Communication is important, in life, in making friendships, relationships, at work and in doing routine activities. It’s conveying ideas and information to others and also, receive some ideas from others. It’s vital for all living beings, not only human beings: animals, insects, plants and trees, to understand the world as we know it, to help each other and to live together well.
Communication is an effort to make shared understanding. It’s needed to develop and to maintain any relationship. Our youth and children too, learn the proper way to communicate by looking to our own examples and begin to imitate us. With time, they develop confidence in themselves. So, by learning the good, proper and healthy ways to communicate, we can help our peers as well as our youth and children.
In the context of the modern world, communications are performed in many ways: visual, auditory, verbal, tactile, olfactory (sense of smell), electromagnetic and biochemical. In the context of the professional world, good communication becomes very crucial. It’s at play in every activity of any business. In a similar way, the quality of professional communication can make or break the business greatly.
the Importance of Communication in the Professional World
Because ‘business’ is a meeting place for like-minded individuals working together for a cause greater than themselves, the healthy and ethical communication is very important. Further, communication develops trust. Good communication can bring people together, unite them in spite of unfavourable challenges and develop deep, long-lasting relationships. Bad communication can be a nightmare: it can break trust, it can destroy peoples’ lives and it can create immense loss, pain and suffering.
So, in professional contexts, it’s vital to learn the way to communicate well, according to the rules of the workplace as well as general manners. To help you to better understand: the quality of communication is developed by a person’s words as well as non-verbal elements like gestures, body language, facial expressions, posture and eye contact. When we say anything, wesay a lot without speaking much. Our body posture, tone of voice and our facial expressions convey a message.
But the important idea here is that we can learn to communicate better. We can learn to communicate openly, clearly and honestly by patience and practise. So, let’s look at the various aspects of professional communication here:
- The Nature of Professional Relationships: For a particular business, the relationships they have amongst each other and with their community helps them to survive, to do their work and to have a future. So, proper professional relationships become very important in the professional context. Here, the nature of professional relationships is defined by a number of rules, developed by the company’s founding members. So, to ensure healthy business, all the employees of a particular business need to respect their rules, within reasonable and ethical limits. Thus, professional relationships need to be handled with care.
- Respect: The word ‘respect’ is often said but less practised. To respect someone is to value someone’s unique nature and appreciate them. To respect someone isn’t to blindly obey them out of fear. So, a relationship based on respect is vital for everyone in a professional environment: founding members, colleagues, clients, customers and new people. It’s also very important between members of an organization. But in the effort to give respect to others, it’s also important to respect ourselves also.
- Trust: It’s important to be able to trust other people. But trust may not be earned overnight and it can be very difficult to earn. If someone’s trust in someone else is damaged, it can be almost impossible to regain or to rebuild this trust. So, it can be very sensitive matter. In professional contexts as well, because communication is vital to success or failure, trust can be very delicate. At our workplace, we need to approach others carefully and with honesty. We need to be open and honest, so that the trust shared between people is protected and is nurtured.
- Listening: Listening is very important to healthy communication. A good listener can encourage others to talk openly and honestly. When other people encounter stress, problems, burden and difficulties, they need other people to listen to their concerns. So, because almost everyone eventually encounters such troubles, we all need to listen to others too. One of the best ways to become a good listener is to develop patience and to give other people a chance to talk. It’s important to simply listen, with an intent to learn about the other people, rather than just to respond or share our own opinions quickly.
- Privacy: We all have some of our personal relationships, activities and commitments away from our work. So, it’s good to develop a sense of privacy for ourselves and others. It’s important to allow people to be by themselves. It’s good to let them talk to others on their phones, in a reasonable way. We should others be free and give them the right to privacy. So, we needn’t spy on their conversations with others, follow them unnecessarily and so on. It’s also very important that other people, at our workplace, give us the same sense of privacy and freedom too. This greatly helps develop a culture of security and well-being.
- Conflicts and Misunderstandings: Conflicts, misunderstandings, fights and disagreements are inevitable. But these aren’t also the end of the world. In case of miscommunications, when you are perhaps at fault, it’s very important to apologize immediately. You can try to explain that you really meant to say something else and you didn’t honestly mean to say something hurtful. In a similar way, it’s important that other people make an effort to be polite to us as well. In certain bigger conflicts, to resolve conflicts and to rebuild trust, all people need to make an effort to come back to normalcy. Here, they can search for one or two issues they tend to agree with each other, share opinions, share experiences and develop companionship.
- Asking for Help: Everyone needs help. Even all the great people in History, have needed help in some ways. In times of confusion, difficulty, burden and stress, we need to ask for help from other people. In professional contexts especially, asking for help is very important. It may seem counterproductive at first. But trying to work when we aren’t well enough isn’t really a good idea because it can damage the quality of work eventually. Thus, we need to ask for help from our seniors and experts, in times of need, in a polite, respecting and genuine way. This habit can greatly help create a friendly and positive work environment.
Learning Healthy Communication Continually
Communication is very important, even in professional contexts. It becomes vital in many activities like engaging clients, media relations, public relations, developing brand, nurturing reputation and engaging employees.
Recognizing that communication is vital, the study of communication itself has been an academic and professional discipline. To guide ourselves to better knowledge and practice within communication, we can study topics like conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, the power of words i.e., verbal communication, body language and ethics, in even more detail.
In sum, it’s important to remember that our words matter. So, as we talk to and work with others, we need to practice and to nurture healthy ways to communicate.
