Why is communication important?
Communication plays a vital role in one’s both personal and professional life. It can help create a great working environment, make it easier to deal with teams and clients, and improve business performance. Failure to convey the right message can lead to severe misconceptions, which can cause negative results.
Why does communication fail?
We all know that clear and honest communication is essential for any business to survive and perform efficiently. A significant issue in an organization is a communication breakdown that could happen for various reasons. Here are seven reasons for communication failure given below:
- Failure to listen: We communicate in various ways, both verbally and nonverbally. When we try to deliver information, the other person either understands part of it, doesn’t grasp it at all, or maybe picks up on something entirely else, which causes communication failure. Suppose the employer has already made a decision, but no one understands how to execute it. In that condition, you will end up with different employees enforcing different solutions, creating chaos, and seeming to be poor communication.
- Lack of understanding of cultural diversity: Multinational organizations have diverse organizational environments, yet they face cultural diversity as one of the most common challenges. The issues develop because people from various backgrounds have different working, living and communication styles. Most multinational corporations have senior managers/executives working in their head offices, and other employees are hired domestically. Even after working for many years, the executives are unaware of the culture and working styles of that particular region. As a result, their employees pay little attention to multiculturalism, and they don’t believe it has anything to do with the company’s performance or efficiency.
- Lack of Trust: Trust is one of the most crucial factors in building any relationship. According to Forbes, “Trust is foundational in management, as it’s the solid floor on which the rest of the manager-employee relationship is build.” Failure to complete deadlines or keep a promise might damage your team’s trust in you. Your team won’t rely on you if you promise too much and don’t work on it.
- Poor Communication Skills and arrogance: Overconfidence frequently leads to ignorance, which finally leads to a lack of clarity on how to deliver one’s message in a diverse world. Expertise in any profession does not rule out the possibility of a lack of communication skills in a multi-cultural environment. Professionals can have a false impression of their interpersonal abilities and never try to enhance their communication style, which is important while keeping in mind the essential cultural sensitivities in their work, mainly when working with employees from diverse cultural backgrounds.
- Difference in experience/opinion: When an employee with diverse levels of experience interacts, the one with more knowledge and expertise must communicate to the other without ambiguity. Differences in principles, attitudes, beliefs, values and thinking create experience differences; however, we often overlook this and believe that others have the same level of understanding as we do.
- Personality and attitude conflict: Conflict or unbalanced dialogue is more likely to occur when there is an inequity of authority. The individual with more authority tends to dominate conversations and develops a bad attitude toward any issue or situation over time. As a result, senior leaders must be more empathic toward their employees and inspire confidence in their team members.
- Lack of understanding of non-verbal Signals: When people speak with each other via Nonverbal cues such as facial expression, eye contact, gestures, and others are equally necessary to notice during any engagement or conversation. Nonverbal Communication is a powerful tool that may help you connect with others, convey your feelings, and develop stronger connections. The way we communicate with our bodies and share with our mouths are two separate things. Despite this, we frequently concentrate on verbal communication while ignoring nonverbal signs.
How to overcome this problem at the workplace?
It is crucial to understand the root cause of your communication problems. By knowing it, you can considerably increase the opportunity to get your business team success. Conducting a monthly assessment of how well the team communicates and collaborates is the most excellent way to discover communication issues and their root causes. Here are some tips to fix poor communication:
- Plan Weekly team meetings with employees.
- Maintain continual communication in the workplace.
- Collect feedback from employees and communicate with them.
- Take the time to listen carefully to everyone’s opinion.
- Make time for non-work-related conversations.
- Make workplace communication training a top priority.
- Create a multiculturism environment in the company.