Effective communication skills are an organizational asset. On further exploration, it appears to lead to primal leadership and emotional intelligence, and overall praise for the leaders demonstrating communication skills.

While all this may be true, and it is indeed nice that there is appreciative acknowledgment of the qualities of the said skilled communicator, how sensitive do we remain to them?How much do we attempt to develop sensitivity or look for ways to improve emotional intelligence?

Such acknowledgment is little help for others to develop their skills. So, we have a world of pedestals of admiration and envy for "those-who-can" and helpless frustration and damaged self-esteem in those who can't. It also leads to "those-who-can" being burdened with the expectations and responsibility of communication on the behalf of all, while "those-who-can't" fumble and drop the ball when unexpected situations that require skilled communication arise. And all this is still a fairy tale at some overall environment level.

On an immediate level,, poor communication leads to much misery in the form of delays, misunderstandings, unintentional hurt and frustration within the team, never mind what happens with relationships out of the team.

Take the case of a client of mine who planned an outbound programme forhis team. Wanting to see a more cohesive working environment, but unwilling to hurt his team by sharing his beliefs about their current state of operations, he chose to not speak about the training right until the opening session of the programme. When he did, several members of his team felt cheated because they had expected an exciting holiday and now felt that they were being put to work.

What had happened that by taking a decision for his team, without sharing the process of arriving at that decision, he had alienated himself from them. They felt that he was acting superior, and they were not willing to take it. When he finally shared what had led him to organize the training, much of the team agreed with his assessment and thought it would have been a good decision that they would have supported if they had known about it.

Surprisingly, this man was the leader for this team on the basis of his communication skills and had a magnificent track record of "convincing presentations" to back his innovative initiatives.

The thing is that communication has three parts to it  - the sender, the medium and the receiver. Each is important. The sender needs to send the message in a way that conveys the intent and content accurately. The medium is important, as it determines how the message is conveyed. The receiver needs to be paying attention to the message and providing feedback.

Examples:

• This man in the above example communicated only part of the content when it was inevitable. If he had conveyed what he ended up confessing later, the intent and content would have been clear as well as the fact that he had included the team in a decision that was relevant to them.
• There are things we find we need to say in person. A phone call or even an SMS is enough for others. An email or SMS works efficiently to send addresses, bank account numbers, etc. A powerpoint presentation adds impact when many points need to be conveyed in a systematic manner.
• A person listening and assuming the unsaid, is actually working from his imagination of what the message was, since the unsaid could have implications other than his assumption and what the sender meant is known only to him, unless he provides feedback about not having received information on some aspects and asking for it.

Communication thus is a living and evolving process with adaptations being incorporated to ensure that it reaches as intended. It may sound simple, but it is to be experienced to be believed.

This is the kind of stuff we address in our programmes for communication. The programme uses behaviour data from activities to understand patterns in our behaviour that lead to communication failure and helps participants explore patterns.

"When we don't understand, we react. When we understand, we respond."