Communication in the workplace is important because it boosts employee morale, engagement, productivity, and satisfaction. Communication is also key for better team collaboration and cooperation. Ultimately, effective workplace communication helps drive better results for individuals, teams, and organizations.
To take it a step further, specifically as a manager, building good communication skills has profound short- and long-term benefits for your organization. An effective communicator is able to motivate their team to get more done with better results and fewer misunderstandings. And who doesn’t want fewer misunderstandings?
All of these things can contribute to the company’s success and to your own personal success as a leader.
7 common types of communication in the workplace
Not all work communication is made equal. We have all had the experience of sitting through a boring, lengthy meeting with the thought, “This should have been an email.
Different communication channels are ideal for different types of communication. Depending on the type of information being conveyed, those different channels can enhance or detract from how it is received. An effective communicator will develop different skills and tools to match the type of communication needed.
- Leadership communication
Leaders often deliver one-way communications to their teams. The goal may be to inform or update, such as a memo about a new company policy or a change in direction. Leaders also often communicate to persuade, encourage, and inspire commitment. They often communicate through stories more than data.
- Upward communication
Managers (and team members) often have to communicate with their own managers and with other leaders who are not in their direct chain of command. These may take the form of memos/emails, reports, or a slot in a standing meeting. Regardless of the format, these types of communications should be considered more formal.
- Updates
Since they are brief by nature, updates often fall short of being a type of strong communication. Use a visual tracker or dashboard to carry the load, and save your verbal or written commentary for drawing the audiences attention to what is most important typically, what requires action or further involvement from them. This might include surprises, obstacles, and potential risks, as well as wins.
- Presentations
These formal communication events tend to receive the lion’s share of attention, for good reason. Presentations are communication tools that are typically aimed at a larger audience with higher stakes. They have objectives like informing, influencing, and persuading. In addition, many people fear public speaking, and thanks to TED and other series, we have a high expectation for entertainment as well as insight.
- Meetings
Meetings, whether large or small, are a critical part of a workplace’s internal communication strategy. They are also one of the least understood and most overused types of communication. Effective meetings build synergy between teams and quickly communicate information that would have a high potential to be misunderstood in another format (like email). The best meetings are highly collaborative and leave participants feeling energized, not drained.
- Customer communications
Communicating with customers can run the entire gamut discussed above, from one-offs to face-to-face, virtual, spoken, or written, formal to ad hoc. In general, all of the considerations of communication among employees go double for customers. Be deliberate and plan your messages to provide what your customer needs, in the way they prefer, and create a positive impression for the company and the product.
- Informal interactions
Informal communications include the emails and chats you engage in all day: making requests, asking for information, responding to requests, and giving or receiving support and guidance. In addition to moving the work of the organization forward, these informal communications have secondary objectives of forming social connections, building culture, establishing trust, and finding common ground.
