Power of Personal Communication

Experience is a great teacher they say – and they say it right. Some of my recent experiences on project/team communication have been learning lessons for me. I think it is really crucial to have sound communication practices (both personal communication as well as project communication) to make our work life easier.

The lessons? Here they go:

Too much of a formality in communication results in too much of a resistance. If you want to get your PC fixed, walk up to the system administrator (or call) and flash a friendly request and the job gets done faster. If the same thing is requested over an email with a copy to the infrastructure director, the person at the other end will surely get on a more defensive side and the work takes longer time to get done. Showing up and doing verbal communication reduces the information clutter and creates synergies. 

With personal communication, show that you care – for clients, for peers and for team members. It helps to talk often to the client – whenever we can. Important and crucial emails or deliveries to clients when complemented with a phone call not only gives the required clarity but also shows that you care. When someone in the team commits a mistake, it helps to walk upto him and give neccessary feedbacks – shows that you are concerned about it. Written word may or may not exhibit the real feeling.

One on one verbal communication is a great connector. Email communication is good for explicit and factual communication but when it comes to implicit and tacit communication, nothing can be as effective as verbal communication.