5 common reasons behind poor communication

In our recent article insert on bad project management we discussed the importance of not just good but fabulous communication.

Great communication is a fundamental skill both in our professional and personal lives.

Get it right and it’s a tool that can help influence be that your colleagues within your business, your suppliers or your customers. Great communication can help fix a damaged relationship it can motivate a team or it can help challenge the status quo.

Conversely, bad communication can be a key contributor in bringing down businesses, causing friction in relationships and resulting in confusion or conflict.

While the underlying reasons for poor communication can be many there are so common themes. In this article will look at five of those.

1  A lack of trust
This is a difficult one as building trust can take any number of ingredients from simply telling the truth or demonstrating competence through to intangibles aspects like portraying confidence and positiveness. If the person you are communicating with does not trust you they will not believe what you’re telling them which can be compounded by a number of facets. Aspects of your personal traits such as how you deal with mistakes and issues, how you treat blame (what do you do when something goes wrong?), distorting or embellishing the truth through to the bottom of the pit – downright lies. All of these can impact whether a person trusts you and what you’re endeavoring to convey to them. In organizations, some speakers appear more trustworthy than others (it’s amazing what body language does) even if the content of the communication is the same. Trust can, of course, be worked on and can be improved but interestingly this takes time for trust to build whereby trust can be destroyed a lot quicker.

2  – Being vague
Great communication gets to the facts and does not make generic statements that are intangible and difficult to support. Being able to demonstrate a topic through the use of data examples and historical evidence helps communicate in a specific way that promotes buy-in from the audience whilst leaves a strong impression. Conversely being vague or wishy-washy with an unclear message supported by information that is incoherent or out of context is unlikely to deliver.

3 Unnecessarily complicated
No matter how complicated the topic is that you’re communicating there are ways and means to do it effectively. Trying to convey things in and overcomplicated fashion will only help lose your audience. This can be especially tempting where your a subject matter expert on a complex topic but being able to distill information down in a way that can be easily digested is a skill well worth learning.

4 Lack of collaboration
No one likes being lectured to and one directional communication can often be ineffective. Most of us have probably heard the “death by powerpoint” remark and most of us have probably been involved in presenting where we could have been perhaps a little more exciting.

Developing communication which actually involves collaboration with your stakeholders is a sure fire way to help build engagement. This will help them feel included and develop that all-important buy-in.

5 Distorting the truth
If you’re looking to communicate by exaggerating the facts then you’re almost certainly creating a situation where you will end up being easily spotted and people will see straight through you. People react much better when they believe what is being told them great communicators recognize this and understand that exaggerating claims does not help rather it often lessens the impact of what is being communicated.

So there are our five key elements of bad communication, have some of your own you’d like to share Feel free to use our comment section below.