It is the giving receiving, or exchange of information opinions or ideas by writings, verbally, non-verbally visual means, or any combination of the three, so that the material communicated is completely understood by everyone concerned.

Communication is obviously key in any relationship – whether personal or professional. In the workplace, communication serves two purposes: it conveys the employees’ responsibilities and builds trust between employees and upper management.

Employee morale and productivity are obviously impacted by poor communication. Have you considered the effects on turnover, customer service and project delivery?

Here are the top 3 costly results of poor communication in the workplace:

1. Employee Absences and Turnover

When communication is poor, morale is poor. When morale is poor, people don’t care. When people don’t care, they don’t show up. See where we’re going with this?

A company study from Proving Communication Impacts Business Performance shows that up to 18% of sick days and absence rates are due to a variation in communication practices, whereas when employees felt included in communication with the company, absence rates are below average.

Did you know when a valuable employee leaves voluntarily it can cost an employer up to three times the employee’s annual salary to replace them? That’s a lot of wasted money that could be fixed with a focus on better employee communication. In a study conducted by Watson Wyatt, it was found that over 50% of companies that communicate effectively are more likely to report levels of turnover below the industry average, compared to 33% with the least effective communication.

2. Customer Service

When employees are disgruntled and unhappy with their job, it shows. Everyone’s attitude is affected. Frustrated employees will create frustrated customers. If an employee doesn’t feel that there is a commitment of communication within the workplace, they will lose the commitment to get the job done.

An improvement in communication will result in an improvement in employee attitude and guess what? An improvement in customer service – which means an increase in revenue. It’s really that simple.

3. Project Delivery

We all know the phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen.” When you have a group of people working on a project together, communication is not optional – it is 100% necessary to be successful. If team members are working in silos and not sharing their status, concerns, and ideas, things will get messy. In fact, two out of three projects will end in failure.

Not only does this make the team and the company look bad, it costs money. Budgets and deadlines are put in place for a reason. If you blow it, most of the time you aren’t given a second chance.

If you DO get another chance, someone is now paying twice for a project that should have been completed correctly the first time around. Time is now also being wasted on the same project when a new one could have been started. A study conducted by the National Association of IT Professionals found that 28% of respondents cited poor communication as the main cause of failure for IT projects.

Make communication and setting proper expectations a priority for your team. Don’t take any chances that communication will just fall in to place. Communication is a thoughtful action and process. Set your team up for success by listening and collaborating on a mutually beneficial plan, such as listing which tools will be used by situation (i.e., texting for emergencies) and when to reply to all and when not to.

When instructions are unclear, people are unable to accomplish and their workplace activities to the standard required. In order to do the job well, people need to understand how to do the job to achieve the intended outcome.

Instructions: Explain to delegates that you are about to give them instructions and they must follow these instructions as given to them. They must follow these quietly and are not allowed to ask any questions. They should not get help from others around them or even look at other people’s work.If anyone asked questions, simply tell them to follow the instructions as they see fit. Present these instructions:Hold up the papers please.Fold the paper in half.Cut (or neatly tear) off the top right corner of the folded paper.Fold in half again.Cut off the top left corner of the paper.Fold in half again.Cut off the bottom right corner of the paper.Fold in half.Cut off the bottom left corner of the paper.Unfold the paper.Ask delegates to show off their unfolded papers to each other and examine similarities or differences.DebriefSimply ask: Did you end up with similar patterns or everyone’s pattern was different? Why is that? Were the instructions clear enough? What was missing? Why feedback is so critical in communication? What happens if feedback is missing? What lessons do we take from this?

Feedback is an essential part of successful interpersonal communication. It indicates how well the sender’s message is being understood or has been understood by the recipient. The importance of feedback cannot be overemphasized. Feedback makes communication a two-way process, it indicates effective understanding or misunderstanding of the message, it stimulates further communication and discussion. N.B Do not make the common mistake of assuming “everything is all right” when there are no visible signs of trouble. It is wise to be a bit sceptical if you receive only positive feedback. Tune in to the bad news along with the good.

· Intention: Effective feedback is directed toward improving job performance and making the employee a more valuable asset it is not a personal attack and should not compromise the individual’s feeling of self-worth or image. Rather effective feedback is directed towards aspects of the job. · Specificity: Effective feedback is designed to provide recipients with specific information so that they know what must be done to correct the situation. Ineffective feedback is general and leaves questions in the recipients minds. For example, telling an employee that he or she is a poor worker. · Description: Effective feedback is descriptive rather than evaluative. It tells the employee what he or she has done in objective terms, rather than presenting value judgement. · Usefulness: Effective feedback is information that an employee can use to improve performance. If it is something that an employee cannot correct, it is not worth mentioning. · Timeliness: Time feedback properly. The more immediate the feedback the better. · Readiness: in order for feedback to be effective, employee must be ready to receive it. When feedback is imposed or forced on employees it is much less effective. · Clarity: Effective feedback must be clearly understood by the recipient. Stick them with pointy end · Validity: Effective feedback must be reliable and valid. When the information employee will feel that the supervisor is unnecessarily biased or the employee may take corrective action that is inappropriate and only compounds the problem.

Receiving frank assessments about ourselves from others is often not easy and can be an emotional experience. Here are a few tips on how best to prepare yourself to receive feedback, to be receptive and to leverage the value of the comments you receive from others.· Relax: Feedback is an adventure of discovery into yourself. Be willing to entertain new ideas about yourself. Some of the comments you receive might be useful, others not. Even if all that is said is not accurate, you just might learn something from the small part that is.

· Be a sponge: Resist the urge to explain. Just listen respectfully, acknowledge the comments and avoid explaining your actions. When you explain, you are likely to be perceived as defensive or unwilling to listen to feedback.· Ask for clarification: Ask if there were certain words, gestures or expressions that created the impression he or she received from you. Listen carefully to these details.· Write down the comments: This information will be even more valuable after a couple of days and you might find it easier to get past any emotionally-charged words or issues you had at the time the comments were made. Practice Kaizen: “Continuous improvement.” Embrace the philosophy that has made Toyota the world’s premier auto manufacturer. When you practice this mindset, you will begin to see that all feedback is an invaluable gift – an invitation to examine one’s self with fresh eyes.

Active levelActive listening is a skill you learn by practice. It takes more effort than plain „hearing‟ but the benefits make it well worthwhile. Listening goes beyond hearing. Hearing is a physiological activity that occurs when sound waves hit our eardrums. Listening is far more complex than hearing or otherwise,

It is a process of sending back to the speaker what you as a listener think the speaker meant-both in content and feeling. Characteristics of active Listeners Active listeners are willing to give the speaker a chance to develop his or her ideas. Active listeners are open-minded about people who look or sound different from themselves. Active listeners can follow several methods of organization- even poorly organized material will be listened to with some degree of tolerance. Active listeners are likely to listen even more attentively when the material becomes difficult. It becomes a challenge to the.

Listening that is directly affected by a person’s beliefs, interests or emotions. Listening for what you want to hear. Personal background experiences habits and family tradition will many times change or distort the speaker’s intended meaning into what the listener really wants to hear.

Listening without talking or directing the speaker in any obvious way- is a powerful means of communicating acceptance. Passive listening allows the speaker to develop his or her thoughts and ideas in the presence of another person who accepts but does not evaluate who supports but does not intrude. By listening passively, you provide a supportive and receptive environment.

If you want to understand what a person means and what a person is feeling, you need to listen empathically. To empathize with others is to feel with them to see the world as they see it, feel what they feel. It can also be described as listening “between the lines”. When we listen between the lines we heighten our awareness and interpersonal sensitivity to the entire message a person may be trying to communicate.

Empathic listening serves as a reward or encouragement to the speaker. It communicates your caring and acceptance and reaffirms the person’s sense of worth. This style of listening seems

to be most important in terms of strengthening or improving a positive interpersonal relationship between the parties involved.

Kinesics Body movement, gestures, posture facial expressions and eye contact fall within the broad field of non-verbal study called Kinesics.  Positive kinesics: Alertness, open posture, smiling, focusing, relaxed breathing, upright posture, head nodding, eye contact.

Negative kinesics: Slouching, tapping of foot, yawning, lack of eye contact, drumming fingers, fidgeting, rolling eyes, frowning, squinting, scowling, crossed arms.

Posture can be used to determine a participant’s degree of attention or involvement the difference in status between communicators, and the level of fondness a person has for the other communicators. Posture is understood through such indicators as direction of lean body orientation, arm position, and body openness.

Gesture A gesture is a non-vocal bodily movement intended to express meaning. They may be articulated with the hands, arms or body. Eye communication/occulesics This is the science of the movement grammar of our eyes and of facial expressions. Eye contact function Eye contact serves several important functions: · To monitor feedback. · To maintain interest and attention visual dominance behaviour, increase of eye contact with the hope that the person will increase attention. · To signal a conversational turn. Eye communication can also serve to inform the other person that the channel of communication is open and that she or he should now speak. · To signal the nature of the relationship: Relationship can either be positive or negative, amorous

Haptics

Physical contact with others is the most basic form of communication and a lack of touch in certain situations often communicates that there is a problem.

Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously, and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, intonation of speech. Sometimes the definition is restricted to vocally-produced sounds. The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics.

) The voice set is the situation in which the speaker is speaking: This can include the situation, gender, mood, age and a persons culture. b) The voice qualities are volume pitch, tempo rhythm articulation, resonance nasality, and accent. They give each individual a unique “voice print”. The non-verbal importance of paralinguistic skills hence can be seen as extremely influencing skill when we communicate with people. An awareness of the subtle nuances of

vocal qualities will help you to understand working relationships. Speaking to co-workers, employees, higher management, clients and customer needs different uses of vocal behavior. The sooner we understand the power of our vocal intonations the better we will be at our interpersonal relationships at workplace and in life.

Conclusion We need to develop proficiency in understanding our non-verbal and those of others so that our interpersonal relationships and communication do not suffer. Good verbal and non-verbal communication skills are the real assets and we must capitalize on them.