How important is it for a manager to be an effective communicator in the workplace? The most recent data suggests that, for corporate recruiters looking to hire for management positions, communication skills rank at the top of the list of core competencies managers need in the workplace:

Good communication skills outrank other core business competencies as the number one skill for corporate recruiters looking to hire MBA graduates. That rather surprising conclusion comes not from communications specialists, but from an organization that has all the relevant data at its fingertips, The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which runs GMAT testing for MBA applicants.

The question, however,  is how much does one really learn in college or graduate school with regard to the art and science of communication? The most recent data from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy indicates that only about one-third of college graduates have a high-level of proficiency in reading and writing, while almost two out of every ten graduates had only basic or below-basic proficiency in reading and writing. The rest – about half of all graduates – fall somewhere in the gray area called “intermediate” proficiency.

But that’s just reading and writing. While the ability to read well and pen effective business correspondence is certainly important in the workplace, to limit communication to reading and writing is to completely miss the boat. A significant amount of relevant, influential, and potentially damaging communication is transmitted in a number of different ways:

• What you don‘t say
• What you do
• What you don’t do
• Who you include in meetings or projects
• Who you exclude from meetings or projects
• How you react to mistakes or failure

Help Wanted: The Parts of Communication Managers Don’t Understand

I have yet to see the organization that doesn’t complain about the the prevalence of inadequate, inconsistent, or incomplete communication. Ten minutes with a group of employees anywhere below the executive or ownership level will quickly uncover of host of communication issues. However, a bit of digging usually reveals that what employees are really concerned about is NOT how poorly their immediate supervisors or managers assigns job tasks, sets deadlines, or criticize performance (very low rungs on the communication ladder). Instead, what employees label as poor communication is:

1. The lack of communication about the “big picture”
2. The inability to have input into the process
3. Management implementing change without clear explanations
4. Management actions that are inconsistent with their words

While there are plenty of applications of communication skills that the average manager usually has yet to master – setting expectations, giving praise and encouragement, and providing effective feedback are good examples – it is these four items that tend to create the most problems for employees.  In fact, as Art Petty points out in a recent blog post regarding communication, a manager’s actions alone have the power to completely override the strongest verbal communications:

…while words are indeed powerful tools for creation or destruction, it’s your actions that will seal your fate as a leader.  Or rather, how well your actions and your words match.

Everyone IS watching you and they are all passing judgment on your credibility as a leader.  Constantly.  Constantly that is, until they find you guilty of failing the test of credibility and they shift into compliance mode.  You’re finished as a leader at this point.

The challenge is that quite often managers are weak communicators to begin with; they were promoted because of their knowledge, skill, or performance. To make things worse, they fail to realize that everything they do is communication and they fail to manage those messages well. And finally, the average manager is often guilty of saying one thing and doing another – as if employees don’t pick up on that stuff?

What part of communication don’t you understand?

Tagged as: core competency, Hiring, MBA