How to Achieve Effective Communication for the Successful Management of Your Organization

Author: Eashani Rodrigo

The previous article on effective communication, discussed why “effective communication is essential for the smooth running of the business”.  It highlighted the relationship between effective communication and company performance, and it also discussed how the benefits of an effective communication can lead a company to drive the performance.

Relating to the previous article, this article will discuss how to achieve this effective communication in workplace for the successful management of the business. This will highlight five aspects to consider when practicing effective communication.  They are: 

• Have a culture where clear and honest communication is present

Employees want to feel their ideas are welcomed and considered, and this positively affect employee loyalty, employee satisfaction, innovation and customer service levels. The company culture largely effect on the employees’ freedom to share their ideas and to build the trust on company management. By instilling practice of clear and honest communication in company culture, can create better work environment for the employees to share their ideas, avoid conflicts, and build trust and respect, as well as to build strong work relationships among individuals, teams and departments. 

One way of creating clear and honest company culture is to involve employees in decision-making, getting their feedback, and keeping them properly informed on current business status and any other changes to the business. 

For an example, if a company is going through a merger it should be properly communicated to the employees. Without keeping them properly updated about this change, employees will resist to work with newly merged employees or the new management. Employee feedback is necessary to resolve conflicts that can arise due merger. If a clear and honest communication did not take place, it will demotivate the employees that could result in higher employee turnover.   

• Have an open or flat structure

Having an open or flat structure enables organizations to have few layers of management. This makes it possible for the communication to be from top down and from the bottom up, making every employee approachable by the top management and vice versa. This means communication can be done from top-level management to front-line employees and from front-line employees back to top management. Moreover, flat structure facilitates horizontal communication, which is the communication across functional/departmental areas. This communication flows enables organization to effectively communicate throughout the organization.

Example of a flat structure and the communication flow

For an example, the CEO of a company can appoints product development team to lead a data-gathering project to recommend product improvements. Having a flat structure enables the department manager to easily gather data from other department managers (horizontal communication) and most importantly, it allows him to gather data from sales employees (bottom up communication) which is a critical input for the project since they are the front-line employees who talks to customers individually. Similarly, once the product improvements are done it can be easily communicated to other department managers through horizontal communication, and directly to the sales employees. This makes it possible to rapidly communicate the change to the entire the company easily.

• Importance practicing empathy

Effective communication requires understanding emotions in others. Practicing empathy is one way of recognizing emotions in other people, and understanding the other person’s perspective and reality. 

Active listening is one of the key aspects of empathy. Listening to the employee’s ideas and viewpoints helps for the effective two-way communication.  Therefore, the company leaders and all the managers should practice empathy in order to establish effective communication in the organization.  

Some aspects to consider when practicing empathy:

—     Try to see things from other person’s points of view

—     Acknowledge the other person’s perspective

—     Have an open mind and attitude

—     Listen to the exact message the other person is trying to communicate

—     Ask the other person to explain his/her position for the better understanding

• Give and get feedback

Effective communication requires a cycle of feedback .Getting a feedback from the receiver helps to ensure that the message is properly understood by the receiver. Depending on the receiver’s feedback, the communication can be improved or enhanced in order to communicate more effectively without misunderstandings.

For an example, a CEO of a company can hold a meeting for the department managers regarding a new project that has been planned to be carried out. After the meeting done, in order to get the feedback from the managers CEO can request each department manager to send action plans highlighting their role in the project. The drafting of action plans requires each manager to communicate the new project with their department’s employees, and the feedback of employees are essentials to agree on responsibilities and timelines. Once the CEO receives all the actions plans by every department, it allows him to ensure that the information about the new project has been properly communicated and understood by the entire organization. If the action plans does not match the message he wanted to communicate he can have another meeting or a discussion with particular department managers to make sure they understand it properly. 

• Make distinction between internal and external communication

Effective communication at workplace should be practiced on internal communication (communicating with employees), as well as external communication (communicating with customers, suppliers etc.). Company management should make a clear distinction between these internal and external communication, as because for the effective communication the message that needs to be communicated, and the communication channel needs to be selected depending on whether it is internal or external communication.

For an example organization often use emails or meetings to communicate with employees (internal communication), and it generally involves getting direct feedback from employees. To communicate with customers organizations often use narrow set of communication channels such as mass media that does not allow the organization to get direct feedback from the customers. Therefore, the mass media advertising campaigns should support the conversations between customers and sales agents, who can provide the company indirect feedback from the customers.