Define and Explain effective business communication

Effective business communication is one of the poorest understood, and least practiced, management tools available to all entrepreneurs.

Yet, it can mean the difference between success and failure when facing a crisis in your business.

Unfortunately, effective business communication has been discussed, dissected, experimented with, expounded upon, seminar’d to death and written about until the word “communication” often brings a shudder to many business people.

Still, the importance of good, effective business communication—or the lack of it—can determine the eventual success or failure of your business, especially when facing a crisis.

This is where your leadership qualities become of utmost importance. You must set the ground-rules for communication so that employees, customers, suppliers and bankers quickly develop a sense of trust.

You can only do this through communication. Nothing you do is more important than developing a good line of communication with everyone. If you don’t already have this, start today!

Instead of a dictionary type of definition, let's look at an expanded definition of effective business communication. To do this we need to break the definition into two distinct types—formal business communication, and informal business communication.

Definition of Business Communication

Formal Business Communication

This involves such things as staff meetings, planning meetings, turnaround team meetings, strategic review meetings, board meetings, written reports of any description, newsletters and so on.

During a crisis these forms of communication take on a definite sense of urgency—just so long as you and your employees do not spend too much time in meetings. Meetings with your turnaround team during the early phases of a crisis are usually group discussions on how best to get through the next 90 days—sometimes the next 24 hours.

If your business has an hourly workforce, whether it is union or non-union, another formal means of communication can be through a labor/management group.

This group is usually composed of three or four selected representatives from the labor force, plus yourself and perhaps your Human Resources manager. The group will initially meet to discuss the crisis and what it could mean to the workforce.

This also requires follow-up meetings to report on progress in resolving the crisis. The meetings need to be a two-way street so both you and your employees can lay out concerns. This is an excellent way to head off potential labor problems.

Informal Business Communication

This happens around the water cooler or the coffeepot; in the lunchroom; walking around your facility; in your office, or someone else’s office or workplace.

This form of communication is by far the most important thing you can do to build consensus among your employees, not to mention information gathering.

What might be considered "chit-chat" at any other time can be extremely effective business communication during a crisis. You will learn things you could not possibly find out any other way, and your employees will be kept up to date almost hour by hour on what is really going on.

A note of caution: you must be a good communicator and not send mixed signals to the employees. What you say to one employee must be consistent with what you say to everyone else, because they will all talk about your conversations—more than you think.