28 Oct Effective communication
I do not pretend to know all there is about effective communication.
This post is intended to encourage its readers to evaluate how well they are communicating. Some prompts…
How often are you misunderstood or asked to clarify what you said? Conversely how often do you ask the person you are speaking with, to clarify, ‘Come again?’
Put five people in a room and ask them to listen to a five-minute talk on AI delivered by a human. Then ask them to list two main points after the talk has been delivered.
How often have you received an email where you cannot grasp what appears on the screen.
Effective communication starts with effective listening and reading skills: written language has tone.
The first IT company I worked for had created a very reliable network protocol, called system network architecture (SNA). The simple description from the techies to the sales dummies was, ‘The message sent has been received and completed’, meaning no data has been lost in the transmission.
If you ever played broken telephone as a child or at a listening skills workshop you know what I mean… I hope you do.
Effective communication skills will help your organisation
· save money
· improve your business relationships with employees, customers, and suppliers
· complete tasks quicker and accurately
· improve understanding
· reduce rework
· reduce frustration and confusion
A good place to start is evaluating company emails.
By creating a standard for email usage in your organisation you
will see an immediate improvement in response times and tasks being
completed sooner.
A refresher course in email etiquette will help your employees:
· create clear concise emails
· complete tasks accurately and promptly
· reduce email stacks
· communicate effectively by email
For more information about this service and building other skills in communication please visit everwrite.co.za.