What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate
Published by admin, on Oct 14 2008, in the categories: Uncategorized
Communication is an integral part of the human civilization. It can be said without a doubt that the amount of progress that humans have made, it is primarily because of their communication abilities. Although, communication is essentially concerned with two interacting people, it has different consequences at the professional level as compared to the personal level. Here we try to focus on the importance of communication in the business world where it is extremely important that the employees and employers are in sync with each other.
Communication Gap
It is often found that a huge gap exists between the understanding of employees and employers about their roles and function towards the company's objectives. They fail to understand that they need to work in concordance towards a common aim for achieving their objective. Meetings concerned with performance reviews are an occasion where the managers inform the employees about the expectations from them but the point does not drive home always.
A recent survey suggests that only 20% of the workers believe in the effectiveness of these performance reviews whereas an overwhelming 66% of employers think that these meetings are an important tool for performance improvements. What we have here is a failure to communicate effectively.
Reasons behind the Failure
- Limited transparency from the employees' point of view towards the performance review process.
- Unclear communication from the employer's side due to insufficient importance being given to employee perception while carving out the strategies.
- Insufficient discussions being done in these meetings as well as insufficient frequency of these discussions.
Remedies
- Always understand the perception of your audience, the employees in this case. This is often ignored leading to the workers producing something entirely different than what was expected. What we have here is a failure to communicate the specific tasks of the employees.
- Understand the individual expectations before laying out the objectives of the group as a whole.
- Be open and generous while communicating with the employees if you want them to be this way too. This will not only lead to more ideas being generated but will also develop a friendly air between the policy makers and the implementers.
- The differences that exist between disciplines, roles and experiences when communication has to be done between various different departments. Usually each department has its own perspectives and interpretations, which may or may not be aligned with the general culture of the organization. If they are not, the departmental results may totally be out of sync with the organizational expectations. What we have here is a failure to communicate between different departments and gaining the required insight of their perspectives.
- The communication practice that is followed in an organization is largely dependent on the culture and tolerance filters employed by the employers. Some important questions in this regard are: Will your message be embraced or ignored? Is an uptake by the employees encouraged after the employers deliver their message? The delivered message should reflect respect and value towards all the business areas of the organization.
Communication failures are bound to occur at some time or the other. But, it is entirely the duty of the organization stakeholders to tackle the associated challenges successfully.
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