Did you know that lack of effective business communication could be wasting your company’s money?
Effective business communication is critical to the success of any company. Poor communication is not only frustrating on a personal level but has the potential of losing or wasting money on your business.
Misinterpreted messages, lost emails, or poor comprehension can cause delays, failed projects, or loss of clients.
Therefore, it is important for everyone in your company to improve their communication skills, without any exceptions, especially when in a higher-level position.
What is Effective Business Communication?
Effective business communication is a two-way process of listening and speaking. It’s of utmost importance in all phases of daily business life.
Ask all your employees whether they’re good communicators, and all of them will say yes.
In reality, though, all of us need to improve our communication skills, even if we’re already good at it.
When it is efficiently used at work, effective business communication can significantly increase the company’s success.
When we speak for, with, or on behalf of the business, the use of effective communication, makes work instructions, tasks, information, expectations, along with work processes, better to understand and easier to execute.
On the other hand, if the way we communicate at work is ineffective, which most are, the company ends up paying for it, literally.
In this article, we’ll talk about everything you need to know about effective business communication – its elements and techniques.
Elements of Effective Business Communication
- Concise: In today’s fast-paced business world, it pays to get to the point quickly. Keep your messages clear and straight-forward so that employees can act fast and stay efficient.
- Complete: Ensure that your messages include all the information your employees will need to finish tasks quickly and accurately.
- Conversational: Make sure that you get the tone right when communicating with employees. You want to encourage them to perform well, rather than barking orders at your team.
- Clear: With effective business communication, the faster you can make your point, the better. If your information is complicated or difficult to understand, your message could easily get lost and then the result could be unnecessary confrontations or mistakes.
- Considerate: Make sure that your employees always have the opportunity to ask questions and get clarity on instructions they may not understand.
- Confidence: Confidence is one of the most essential characteristics of effective business communication. Your staff needs to know that you are credible to delegate and that you know what you’re talking about.
- Checked: Ensure that you always double-check your data before passing information onto your team.
Effective Business Communication Techniques
1. Listen Actively and Attentively
Hearing the words coming out of someone’s mouth isn’t always the same as listening. Active listening implies engagement and acknowledgment.
Active listening strategies:
- Nodding, repeating important information, and asking questions, are all active listening strategies that improve the quality of the conversation and increase the amount of information that you will be remembering.
- The most frequent example is repeating a person’s name when you’re being introduced to them.
Active listening increases the number of details you will remember, shows interest in the other person, and builds a connection between the parties involved.
2. Give Feedback
In almost any workplace, feedback is a crucial part of the workflow.
Knowing other people’s perspectives, hearing their suggestions and recommendations, and offering your own in return is what leads to progress and development.
But both giving and receiving feedback can be a very fragile communication process.
Tips on giving feedback:
- Being honest is always important, but the way you deliver your point of view can make all the difference between a positive and a negative experience.
- It is always important to frame your feedback in a positive manner, even when it’s criticism. Most people are sensitive to criticism and a brutally honest opinion can be perceived as malicious.
- Ask additional questions and confirm, to make sure you understood everything right, then offer advice for improvement instead of tearing down other people’s work.
Consider using a reward management system to provide feedback and to offer something in return for their hard work. Your feedback won't be useful if employees aren’t compensated appropriately for their efforts. After all, why would they change if they don’t feel valued?
3. Build Connections
If you want people to actually listen and understand what you are saying, you need to do more than speaking. You need to build connections.
How to build strong connections:
- Engage and show interest in your conversation partner and they will return the favor.
- Know who you are talking to, what is their background, and what are their interests will give you a clear idea of how to better approach any subject in order to actually reach them. A good communicator knows their audience and shapes their message accordingly.
Just as important, this is a great networking strategy. Building connections with other professionals should be a part of anyone’s career plans.
4. Ask Questions
Asking questions has two major benefits in effective business communication: first, they help us find out the information we want, and second, it shows the other person that we are interested in what they have to say, which keeps the conversation going.
Why you should ask questions:
- The more questions you ask, the better you will understand the subject being discussed.
- More than that, managers and team leaders should ask questions about the purpose of testing the level of understanding their subordinates have regarding a subject.
- Questions are the engine of communication, so never be afraid to keep it revived.
5. Show Empathy
The work environment can be very stressful and overwhelming, which is exactly why we need to show empathy to one another.
Why you should show empathy:
- Empathetic communication builds trust and connections among coworkers while encouraging people to keep doing the best, even when that doesn’t seem to be good enough.
- People are more likely to put in more effort and stay motivated when they feel like their struggle is appreciated instead of being ignored. Nobody likes to be treated like a robot that is always expected to be productive.
- Practice empathy at work and share your feelings with your teammates. More often than not, you will realize that most people share similar feelings and struggles as you do.
6. Adjust Your Communication According to the Recipient
Everyone receives and decodes information differently. You should encourage your employees to think about the recipient before sending information.
For example, some people prefer to receive detailed information, while others only need a snapshot of the details.
7. Keep an Open Mind
This effective business communication technique is related to listening.
Being open-minded when communicating means that you are willing to understand someone’s point of view, even if you have already formed preconceived ideas.
For a more productive conversation, you should adopt a flexible communication approach when you disagree with someone.
Conclusion
Effective business communication techniques are vital for creating a positive workplace culture.
Improving the quality of your communication ultimately requires change at a personal level.
Effective business communication is the consequence of the shared personal efforts of all the parties involved.
Start small by working on improving your own communication skills, have your company offer communication training to all employees, and encourage a culture of honesty, trust, and collaboration.
