Analyzing Communication At Work

A pretty cool definition of “communication” amongst the many hundreds of them, is this:

“Effective communication has taken place when the sender of the message and the receiver of the message enjoy the same understanding of the content”.  This is a very useful standard-setter for the kind of communication you should be pursuing in the work environment.  Frankly, in your personal life besides, because this statement speaks to the duality of “communication” in that it implies that more than one person is required to achieve its self-evident goal.

But how can you do this better and what are how the attempt to do so can be foiled?

BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION

Let’s start here.  Before we can begin to formulate plans to improve our communication, we first have to know what constitutes bad communication.  More often than not, “bad” communication doesn’t happy purposefully so, therefore, it can be done better.  Some of the more obvious communication barriers are:

• Differences in language.
• Differences in nationality or cultural identification.
• Attempting to communicate in a loud or disruptive environment.
• Having a workplace that is frequently the site of labor complaints, could indicate much bigger problems.

Conduct a quick test on your employees and see if you can find out where all of them come from, whether they’re all domestic or not doesn’t much matter when you think that from one State to the next in America, differences in spoken English means that what’s true or funny in one State isn’t necessarily the same in the other.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

It’s very important to acknowledge where problems exist and to then formulate plans to fix them.  When it comes to inspiring an open and calm environment that is committed to improving communications standards, you will also find that your staff will take you a lot more seriously too.  People want to be heard and will seldom argue their data, so if you value your business you’ll make reasonable investments in training and development with a solid focus on effective communication.  Nothing is going to change when you discover problems without a solid plan to get you there and once you’ve identified all the areas where you can do better.  Business has to be ahead of the game to stay relevant.  Not just in communications but productivity too.

THE RIGHT TECH, FOR THE RIGHT JOB

We simply cannot overstate it enough, more has changed in the last 25 years than in the 100 before it and now we have dozens of options at our disposal to enable open and effective communication in the workplace.  We have wearable devices, mobile telephones with a million apps, automatic translation software, and video calling.  All of which are geared towards improving the quality of communication between humans.  Sometimes you don’t always need the best and latest to achieve highly effective communication.  In the United States as in most countries, our emergency services all use radio communication devices like these Motorola police radios that allow for instant communication between public health and safety officials at a fraction of the cost of massive data installations for mobile phone communications.  So making sure that you know what your specific needs and goals are to achieving optimum communication.