Is Communication merely a tool to achieve a goal or is Communication an END in itself?
We are going through a technological revolution, a time of disruption in almost every walk of life, most significant of which is DISRUPTIVE THOUGHT PROCESS. This is an era when every one of us is looking into ourselves questioning not only our actions but the very thought process that leads to them. With so much turbulence and disruption both inside out, we are the only keener to clarify the communication we give and receive.
Once I was in an important meeting with a client in India when my boss called from the middle east. I cut his call with a message apologizing for not taking his call and explaining the reason behind it. The first thing he made clear when we spoke again was that he was fine with my cutting the call but not fine with my apologizing for it.
That day he communicated Respect for my Job without saying it in so many words. So, though he seemingly admonished me, he left me feeling elated! Why? And How? The key is not just communication but the Perception that the Communication renders.
Communication is an all-encompassing blanket that dictates the perception formation of an individual. Remember every individual’s perception is his reality so communication actually dictates the very reality that the individual surrounds himself with. Not very unlike augmented reality! Formal and informal communication both have become all the more in today’s scenario as the onslaught of Covid’s wave after wave has shown that things we had taken for granted like meeting people in person, gathering, and socializing in person are all now but a distant dream.
Business communication traditionally has been limited to be merely a tool. We were taught that Organizational Communication is used to perform four functions ie Control, Motivate, Inform & Express Emotionally. I believe that communication is much more than a tool or a medium to achieve a goal. Let's look at the scope of communication in the functioning of the organization.
- LEADING-: Today’s transient world has taught us that LEADING IS A FUNCTION and not a designation. Earlier on Leaders were almost always the bosses. Many a time leaders were the bosses or rather only the bosses could be leaders. But today we understand that bosses may not be proficient in everything all the time. So we work project-wise and the person best suited for the particular project is given free hand to steer the project based on already existing guidelines. However, the oft-time fallout is that while PMP and other courses train and helps us to achieve the target without failure or minimum deviation, the handling of the most important resource ie team members is often relegated to mere functions. Team members are the most important contributors because they act on their own using tools like training or guidelines. However, any mistake or fallout on their part too can cause equally distressing damage. This is where we have to understand that the human resource’s performance is completely dependent on his or her perceived reality and that perception, in turn, is dependent as much if not more on communication as much as real-time incidents.
- TEAM ALIGNMENT tops the list of functions that the leadership today is all about. The leader ensures the Team’s Alignment with organizational goals. Alignment among the team members and organizational goals or amongst the team members can be achieved only if there is a perceived common ground or a clarity about how the set goal is going to benefit each member involved. This perception can be achieved only if there is a free and effective flow of INFORMATION from top down. The goals, processes, and even the organization's functioning and its team members depend on this information exchange and the perception or reception of the information. Training debriefs, instructions, memos, etc all form a part of this information exchange.
- PROBLEM-SOLVING is another function of the leader as any proper well-rounded leader would be actively involved in solving the team or team member’s problem. To do so effectively, he or she must understand the problem. So here too the perception has to be of the same reality. The leader will have to perceive the problem from the viewpoint of the team mate. We need effective communication not only to understand the problem but also to trash out a solution, and then to implement it and later review the results. Every leader who is a problem solver in the sense that he listens and detects issues, often taking steps in solving them, his next priority would be to make sure it doesn’t happen. This would mean acting proactively and one of the most important methods to make sure of that is through an empathetic understanding of the situation through effective communication.
- MOTIVATION is the third prong of an effective leader who steers the ship towards its goal successfully. Aligning the employees to the organizational goals would not suffice in itself. The team members would have to be motivated to push themselves out of the comfort zone and keep developing themselves further day after day. An organization is made of people and sustained development of people will ensure the development of the organization in itself. Development of self and therefore of the organization again depends on what is perceived to be beneficial or in fact evolutionary. Communication will be deciding the parameters on that too. A leader would be able to set about looking at a sustainable, evolving organization if he views it through the lens of communication. An able LEADER can achieve it through ALIGNING, PROBLEM-SOLVING, AND MOTIVATING- all three of them are different facets of COMMUNICATION. So a leader is only as good as his or her communication is.
- CRISIS MANAGEMENT : A crisis could arise both internally and externally. When an organization faces a crisis due to internal conflict among team members/ process/ supply chain/ market conditions/ or sheer unexpected calamities, each of them has to be handled with – salvage what is left and minimize the damage- not only counteraction but also effective communication. An external crisis occurring due to a faux pas by any member representing the company, or any product/service failure of the company, or a branding or PR disaster of the company also can be handled only through effective communication.
In today's world when we are constantly bombarded with words like VUCA, 4.0 revolution, disruptions, etc the only mantra seem to be act or rather react to the change in situation as we go. The key to such a constant improvisation is the perception of the situation and communication of that perception to the team members.
So to sum up organizational communication has evolved from being just a tool to achieve the organizational goals to become the very organization as the perception of the organization itself lies in communication.. Comprehending this very fact is the first step to designing everything in an organization AROUND communication and not the other way!!
CREDITS:MATTHEW A KOSCHMANN
IMAGE CREDITS: DANIEL BURNS
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-organizational-communication-today-merely-tool-achieve-pillai
