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The Ultimate Guide to Business Communication
Business communication is a critical part of running a successful company and keeping your employees happy.
According to the Harvard Business Review, two thirds of managers are uncomfortable communicating with their employees. According to the article, most are uncomfortable because of their fear of hurting people’s feelings and dread having to deal with the potential drama and possible retribution.
Most often I find that poor business communication is the root cause of a lack of accountability, mistakes, missed deadlines and cooperation in the workplace.
Whether you realize it or not, all those problems and headaches you experience are at the root due to poor, ineffective or at times non existent business communication.
Here’s a story that illustrates why mastering your own business communication is so important to getting the results you want.
In this case study, I share the story of how a company president had a communication style that wasn’t conducive to getting people on board with his vision and initiatives. While working together, we were able to pinpoint the changes in his communication style that he needed to make, to get the results he sought.
As a result of the shift in his communication, and how he interacted with others, people felt free to ask questions, and their resistance to change declined dramatically. His listening skills improved and complaints from those he managed, and his boss dropped off.
What amazed him was how much more accountable others were. Once he recognized how his communication style was impacting the results he wasn’t getting, he adjusted. By making these adjustments, he gained buy-in and cooperation from others, and he gained their trust and loyalty.
The obvious outcome was results improved and everyone was happier.
Even things you don't normally equate to communication issues almost always involve communication, such as poor hiring, poor performance, flat sales, turn over, conflict and more.
Once you understand how critical business communication is, it’s imperative you take a look at your own communication style and skills. What adjustments can you make to improve the outcomes you want?
So often it is a few small changes that can make a big difference.
This business communication resource page has been created to provide you with help in improving your communication. It provides real world examples of where communication impacted the results that leaders were getting, and explanations on what these leaders did to improve the results, have fewer problems and less drama.
We have divided the resource page into five sections, each building on the section before. You’ll find tools, ideas and help throughout each section. Read the articles and take advantage of the resources we provide. Resources such as the Communication Quiz where you will learn your communication style, our checklist Making Difficult Conversations Easy, which will help you with handling those miserable difficult conversations you’d rather avoid, as well as others.
Start with the section on Understanding the Basics of Effective Communication. We begin the discussion on communication by discussing what communication is and how it impacts your team, your organization, and your customers.
Outline:
Being able to communicate well is an important skill, any time you interact with another person. This is true both personally and professionally.
However, when it comes to communication in the workplace, good communication is key to your success, and the success of your business or team. If you are not getting the results you want from others, if you feel like others aren’t listening or simply sense there is a communication problem in your office, take a look at this article.
In this article, I’ll help you understand what’s really happening when two or more people communicate, and you’ll gain insight into why your expectations and the results are so often different.
Communication isn’t only about telling other what you want them to do, or easing conflict. It is also an important factor in building healthy client relationships, improving the bottom line, team effectiveness, and keeping your employees happy, and more.
There are many situations that occur in the workplace that are stressful and frustrating. These situations create and exacerbate communication challenges that already exist.
Here are the top 5 most stressful situations that cause communication issues. Many of these problems can easily be averted by first recognizing the potential for communication problems to occur. And understanding the importance of frequent communication. It’s equally important for you, the leader to stay composed and serene to reduce stress and communication challenges. All of this helps employees focus on their work rather than their stress knowing you have their backs.
Business communication skills are critical for success, and as a rule they are learned skills and not innate. Even those born with the ability to communicate well, can develop their skills more fully. Having poor, ineffective or minimal communication causes problems, period! It reduces trust, which in turn creates a multitude of other problems.
Remember, communication is an essential tool in the workplace.
When done right it will help you improve productivity and maintain strong working relationships at all levels in your organization.
When you invest time and energy into delivering clear communication not only will you rapidly build trust, it will help to improve the output of the team and morale in general.
A great way to begin your journey of developing your communication skills is to first understand what type of communicator you are now.
Take the Communication Quiz and learn your communication style, how your style is affecting good, and the not so good results you are having with your team and others.
We’ll send you the report which includes ideas on where to start developing specific skills.
According to statistics reported by Harvard Business Review, two thirds of managers are uncomfortable with communicating with their employees. And 57% of employees reported that they are not being given clear directions.
Astonishing right?
Looking at these numbers, it is clear that there is a need to improve communication in the workplace. You want to build a high-performance culture, right? And a high-performance culture is one indication that good communication exists at many levels.
Improving communication starts at the top and can help you as a leader solve problems.
Great leaders communicate the company’s vision and build high performing teams. Often, top-notch communication is what distinguishes a good leader from a great one. That one skill, communication, affects every aspect of a company, the team and the business as a whole.
So much more is expected from managers and leaders today. If you are in a leadership role it is assumed you have the skills and experience to lead effectively. You have to do more with less resources. Project deadlines are contracting and time and quality pressures are enormous.
One of the most important skills leaders at all levels must master is communication skills in the workplace, which includes helping others to unlock their creativity.
Did you know that your feelings and past experiences can get in the way of your communication?
In this case study, a Vice President of Human Resources was struggling with his relationships with colleagues at his same level in the organization. He often felt treated differently by them, and even by his boss, and frequently expressed this to me and others.
As a result of his feelings and concerns, he frequently got angry and yelled at his colleagues during meetings. Of course, none of this behavior endeared him to others, and in fact exacerbated the situation.
Fortunately we were able to work together to shift these feelings and find ways for him to stay calm during meetings and interactions with others. As a result his communication skills improved and he moved from resisting and fighting to being open and accessible.
Next time you feel a strong emotion or feeling, pay attention to that emotion and try not to let it get in the way of your message.
Both positive emotions, like happiness, and negative emotions, like anger, can influence how you interact and communicate with others.
One challenge for leaders is being able to read and interpret your employee’s non-verbal communication and body language. What they say and what their body language says may not always be congruent. You don’t need to be a mentalist to read people’s body language, but you do need to have some idea of human behavior to understand what employees need, based on their non-verbal actions, in addition to what they are saying.
Conducting business in other countries isn’t as complicated as it once was due to technology. Companies now have employees as well as customers in countries around the world. This globalization is exciting and brings with it some challenges, mastering how to communicate and work with employees and customers in other countries has become even more important.
Let’s move on to working remotely.
Since more people than ever are working remotely, I believe that working remotely is a trend that won’t be going away. Now it’s even more important to make sure you make it a priority to communicate regularly and effectively with your team.
What I do know is that for individuals or teams who work remotely to be effective, top-notch business communication skills are required for everyone.
All the technology in the world won’t make up for ineffective or poor communication skills.
When work is frustrating, schedules are tight and deadlines are looming, stress is going to happen.
When you have employees who are working remotely and around the globe just finding a convenient time for meetings can be a challenge.
Download our 7 Communication Skills to Stop Stress in its Tracks guidebook to learn how to use communication as an anecdote to frustration and stress.
No one looks forward to having those difficult, uncomfortable conversations… you know, the ones where you have to discuss performance, attitude, accountability or something similar.
Do you need to share some unpleasant news with your team or a team member, or tell a customer bad news? Don’t you just hate even thinking about having these conversations?
So how do you make these dreaded conversations easier?
I this article I cover the 7 essential steps you should take to prepare for those difficult conversations. The most important one is step #3 where I suggest that you take time to plan and prepare for the meeting. Take 10 – 15 minutes and write down what you want to discuss. What are your key talking points and what is the message you want to deliver? It will help you deliver the message you want, and keep your emotions in check.
What you don’t want to ever make the mistake of is ignoring or missing having those important conversations. What I’m referring to are the conversations that if we had taken the time to have, a whole host of problems would never come up at all, or if they did you would have already discussed how to handle them.
It’s all about learning to play offense, not defense.
When you take the time to plan, it helps to take the emotions out of your communication. When we are upset our emotions get in the way, and interfere with our own clarity about what we want to say and what we want from the conversation.
What we say or do when emotional can damage relationships.
We’ve all been there. When we are upset we say or do something we typically wouldn’t. Even if we apologize it can damage the relationship. Some things can’t be undone.
Take the time to plan in advance, and while you are doing that and I’ve found that a key component in effective communication is asking questions. There is so much power in asking questions, and asking the right questions at the right time.
Make a list of questions during your planning time that you want to ask.
When you ask questions you get useful information. You may not like the response, and you can chose to ignore it or look at it a different way. Regardless of your choice, it does mean you now have the information you need to make an informed decision.
Stop and ask yourself, how often do I ask questions? I bet not often enough.
If you start by understanding how you communicate now, your communication style, you’ll learn where you may be communicating with emotion too often and how skipping planning your conversations has cost you time when you have to have conversations again and again, or the results aren’t what you expected or wanted, to name a few.
It isn’t simply about identifying challenges with your communication.
We give you ideas on what areas to develop and how to go about doing it. Click the image below and take the Communication Quiz.
Building successful workplace relationships takes as much effort and investment as personal relationships.
They aren’t always easy, and not everyone is invested at the same level. With more and more people working remotely and relying on email and text to communicate, it is easy to assume people understand what we want. And it’s easy to overlook the importance of human interactions.
With so much going on in the workplace and teams working remotely now more than ever, situations arise where communicating face to face or voice to voice is important…especially since we can’t simply walk down the hall and have a conversation. It’s easy to misconstrue the meaning of emails and/or texts.
It is critically important that you are able to recognize when you need a face to face or voice to voice conversation. Let’s face it, communication affects everything that works or doesn’t in an organization and it’s up to you to make sure it happens.
To have successful relationships you have to make sure your message is clear and understood.
You have to share in the responsibility when there is a problem for both the problem itself and for working through to resolution.
You have to be patient and willing to try, and try again
Often overlooked as a component to building relationships, but also important is small talk.
The thing to remember is not to engage in small talk for the sake of wanting something from someone. People can sense if you’re being truly genuine or its the ‘thing you are just doing’.
The benefit of small talk only happens when the other person feels you care.
You may have less turnover, improved performance, less gossip, less complaining, a greater willingness to contribute… when you invest in small talk, but those are also the natural outgrowth of being genuine.
Listening and hearing are not the same, but most people use the words interchangeably. In this article here I share 5 examples why listening is so much more than hearing the words and, unless you are listening, not simply hearing, you will miss clues that are vital for successful communication.
A key component in effective communication is asking questions. There is so much power in asking questions, and asking the right questions at the right time.
The power when asking questions is that you get information so you know how to proceed.
Sometimes you may or may not like the response you get. If you don’t like the response you can choose to look at it from a different angle or ignore the information. It does mean however that you now have the information you need to make an informed decision.
Let’s wrap up this section on communication with the top phrases or words that you should avoid using in the workplace.
Let’s face it, there are phrases that have become so common in the workplace that they have become meaningless and lost their power. And many we use are meaningless as they don’t inform or tell us anything.
Avoid or stop using this list of words and phrases in your communications.
- But
- Always
- Never
- Actually
- Okay
- Fine
- Try
- Assume
- Probably
- Sure
- Can't
These are just some of the words that I recommend you stop using. There are phrases that can wreak havoc with your communication as well.
Get the full list of words and phrases here and see the reasons why you want to avoid or stop using them in your communication.
Constant overuse has people missing the message altogether or misunderstanding it. What do you think when you hear others use them?
Can you see why polishing up your verbal communication skills is so important?
When it’s time to cut through the clutter and get clarity on your message these tips will help you get your meaning across and get the result you are looking for.
When you understand your communication style, you will recognize where and how it is impacting the interactions with others.
Take the Communication Quiz by clicking the image below. You’ll not only learn your style, we’ll give you tips on areas of development, and help you learn where your style is working for you.
When it comes to communication, the question I get asked most often is how do I master having those difficult conversations?
Most people think “I’m not good at having these conversations” or “they always end poorly”. What I hear often when the conversation is around an employee’s performance is “nothing changes anyhow”.
There are 9 keys to mastering those difficult conversations. Not only should you prepare for them, these keys are focused on your body language and other non-verbal ways you are communicating, which are so important to how the message is heard and received.
So many factors affect how these conversations turn out.
Your body language says things to others that will influence how they perceive the message. Don’t rush through them, even though you probably feel like you just want to get it over with. Be sure you are clear with your message. Stay present in the conversation. All of these and more, will affect the possibility that neither you or the other person will be satisfied with the outcome.
Are you faced with having to have a conversation with a toxic person?
Unfortunately we cannot avoid dealing with these types of people in our work lives. Having difficult conversations can stretch our limits of self control. Here are ideas on how to have a difficult conversation with a toxic person without going postal.
- Limit the Conversation
- Plan what you want to say in advance.
- Set a time limit on the conversation
- Be direct.
- Explain the purpose of the conversation.
- Keep your emotions in check.
And finally make sure you close the loop before ending the conversation. What do you expect from them? Have they agreed to your request? Have you discussed consequences (if appropriate) if nothing changes?
The likelihood is very high that almost everyone in your organization has to at some point have a difficult conversation with someone outside the company.
So how do you train employees to have those difficult but necessary conversations?
They need to be taught that they are dealing with people, who have feelings, concerns, fears, frustrations and a whole host of other emotions. Ignoring emotions and feelings may seem easier but I promise you all it does is inflame the other person and you won’t get the results you want.
How we communicate with others can ease the path when having difficult conversations, or it can turn those conversations to confrontations.
The secret to making those difficult conversations easier is to remind everyone who works for you that everyone deserves respect and to be treated as a human being.
It’s really simple…if you care enough.
Difficult conversations are just that…difficult.
They are uncomfortable and you’d rather not have them at all. But you and others in your company will have to and I can help you learn how to make them less painful.
Download our Making Difficult Conversations Easy Checklist and learn what to do and when, so these conversations don’t turn into each of you frustrated even more.
In Summary
In my work with hundreds of companies, and many hundreds of leaders in over twenty years I have seen where communication can be a tool that revolutionizes the company and moves them ahead of the competition, or prevents them from achieving greatness.
It’s no accident that those leaders who have the difficult conversations, that listen intently to others, who understand the power of effective communication have less turnover, greater productivity and fewer problems.
Communication is the key to everything that works or doesn’t in an organization. How are your communication skills? Are they helping you get the results you want, or interfering?