The Need To Communicate

Communication is at the heart of everything we do. Chris Olchawski, Owner & Director at Management Learning Resources Ltd. explains why getting your point across clearly is so important in everyday business life.

In the land of soft skills is communication the lion king? Surely communication skills lay at the heart of just about all human interaction? Impacting sales, efficiency, outputs and performance – everything an organisation does. Yet while ‘Excellent Communication Skills’ may regularly pop up on CVs and job specs as cliches, in practice how much time is spent refining those skills?

We understand how easy it is to misunderstand one another, after all we are only too familiar with misunderstandings at home and in the workplace. We pick up phones after an email exchange, we arrange coffees, drinks, and meals, to make sure we are “all on the same page”.

We treat people who communicate well with a sort of hallowed reverence, because we fully understand what it is they are saying, indeed the whole group gets it. So, inspite of the fact we are communicating virtually all our waking day, we spend precious little time, if any, actually even thinking about working on this priceless skill.

Nobody expects to perfect any other skill without working on it. While some of us may have a little more natural aptitude for a musical instrument, a sport, or an art all of us improve with some help and coaching. So, it is with communication. And this is a skill in which improvement can genuinely be life changing.

It is well worthwhile considering including an element of communication training into almost any other training situation because of its fundamental role, and you are likely to find it helps the rest of your learning and development along. Communication topics can include appreciation of various styles and help to identify your own, improving listening skills, effectiveness, responses etc.

It would be ridiculous to say that communication training will solve every problem, so nothing else matters – but it is at the very heart of human interaction and deserves to be considered as part of any Learning & Development Programme.

At MLR we will happily help you to decide what is the most appropriate solution for your particular circumstances. Resources are available in hard copy and online formats, to suit classroom and remote learning. Our experience is that the shared knowledge of self and others often helps to build relationships, as the realisation of why things have been difficult dawns.

Find out more about what we can offer here.