The Importance of Business Communication Skills
The Importance of Business Communication Skills
Business communication is a two-part process, of transmitting and receiving.
You need to develop your abilities to accurately transmit your thoughts, opinions, ideas and feelings to others. You should also be able to correctly receive and understand, other people's thoughts feelings, plans and ideas.
In business, you would use this two-part process to communicate and/or discover the following business-related topics:
- The business goal that is to be achieved.
- The reasons why the goal is desirable and necessary.
- The business plan that is likely to achieve the goal in the most efficient manner possible.
- The recent market results (what has been going well, what has not been going well).
- To correctly interpret, both the positive and negative results and to correctly discern what they mean for the business.
- What changes need to be made, in order to improve on the current situation.
- To inspire positive emotions and attitudes, especially towards accepting the need to make adaptive changes.
1. Communicate the goal to be achieved.
All businesses exist to achieve goals. They do that by helping their customers achieve their goals.
Therefore, the fundamental communication skill is to communicate your business goals, and to understand the goals of your customers.
You must clearly understand and be able to communicate two things:
- What you want.
- What the customer wants.
2. Communicate the reasons why the goal is necessary, desirable, important.
Not only should you be able to communicate WHAT is wanted, but also WHY it is wanted.
You must understand and be able to explain the motivation.
If you don't understand the WHY behind the WHAT, then you won't fully understand the situation.
You should communicate and discover both sets, the WHAT and the WHY?
3. The plan that is likely to achieve the goal in the most efficient manner possible.
All goals need a plan capable of achieving them. So, the next thing to communicate or discover, is the PLAN.
This is the HOW, ie the means by which the goal can be most efficiently achieved.
You need to communicate the plan as accurately as you are able. Everyone should understand the plan and where they fit in.
And you must be ready to ask as many questions as necessary, in order to gain the fullest understanding of plans formulated by others.
4. The recent feedback results (What has been going well. What has not been going well).
The economy is like a fast-flowing, ever-changing river, which forms the business context on which your vessel is making its way.
You need to know the current situation in terms of what is good and what it not.
Therefore, you need to explain and/or discover exactly how things are at the present.
- You need to be able to communicate exactly what is going well.
- You need to be able to discover, by asking as many questions as necessary, what is NOT going so well, and even what is going BADLY.
Not everyone in your organisation wants to admit everything, so you need to work hard to find the facts.
5. To correctly interpret both the positive and negative results and to correctly communicate what they mean for the business.
When you find the facts, both the positive and negative, you must properly evaluate them, to discern their proper meaning and their implications.
You need to communicate to others your interpretation of the facts, so that they understand you, agree with you and are willing to act on your interpretation.
And you need to extract from other people their interpretation of the facts, so that you can understand things from other perspectives.
This means you need to listen carefully and evaluate logically.
6. What changes to the business need to be made, to improve upon the current situation.
Since the river continually changes, then your business must continually adapt.
Therefore, you need to:
- communicate, in a convincing manner, what adaptive changes you recommend.
- discover what changes others recommend.
- be cautious of the people who argue for NO CHANGE, for too long. Although no change implies progress. All progress implies change.
7. Inspire positive emotions and attitudes, especially towards accepting the need to make adaptive changes.
All progress implies change, but sadly many people hate change.
Therefore, your last business skill is to inspire positive emotions, and attitudes, especially in relation to persuading people to accept the need to make changes.
You can best do that by asking them what happens to any business, or individual, that refuses to adapt to changing circumstances?
The Magnificent Seven Business Questions
Memorise and use the following questions every day:
- What is the goal to be achieved?
- Why is this goal important? (What are the motives, purpose, or reasons behind this goal?)
- By what means can the goal best be achieved? Where is the detailed written plan?
- What's the recent feedback from the marketplace? From our customers? What is going well, what is NOT going well?
- What does the recent positive and negative feedback mean for our business?
- Based on the recent feedback results, what adaptive changes need to be made to our plans and actions, in order to improve upon the current situation?
- How can we ensure the necessary changes are not resisted by the team (or customers), but rather are perceived as adaptive and progressive changes?
About the Author: Chris Farmer
Chris Farmer is the founder of the Corporate Coach Group and has many years’ experience in training leaders and managers, in both the public and private sectors, to achieve their organisational goals, especially during tough economic times. He is also well aware of the disciplines and problems associated with running a business.
Over the years, Chris has designed and delivered thousands of training programmes and has coached and motivated many management teams, groups and individuals. His training programmes are both structured and clear, designed to help delegates organise their thinking and, wherever necessary, to improve their techniques and skills.
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