Whether you’re an introvert or a straight-forward person like me, you’d probably be struggling with proper workplace communication because it just doesn’t go with your nature.
However, practicing effective workplace communication is very important to maintain a good rapport with your colleagues and to maintain a positive professional connection with your bosses.
So what exactly is workplace communication? Workplace communication is nothing but exchanging ideas and information among your colleagues, work teams and your organization’s management.
Whether you’re sending a quick Teams / Slack message, presenting in a review meeting to your boss or presenting in a board meeting, discussing with cross teams in a meeting or even chatting with your colleagues over coffee, workplace communication plays a major role in every aspect of our professional lives.
Workplace communication basically includes all interactions that happen within a work environment – from formal presentation to casual conversations with colleagues. Let’s just look further into what is effective workplace communication is and its importance.
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Importance of Effective Workplace Communication
Effective communication at the workplace ensures that information is clearly exchanged and helps for better team collaboration. When the communication is clear and not ambiguous, it is easy for the team members to be aligned with the common goals. Meanwhile it reduces errors, misunderstandings thus increasing overall productivity.
We all know that hybrid and remote working styles have become common nowadays especially post COVID. Effective workplace communication has become even more crucial for such remote work environments to ensure that geographic distances don’t become barriers for operations.
So how exactly can your workplace communication be effective? We have split the workplace communication into 4 different modules. Let’s see what they are, what kind of communication each module holds and how they can be improved.
Types of Workplace Communication
We often think that communication basically refers to verbal communication. When it comes to the workplace, there is no single mode of communication, right? There are 4 crucial types of communication at the workplace.
- Verbal Communication
- Non-Verbal Communication
- Written Communication
- Digital Communication
Verbal Communication
Verbal communication in-turn can be split into two categories.
- Formal Communication – Meetings and Presentations
- Informal Communication – Casual conversations with colleagues.
Formal verbal communication include face-to-face meetings, teams / google meet calls, video conferences and board presentations. It’s important to maintain a professional but also an approachable tone for this setting.
The communication should come across with confidence and with authority (sometimes, if needed). Maintaining clarity in the speech with an appropriate pace helps the audience get your point easily. Remember to use simple and straightforward language rather than using jargon.
In-case if you’re a listener, you need to practice active listening. Pay full attention to the user and provide verbal acknowledgements whenever needed. If you need clarity anywhere, ask for it and also offer relevant feedback. The key is to show engagement through appropriate responses.
Informal verbal communication are daily casual interactions with your colleagues at work like Lunch break conversation, quick chats while grabbing coffee at the pantry, sharing weekend plans and casual team celebrations like birthdays or work anniversaries.
Informal communication helps you to build relationships with your colleagues, makes the work environment more enjoyable, helps new employees feel more comfortable and welcome and creates stronger team bonds. It also helps in improving work culture by reducing workplace stress and makes it easier to ask for help.
Non Verbal Communication
Non Verbal Communication involves your body language, facial expressions and gestures while you are communicating. These unspoken signals often speak louder than words. So how can you effectively have non-verbal communication at the workplace?
Pay attention to some of your body languages. Improve your posture by sitting upright which conveys attentiveness in the meetings. Your gestures and facial expressions communicate emotions and reactions.
Using gestures like hand movements while talking can emphasize the points you want to communicate. Show your confidence by maintaining eye contact. Avoiding eye contact can be seen as shyness. Work on your active listening signals, especially your head movements like nodding to show agreement and facial expressions to express empathy.
Written Communication
Majority of our formal communication at work for all designations use the written communication channel. Most of them are in the form of emails, some other written workspace communication are in report and memo formats.
It is important to follow some email etiquettes to express professionalism in your formal written communication at the workplace. Make sure to use clear subject lines for the emails, start the email with professional greeting and closing, use appropriate diplomatic tone and provide brief information rather than writing long emails. Keep the detailed explanation for verbal communication during the meetings.
For other forms of written communication (some points here work for Emails as well) use proper formatting and bullet points wherever needed. It makes your reports and documentation more readable. Use headers and sub headers wherever needed. Once you are done, proofread thoroughly and check for clarity. Ensure the information provided is not ambiguous and clear.
Digital Communication
Digital communication involves both formal and informal forms of communications. People who work remotely rely highly on their digital communication which includes instant messaging on the Teams or Slack, video conferences, audio / virtual meetings.
In this type of communication, it’s not possible to use body language, gestures or facial expressions. Hence it is recommended to use digital communication effectively as it’s easy to misinterpret.
There are a lot of platforms available these days for digital communication. You can connect via Slack and Microsoft Teams for real-time conversations, direct messages and file sharing. Zoom and Google Meet for video conferencing, Outlook and Gmail as email platforms.
Some organizations use platforms like Jira, Trello, Asana and Swatle for project management and team collaboration.
Digital communication at the workplace has more benefits than the traditional verbal communication like you can record the entire meeting, you can connect from anywhere and don’t necessarily need to maintain a body language or gestures. All you need to focus on is to maintain a professional tone, ensure that your tone doesn’t come across rude. Now, this is only for audio conferences. Your non-verbal communication does come into play if it is video conferencing.
Benefits of Effective Workplace Communication
Having effective workplace communication by following some of the above mentioned ideas, can result in increased productivity and efficiency and the workplace.
It helps in quick decision making, more clarity in the task assignments, reduced errors and misunderstandings, no gaps in communication and quicker problem resolution.
Effective workplace communication also helps in enhanced team collaboration, improved coordination with cross team departments.
This results in better project outcomes, knowledge sharing, innovation and creativity. Moreover, personally it boosts your confidence as well at the workplace to be able to communicate effectively at the workplace.
Key Components of Effective Workplace Communication
We have covered most of the key components elaborately in the above points. Providing you more of a summary here to quickly grab the key points. Key components include clarity in your communication like clear and brief messaging, well organized information, appropriate level of details.
Active listening is more important when you’re not the speaker. Pay full attention to the speaker and use head movements for responding, providing non verbal acknowledgement.
Another crucial key component for effective communication is to choose the right channel for communication. Choose email for formal communication, instant messaging for quick and short updates, have meetings for complex discussions, video or audio calls for remote teams, written documentations for SOPs are procedures and one-on-one or face-to-face catch up in case of ambiguity in the process or if you need more clarity.
Common Barriers to Effective Workplace Communication
Maintaining effective communication at the workplace does come with certain barriers. Some of the common ones include language and cultural differences as the employees may be from different cultural backgrounds. If you are part of a diverse team, then it is a bit difficult to mingle with the team and communicate effectively. It often leads to misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
Remote teams face technological issues sometimes like network or technical issues which can disrupt the video calls or the exchange of information.
Also, compared to face-to-face interaction remote work can make it harder to communicate effectively due to physical separation. Sometimes emotional barriers like stress, anger and anxiety can disrupt clear communication.
Organizations with a larger count of employees can have hierarchical barriers as the strict hierarchy structures can create power dynamics and prevent open communication.
Some employees are too shy to ask for clarity and start working based on some assumptions which can lead to deviation from the actual goal.
Finally, failing to listen actively can not only make you look disinterested but also lead to miss important information and misunderstanding.
Strategies to overcome the barriers of Effective Workplace Communication
To overcome the language and cultural barriers, pick up some of the key phrases in the colleagues’ languages to show some effort and respect.
Be aware of cultural sensitivity and respect their cultural practices and norms. For technological issues, quickly report tech issues to IT for resolution and familiarize yourself with the communication tools.
To those who are working remotely, in order to overcome the physical barriers try to stay connected via video calls rather than relying on the emails and messaging. It helps to build good rapport within the team and the verbal tone can help communicate comfortably.
To overcome the emotional barriers, attend counseling sessions and try to manage your personal emotions before communicating. In case your colleague is having an emotional barrier, try to understand their perspective and emotions by showing some empathy.
Now, hierarchical barriers are common at most of the workplaces. Try to approach your supervisors openly and with respect. Don’t be afraid to start conversations with your higher officials. It shows you are confident enough to communicate the roadblocks and seek solutions.
Improve your listening and engagement skills, practice active listening, focus on the speaker and clarify points if you don’t understand. Do not conclude anything based on assumption.
Conclusion
By following the above mentioned strategies in your daily routines, employees can enhance their workplace communication skills. It does not just apply to employees but for the higher officials as well.
For any successful organization, effective workplace communication is the backbone. It helps in clarity, enhances team collaboration and builds strong relationships among the team members.
As we have mentioned above, workplace communication isn’t just about sharing information. It is the foundation of successful teamwork and organizational growth.
Whether you are leading a team meeting, presenting to the board or having casual conversations with co-workers, the tools and techniques we discussed can help transform workplace interactions.
Remember, good communication is a skill that requires constant practice and refinement.