Effective Communications Honesty in the Workplace
An effective office communication strategy is important in high performance environments. It is expected that articulation of all messaging be proper in proportionality, substantiation and audience targeting. This creates a reactive mesh, delivering actionable information to the proper people, eliminating any noise that would cloud the deliberate intent of the organization. Having all of these communications be true and honest, in all of these factors, is important to ensuring a strong mesh. When improper communications begin to take place, the organization's productivity is impacted, perhaps enough to drive them completely out of business. It is important to instill a sense of importance in contemplation and execution.
When honesty lapses in the work place, expectations fail to be properly set and people begin to obscure the details of events. This is usually done in an attempt to avoid calling others out, or perhaps because they do not wish to take on the additional liability of explanation. A culture such as this is toxic and usurps productivity. It must be a point to drive home the importance of an open communication, full disclosure and relevancy targeting attributes of a culture. Mistakes are opportunities for improvement, should be marked as such and the areas with the highest return on improvement capital should be improved upon, given sufficient capital to do so. Knowing the stakes of each decision beforehand, communicating effectively and following up if appropriate will be keys to unlocking the full potential of employee contributors and vendors.
Measures may be taken to ensure that employees feel objective about the information they are conveying, therefore doing so with truer honesty. Entering results into a system of some sort will enable trending reports, as well as cause it to become more of a formality, rather than a burdensome task, dumped onto the employee. It is important that the employee return the same respect to the employer, in only utilizing time for delivering actionable information that can be used to provide adequate reigns for the organization to the leadership team.
These principles are especially true for customer interaction. It is reasonable for one to feel as though negativity should be mitigated in portraying the image of an organization in meetings, among the more influential. This is not effective though. More likely, a disclosure that the action is being taken to portray the true nature of a partner or customer will be sufficient in ensuring that the leadership team does not take slight in the message. If the true nature of the organization, and the ecosystem it sits within, is not properly disclosed by each employee, then the controls available for their disposal are limited and the company will most likely suffer.
Times of deception such as this lead to a very aggressive and defensive organization where the day-to-day turmoil acts as a catalyst for the otherwise toxic work environment. It works its way into the moods and emotions, the thoughts and spirits, the mind and soul, affecting everyone involved with the organization. This typically snowballs until capital runs dry for funding dysfunctional departments, aggrieved employees and loathsome leadership teams. The importance of honesty cannot be overstated.
