Effective Communication values

Introduction:

Queensland government defines effective communication as ‘’the exchange of information, intention and emotion, It involves clearly transmitting a message and receiving acknowledgment that the message has been received and understood by your intended audience’’. Good communication usually increases productivity and cement and develop ties and relationships because it gives feeling of being heard and understood, while poor communication in other hand would ruin relationship. In businesses. relationships directly and indirectly affected by poor relationships in term of projects execution, sales and reputation.

There are four core values of communication which are: transparency to tell the truth, empathy to understand and acknowledge others, Conciseness to the point and positive to be constructive. In the following I will explain them.

1-    Transparent communication:

Transparency means you tell the truth and build trust whether information is good or bad. Many project leaders fail to be transparent with their team for the sake of confidentiality or to show their confidence, form personal experience I can tell you that is not correct; you lose when you lead defensively because it is contagious behaviour. Cooperating with the team and sharing information have always been better for building team trust, an important ingredient in fostering a strong team.

There are many benefits of becoming transparent such as:

• building stronger ties with team, customer and stakeholders.
• Improve collaboration with your team.
• High and clear accountability in the organisation.
• Promote ethical and practical practices.

Leaders are responsible for building a culture of transparency by creating an open communication environment. Being clear and honest about the objectives, goals and expectations is vital for transparent communication. Beyond that, follow up with the team and giving consistent and constructive feedback can make a big difference in the level of trust a pillar to transparent communication.

2-    Empathic communication:

Leading your team with empathy is vital for better performance, because the team will feel comfortable communicating their ideas without fear of being judged. International Journal of Caring Sciences defines empathy as the "capacity" to share and understand another’s "state of mind" or emotion. It is about putting oneself into another’s shoes.

Empathy is also considered part of emotional intelligence, which is defined as the ability, capacity, skill, or a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups. To manage others’ emotions, leaders need to possess empathy skills. For a long time, empathy have been overlooked as leaders’ performance indicator, while it is an important trait of effective leaders, It has been proven that today’s managers should focus on person and being able to cooperate with different cultures, people, departments, and backgrounds.

Benefits of communication with empathy are, but not limited to:

• Improve team productivity and morale
• Increase team engagement and support.
• Create a welcoming positive and motivating work environment.
• Improve you and your team active listening and reduce conflicts.

3-    Concise communication

Leaders should always do more and talk less, to do that they must be concise in their communication. We can define concise communication as the clear, brief to the point form of message that led to effective and objective communication. Wharton school in The University of Pennsylvania clearly mentioned ’Concise communication saves time and makes it easier for the audience to understand and process a message’.

Concise communication is not only critical for speakers but also for listeners because they tend to avoid or are unlikely to listen to excessive, unclear, or ambiguous speech, simply because they do not have time for it. Furthermore, when a speaker talks too much, they appear to be either uninformed about the topic and unable to articulate it objectively and succinctly. Over-communicative people are not favoured, and they are often unwelcome or not invited to meetings.

 Concise communication provides many benefits such as:

• Save time, Efficient and fast communication because it avoids unnecessary details.
• Keep the listener focus on the important message and engaged.
• Facilitate teamwork and decision making which improve productivity.
• Avoid conflicts and facilitate its resolutions

4-    Positive communication

Positive communication has many definitions. Olga Arkadyevna (PhD and professor at Volgograd State Socio-Pedagogical University) defined it as an interaction based on positive emotions, aimed at mutual understanding and satisfaction for all parties involved. Leaders must maintain positive communication with their stakeholders, as it leads to effective communication and better outcomes.

Positive communication is a critical value because it improves collaboration and cooperation among the team, which boosts productivity and facilitates interpersonal relationships. In addition, it creates a respectful workplace where diverse opinions are welcomed, and an inclusive environment with a culture of constructive feedback.

Conclusion:

To sum up, to communicate effectively in your work environment, your message should be deliberate, empathic where needed, and clear avoiding misinterpreting. To do that, leaders have to adopt those four values: transparency, empathy, conciseness and positive. I can’t agree more with the journalist Sydney J. Harris when he said that said that, “the two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things: information is giving out; communication is getting through.”

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