Tips To Effectively Communicate At Work

When you’re in the workplace, you quickly notice that everyone has to learn how to communicate with people no matter whether they are introverted or extroverted. But that doesn’t mean that everyone communicates well, there may often be people who just can’t get their point across easily or who just expect others to understand them.

Being able to effectively communicate at work is particularly ideal, there are no crossed wires and everyone fully understands what they are supposed to do. As such, we’ve put together a few tips that may help you to become a communications master in the workplace.

Be Direct

There can be nothing worse in the workplace than receiving a vague email, or listening to information from managers that you simply don’t understand. It’s not only annoying, but it’s time wasting. Too often employees can end up spending large amounts of time having to go back and forth with each other to figure out what the first one meant.

Even worse is when people high up in the business send out vague information to the rest of the company. How are employees supposed to understand what is happening when they don’t even understand what their boss is saying?

As such, when dealing with colleagues, customers or employees it’s incredibly important to be as direct as possible. Be explicit in what you are talking about; give the names of people instead of just vague descriptions, give direct times that people can work towards. Before you send off any communication, read through it yourself and ask if you would understand it if you had no prior knowledge. If not, it’s time to amend.

Be Relevant

Just as important as it is to be direct with people when communicating with them so they are not confused, it’s just as important to ensure that communication is relevant. Sending emails that spend too long talking about your weekend and not actually the topic on hand can only lead to irritation from the receiving party.

A client who makes it clear they only care about buying printers for example, is hardly going to be interested in proposals for managed social media. It means that it is wasted time on your end producing the communication and even worse, wasted time on their end having to read it.

This also counts when verbally communicating. If you’re giving a conference or presentation to people, what exactly is the value they are getting out of you talking about something with no relevance? If they’re not invested in you, then they’re not going to be listening and you’re losing potential.

Be Open

This is particularly relevant for in the workplace itself. As we’ve suggested before, there can be nothing worse than employees not understanding what is happening because of confusing or irrelevant communication. But it is equally as important to be open and honest with people.

Workplaces that are built on openness will nurture a more trusting environment as employees will be more likely to put trust into their managers and bosses. By being open, you will be effectively communicating to your workplace that they are important enough to know everything that is happening.

Admittedly not everything may be relevant to everyone, but as long as they know that they are in the information loop they are more likely to be happy. It can also result in higher productivity as employees will be confident in their job as they will know exactly where they, and their company, stand.

Do You Have Any More Tips On How To Effectively Communicate?

We’ve only discussed three tips here, but there are many more that could be suggested to improve communication in the workplace. Do you have any that we missed? We’d love to hear from you.