Some communication techniques

Read any attitude survey and it will say people want face-to-face communication. This may be admirable – but how practical is it? Some managers are very uncomfortable at communicating with their staff. They need coaching/training/encouraging to do so. Then there is the sheer difficulty of getting peripatetic managers to stay in one place long enough to give quality time to face-to-face communication. Neither of these challenges is insuperable, but they do need working on. Meanwhile there are other useful techniques to back up the desired one-to-one face-to-face communication and these are described in the BP case study that follows.

Primary tools range from various forms of debrief such as team meetings and large gatherings where staff have the chance to listen to, and ask questions of, a senior manager, to facilitated focus group meetings that give staff the chance to provide feedback in a ‘safe’ environment. Among the secondary tools to support the primary processes are articles in house journals, videos, audio-tapes (easy to listen to on the way to work), award schemes and surveys.

The point to make about both primary and secondary tools is that they are more about processes than products. They need to be tailored to the individual needs of not just the company but also the specific part of that company. And they need to adhere to the basic communication principles of timeliness, openness and honesty.

There is one final essential point to make about communication and it is this: communication is a shared resource. It is not, as some people think, something that is done to them. Nor is it, as some managers think, something that people do for them. The success or failure of communication rests with the whole organization, with a little help from the person at the very top…