Communication the lifeblood of the Business

Communication is a vital ingredient of a successful business and yet how much time do we spend on honing our skills? How much time do we spend understanding how effective communication is?

All too often I see a general question in a survey around communication, but for me communication for employees can be broken into three.

• Top Down
• Up to the top
• Side to side across peers and functions

Often the top down is relatively ok, but this is in the art of telling. Telling does not naturely inspire, motivate, engage people. That level of commitment occurs when there value is put on all communication and a real dialogue occurs. To create the right culture I would suggest there are 2 areas that business need to look at both in relation to employees and their customers

1. Understand the 3 types of communication - as above - and audit them. Find out where the breakdown occurs and develop the skills to remedy the situation.
2. Ask whether you value communication...do you develop skills across the business on how to communicate, how to create dialogue? Is it a competence that you look for in a manager of people?