Business Communication Is About Results
Personal Communication Is About Spending Quality Time Together
Welcome! Last week we briefly contrasted personal and business communication. The difference is important enough that a little deeper dive is warranted.1
Business and personal communication are not the same. Personal communication is just that … personal. Tonight, my wife and I are having dinner with friends, and I fully expect that there will be lively conversation over good food and wine. Do we have a desired outcome? Sure. We want all of us to have a good time, but there is no conscious planning related to how to make that happen. It will either happen or it won’t. There isn’t any agenda other than to meet at a certain location, at a certain time, and spend a few hours together enjoying each other’s company. Spending quality time together is the ultimate objective.
Business communication is about results and to apply the same communication approach in a business environment is usually a mistake. The lovely dinner scenario we just looked at, within a business context, would be considered a waste of everyone’s time. People would leave wondering why they got together at all when they could have been at home with their families. The intent of personal and business communication is different. (For now, I am skipping the intentional team building type of dinners that are actually a good idea. And, if we are honest, even these more personal “business” meetings have an intended outcome – to develop teamwork and comradery through increased familiarity.) Business communication is outcome focused.
Well run businesses make the most efficient use of resources, whether that be materials, money, finances, or personnel time to name a few. Employees are expected to complete certain tasks within a specific timeframe as outlined in their job description. Whether they are “good” at their job is determined in large part based on how well they accomplish their allotted tasks. Very few people have too much time on their hands, so everyone is looking for ways to accomplish their respective duties most efficiently. This is where you come in. When you help them become more efficient you make them more willing to cooperate with you.
“Efficient organizations communicate to move individuals, groups and eventually the entire organization in a specific, unified direction. When employees focus on actions and outcomes, instead of simply ‘acting’ like they are communicating to ‘get stuff done’, clarity emerges, and efficiency happens.” 2
This gets more complicated when you realize that to accomplish your assigned tasks you will need the help of others over whom you have no authority. An organization of any size will have separate groups chartered with performing tasks important to overall organization success. These groups, for example, may be operations, procurement, finance, accounting, sales, marketing, shipping, and customer service. They may look like distinct groups within the organization, but they are all interconnected and offer services important to overall organization success, or they would not exist. You may need their cooperation to achieve your goals, which implies communication. When you communicate with them you do so with the intent of gaining something related to achieving your goals. This is often called “influencing without authority.”
To recap: Personal communication is about spending quality time with friends and family, where business communication is about using time most efficiently to accomplish your assigned objectives, usually with the assistance of other employees.
Can you see how creating your communication message based on your thought processes is reverse logic thinking? Your focus should instead be on the thought processes of your audience and what they need to hear to be willing to help you achieve your objectives.
Key takeaways from this week:
Personal and business communication have different objectives.
Successful businesses focus on the most efficient ways to gain the most productive use of resources, including personnel time.
Business communication involves other employees who have an interest in your actions.
You will need to convince others who don’t work for you to cooperate which involves “influencing without authority.” (This important topic will be covered in later posts.)
The better you understand your audience, their thinking processes, and their motivations, the better you can “tune” your communication to gain cooperation.
Almost everyone is looking for a way to get more done with less time.
Before you pick up the phone or send an email, take a moment to picture the receiver of your audience and determine what specifically you want from them in relation to this particular communication. After all, if you aren’t clear about what you want, how will you get it? Start with these questions.
What must they do to be seen as successful in their jobs?
How do you expect them to react to your requested actions?
How does their anticipated reaction align, or not, with your requested actions?
In light of all this, why should they cooperate?
With these simple questions you are developing an idea of what the world looks like through their eyes, or their perceptions, which in large part determines whether they will cooperate or not.
Audience perception is so integral to effective communication that it is the topic of the next blog post.
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Copyright © 2023 by Ed Paulson. All Rights Reserved.
Last week I mentioned that this week’s topic would be about the complete communication model, but I realized that a few topics should be covered before we go there.
This is a brief excerpt from Page 7 of my “Getting Through: A Systematic Approach To Being Understood” (ISBN: 9798987950807) organizational communication book which looks deeply into this and other business communication topics. It is available now through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.