. The more we grow in awareness, psychology, and personal development, the more we can communicate effectively as a High-Performance Leader. In most cases, it is not until we are experiencing declines in talent retention, lack of engagement, or low performance that we realize a change needs to happen. Thankfully, that will not be your case. Next we will be peeling back the layers on the most common communication problems and how you can overcome them.

The Most Common Communication Problems and Their Solutions

Challenge: Information Silos

Information silos occur when groups of people in a company only communicate with those in their group. 

They can have a significant barrier to effective workplace communication because they reduce transparency, collaboration, teamwork, and productivity, which can increase costs and complicate business decisions. They can also incite competition and cause conflict across departments.

Solution

Promote effective workplace communication by encouraging team members to make connections with all employees and put openness first.

Help make the work of teams and individual employees more visible across the organization, emphasizing a culture of open knowledge exchange. It helps to have a rallying mantra to motivate staff. For example, phrases such as “all support, no walls” can be an effective reminder. The letter “T” in our IMPACT model represents Trust, which is comprised of Transparency in performance and information, and Truth, over Time. You will create your own over time.

Formally recognizing those that openly share essential information that facilitated collaboration to build a solution shows your commitment to a no silo environment, and the value of working together.  

Challenge: Poor Writing

Poor writing is a significant challenge in effective communication. It can hurt a company's brand and credibility. It can show carelessness and disregard for quality, reflecting on the company, its products, services, and people. Poor communication often includes incomplete instructions and difficult-to-understand directives, which can cause confusion, delays, and costly errors.

Solution 

Incorporate business and technical writing into employee professional development. Provide employees with access to grammar and proofreading tools such as Grammarly, ProWriting Aid, Hemingway, White Smoke, Readable, Ginger, and Sapling to mention a few.

Naturally, training tends to have an 18 month delay in quality application. So if you need to hire a third party in the meantime, you can always consider Marq Neasman Consulting’s Corporate Communications management solutions.

You can also coach employees. Here are some suggestions:

• Have employees start written communication by asking themselves: "What is the purpose of my communication, that is, what do I want my readers to know, do, or feel? 

• After they have drafted the purpose for their communication, encourage them to ask: Can I say it more simply?  

• Provide feedback on minimizing jargon and superfluous buzzwords and encourage them to edit, proofread, and revise their work before sharing it. 

Challenge: Inconsistent channels

Inconsistent communication delivery methods can be a barrier to effective workplace communication. Employees can become frustrated if they don't know which communication channels are used to convey specific forms of information. For example, will employee communications be sent via email, text, or instant message? If there is no consistency, important information can be missed

Solution

Choose a consistent method and inform people where to find important information, whether you use newsletters, quarterly reports, email, chat platforms, or the intranet. Consistently using the same ways to send out company information is an effective workplace communication practice that ensures information gets to everyone simultaneously and that everyone is informed.  

Challenge: Lack of Communication

Keeping employees informed about company updates, relevant industry information, and necessary resources helps them feel connected to your business, valued for their efforts, and educated about how they can better perform and grow professionally. Insufficient communication can cause employees to feel disconnected and demotivated. A lack of information can also lead to a lack of trust and cause employees to rely on rumors and miscommunications to fill in the gaps.

Solution

Regular communication via a newsletter or town hall that shares progress about how your business is meeting client expectations, acknowledges employees for their efforts, changes in procedures, relevant industry news and events that provide insights into how your business is leading the industry or how the industry is evolving can help connect employees to your business and create an environment of inclusivity where they are encouraged to learn and grow professionally,  

Challenge: Information Overload

Just as a failure to communicate creates challenges for your employees, the same is true for over-communicating. 

Examples include excessive meetings, emails, file sharing, invitations of all kinds, frequent company-wide messages, phone calls, pings, and chats. Overwhelming employees with information can also slow their ability to make decisions and take action.

Solution

Work requires focus. Consider reducing daily information volume to allow employees periods of concentration. These two questions can help you analyze whether you are contributing to information overload:

• Are employees repeatedly notified about the same issue?

• Does the information they receive have anything to do with their responsibilities?

You may also want to consider sending agendas out with meeting invitations. Assign timeframes to discuss each topic. Limit confusion about meeting outcomes by reviewing tasks assigned during the meeting and don't adjourn the meeting until everyone is clear on next steps.

Challenge: Withholding or Sugarcoating Negative Information.

Workers fearing repercussions may hide or downplay negative information for their own protection and to avoid making an unfavorable impression.

Withholding information can create an environment of fear-based decision making and can set a business up for unwelcome and embarrassing surprises by depriving the company of vital information needed to ensure its growth and success. 

Solution 

This communication challenge can be avoided by creating an environment where it is acceptable for subordinates to speak honestly with you and their managers. This can be accomplished by:

• Having an open door policy where employees can set up time to share concerns. 

• Encouraging those who are typically quiet in meetings by asking them what they think. 

• Leading the way by being open yourself. 

• Thanking your team for their honesty and respecting their candor.

Challenge: Cultural Differences

Many businesses today span international boundaries employing workers with a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings. Additionally, professional etiquette and working styles vary across different cultures and can trigger conflict and frustration.  

Solution

Provide training and development programs to educate your employees about the diverse cultures they serve.

Consider the unique characteristics of their culture. For example, cultures have different definitions of funny. Encourage employees to avoid humor in communication until they've built a relationship with colleagues where they are confident that their humor will not be perceived as offensive.  

It also helps to remember that cultures also have different views of hierarchy and authority, which can easily lead to tense situations. To avoid a cultural faux pas, consider informing your staff of the the hierarchy and authority associated with the region of the world they serve and how to navigate it respectfully. 

Challenge:  Lack of a Standardized Communication Structure

As discussed above, lack of structured communication can cause unreliable information to be shared, creates opportunity for misinterpretation to spread, excludes people from discussions, and has an overall negative effect on your employees' ability to help you build a successful business.  

Solution 

A formal, standardized communication structure in a single location can help you address the above challenges. Consider building effective, well-thought-out communication policies. You may want to begin by thinking of this solution as a three-part process.  

Employees:  Provide comprehensive training to new and existing employees about your communication rules and protocols. Monitor employees to ensure they take the required training and be an example of what it means to adhere to the company's culture of open and inclusive communication. 

Construct policies: Centralize your communications policies so they are easily found and include all aspects of your communication policy. Some of the items in your policy may include:

• Proper etiquette when communicating by email, participating in conference calls, or online meetings.

• How to communicate with complaining clients.

• Guidance for social media communication.

Technology: Effective workplace communication requires established guidelines for using communication tools and technology. Examples of policy items to include are:

• Rules for using personal devices in the workplace. For example, company data shouldn't be stored on personal devices or sent to personal email accounts.

• Rules for communicating on personal social media accounts about your company. 

• Cybersecurity protocols.

Challenge: Poor Onboarding Communication Process

When employees join your company and there is no formal communication training, they may be left adrift as how to communicate and where to find the information they need to effectively do their job.  This can cause frustration, slow their progress, and leave a poor first impression of their new job.  

Solution  

Share your communication policy with them as soon as they join your firm and explain the high value you place on effective communication. To ensure all employees operate under the same guidelines, consider mandatory communications training. Show them where your policies can be found and that updates will be communicated via email to all employees. Talk with them about the value you place on open and honest communication and that your door is always open to hear their concerns and ideas.

Introduction to Executive Communication

Over the last decade we have had the opportunity to gather mass amounts of data on habits and skills that move the top line of an organization (communication is #1). We then took these data points and simplified them to the most effective format of speaking. We then crystalized it into a method which our firm, Marq Neasman Consulting, deploys into corporate organizations struggling to increase productivity, build brand, or manage internal communication.

The method we use is what we refer to as Executive Communication, otherwise known as “Top-Down Communication”. This style is very simple, something that we here at Neasman Innovate are a huge fan of (simplicity is genius). The most difficult part this method will be developing the cultural habits for effective and efficient distribution. But we’ll do our best to help you with that as well.

So when we talk about Executive Communications, let’s consider there are just two elements that are of optimal importance in any message. The first is the Key Topic, and the second are Details. The principle-in-action when using this style of communication is the Pyramid Principle (Barbara Minto wrote an amazing book on this). The principle gets its name from its likeness to a pyramid. Information should flow downhill, from a Key Topic, or main objective, to 2-3 details supporting it.

That’s it… Any amount over three sends the mind into communication overload. It’s the same reason you will find very few paragraphs with more than three sentences in this article; even though we are well aware that a complete paragraph has five.

As an executive or business leader, this is extremely effective because in most cases we do not want to get too involved in the minutia of process; we are more concerned with outcomes. By getting the main point first, it helps focus our attention and be able to walk away with data sets we can communicate effectively to others.

How Executive Communication Does Not Work

In most cases, when people are communicating they tend to share the details about what they have done, walking a person step by step through their process. Then they summit in the conversation on the main point they wanted to convey. In other words, they explain “How, then what”. This breaks all the rules of Executive (Top-Down) Communication.

The individual actually goes in the opposite direction of how we suggest to communicate. They start at the bottom of the Pyramid and travel uphill to the top (Bottom-Up). From a logic stand point, if we frame information and communication as a flow of water, it gathers speed and power going down hill. Just as it is harder for water to go uphill, information struggles to do the same.

Here’s another question to ponder. If we started with the details of this article instead of the main point, would you have considered reading it? Chances are not, because we did not take the time to first explain what you would be reading. So if this is such an ineffective way of communicating, why do so many people do it?

The answer is very simple, humans are innately consumed with ourselves. It is instinctive to want our superlatives, peers, and even downline to know how much work we are doing (ie. the process). The reality is they are not nearly as concerned with the work you are doing as they are with their own priorities.

How Executive Communication Works

Great executive communication focuses on results, or the “what and why,” never the process. In a work setting that requires a high demand of mental capacity, it is expected that one would apply critical thinking frameworks and due diligence. It’s the nature of the work, so most people are not interested in hearing this.

By starting with the main idea, Key Topic, or hypothesis, a decision maker like yourself is empowered immediately with in the first 30 seconds of answering the question. In the event the meeting must be adjourned, you have obtained information on the project’s status.

In the event there was more time to continue, the following answers would simply be the top three reasons the associate based their hypothesis on. This cuts down a meeting from 15 minutes to 5 minutes (or from 30 to 15). It might not seem like much, but when you add up 30 minute meetings over the course of a year that’s a lot of time wasted.

Power Thought

In conclusion, we have examined the major causes of poor organizational communication, practical steps to overcome them, and a more streamlined way to help your staff communicate with you and vice versa.

I charge you to implement an Executive Communication strategy in your organization and watch the degree of effectiveness increase. With this charge I want you to hold me accountable to a guarantee that within a year you will see 40-60% increases in impact, income, and influence by applying this principle to all of your internal and external copy, meetings, and customer interface.

If you or your team need assistance, you are welcomed to schedule a complimentary consultation with an advisor, our team at Marq Neasman Consulting is always on stand by.