Our workplace is often our second home. Most of us usually spend a significant amount of our time at the workplace than we do at our homes during our working lives. All of this consists of a lot of interaction with our colleagues, peers, seniors, and juniors internally and clients, customers, business partners, and other stakeholders externally. It’s about daily planning, implementation, execution, and coordination of various tasks, where everything is communication driven.
Communication failure and success are directly linked with the failure and success of the systems, processes, modalities, and campaigns, and eventually affect the top line and bottom line of the organisation. Communication affects a lot of things like solving a problem, addressing a conflict, ensuring the right decisions, leadership issues, interpersonal relationships, individual employee growth and development, and so on.
Good communication ensures that the workflow is smooth and hassle-free, while poor communication can complicate the process and affect the proper flow of information leading to blockage of systems and processes affecting workflow poorly. It’s always about a healthy exchange of ideas, thoughts, views, opinions, facts, concepts, beliefs, interpretations, etc., about work issues. Improperly communicated thoughts and ideas, unexplained interpretations, unclear concepts, confusing opinions, and misunderstood beliefs often cause a severe jam in communication creating more work-led struggles.
Most organisations these days while hiring people explicitly look for good written and oral communication as required skillsets beyond the technical and academic ones for any role. It’s important how an issue, problem, or decision is being conveyed via communication whether in writing or verbally. It matters what’s the attitude of the person, what’s the style, what’s the approach taken while informing, sharing, discussing, talking, and communicating with others.
Everything matters from a good v/s bad grammar in writing, a professional v/s casual, a respectful v/s normal way of communicating with people. Interestingly, most often one may not have any kind of ill feeling or may not want to send bad vibes, it may, however, happen that the receiver of the communication might perceive it completely another way due to poor quality of communication.
A straightforward and candid communication might be perceived as rude and blatant, while poorly written communication might be understood as a casual approach by the communicator and likewise. Many times communication is also wrongly understood due to the existing diversities in any organisation. Often the workforce comes from varied and diverse socio-economic, cultural, and geographical backgrounds. That’s another cause of communication being misunderstood if it hasn’t been thought through by the one who is delivering it.
Creativity is when complex thoughts can be explained in simple ways that are understood by the receiver coming from any diversity of religion, gender, cast, creed, culture, academics, and linguistics for that matter. Being creative doesn’t mean it has to be witty or funny always. It is rather being thoughtful about the person who is going to receive the communication and communicating in a way that will be best understood.
Innovation in communication happens when one can think through the situation, organise thoughts, craft the right communication whether written or oral, meeting the situation, context, and the people one is dealing with. Being able to wear the shoes of the receiver, one can ensure smooth and impacting delivery of one’s thoughts and ideas, without missing the points.
Creativity in communications is really when one can reach the message exactly as it is supposed to be communicated to the audience and generate the desired impact. It’s all about delivering the right message to the audience despite the diversity and broad range of perspectives, insights, and ideas that exist among them.
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
Praveen has been closely associated with many national and international events related to cinema for children, art and culture. He has a well-rounded experience that cuts across all key sectors of PR & Corporate Communications.
He started his career with URJA Communications, an advertising agency specialising in technology brands, where he was instrumental in developing the PR division. Post this, he had a stint with Horizons Porter Novelli, a global public relations consultancy. Thereafter, he was heading the IT & Telecom division at Clea PR, a leading Indian public relations and communications company followed by a fairly long stint with Omnicom Group agencies viz. TBWA\India and Brodeur India.
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