Depending on the industry, businesses can be so expansive that large amounts of their employees will never meet, let alone work alongside one another. But good communication is still a priceless asset. Here are some tips for improving your business’s communication skills.
- Use the Right Tools
In a world where technology dictates the way businesses are run, there are many ways to solve your business’s problems if you have the right tools. Whether you’re utilizing a beamformer combiner for commercial communications or a chatting tool like Slack, picking a tool that fits your employees’ unique needs is important. It should be clear to everyone who works at your business which platform is the right one for each situation, to avoid miscommunication.
- Avoid Lengthy Words
A big pitfall that many higher-ups in business struggle with are the temptation to start using long, intellectual-sounding words when communicating with others. This is a bad habit that’s often reinforced by writing apps that edit for clarity since using one big word can often eliminate several shorter words. But if you want everyone to understand you without having to crack open a dictionary, stick to simple vocabulary words.
- Know Your Audience
A lot of confusion that happens within businesses comes from management falsely identifying who needs to know what. When a lot of irrelevant information is being emphasized in meetings and memos, it can make employees seriously confused about what they need to know and what their jobs are. Instead, try to keep all communication as strictly relevant as possible. If your meeting could be condensed into a three-point email, try doing that instead of calling a large group of people together to hear information that’s only partially relevant to their jobs.
- Open the Floor
If open communication is what you want to achieve for your business, it’s important to reinforce that as often as possible. This means that during meetings there should always be time for people to ask questions and make comments. Opinions should be valued, and you should have the ability to either give satisfying responses or say you’ll get back to them with an answer once you have one.
When management starts turning meetings into monologues, it can quickly give the impression that nobody’s opinion is needed and further information won’t be given. It can be hard to change the culture within a business, but doing so can transform a business’s trajectory.