Clearly Communicating in Business

I was reminded again today just how important clear communication is.

Our business unit has been without a CEO since we merged with a larger company almost 2 years ago….....until this week. Our new CEO has been at our facility since Wednesday of this week. Today he arranged small group settings in which he could get to know the employees better.  Each group of people met for approximately 1 hour today with the new CEO.

I have really enjoyed these changes. My small training and consulting company has been up and running for about 2 years now. I have viewed each of these changes at my primary job as ‘ a business case study’.  The beauty is that this is real life stuff……real people with a real world class company.

I said all of that to lead to this…..today our new CEO asked each group what we ‘the employees’ expect from him ‘the CEO’.  One of the key points mentioned was that people wanted ‘clear communication’. I thought about this and it struck me as odd. We are a company that is very established. We have been around a long time and are a small to mid-size company. One would think that clear communication would be easy in such a company …….yet people felt the need to make it a point. As the day continued on I thought about a book that I purchased back in November of 2009 entitled Just Listen by Mark Goulston.

It suddenly registered with me……many businesses, partnerships, governments and marriages all fail based on one key factor, ‘poor communication’. Our new CEO made a GREAT point. In this age of email, social networking and gadgets, the tools of communication are available however in a small company such as ours we often communicate less. ‘Context’ can easily be lost in an email. A text message can’t completely capture your smile or frown as you speak. He encouraged us all to use one of the most powerful tools available to mankind, ‘face to face communication’.

I’d venture to say based on several years of continual study and job experience that we all fail to one degree or another regarding clear communication. I look back over the last year and see where I could have communicated more clearly. In fact, my worst defeats in the last year were self-imposed based on poor communication skills on my part.

I challenge you to think about your particular situation. Think about your specific customers. How can you communicate more clearly? I’d place ‘clear communication’ at the top of the list for any successful business!

Your thoughts?

kml

2010