This article provides guidance on which communication mode (email, face to face conversation, chat) to use based on the type of conversation you need to have in the workplace. We’ll walk through the best ways to give / get information from colleagues and peers. Effective workplace communication for team meetings, project meetings, client meetings and 1:1 correspondence is critical for success in your current role as well as career advancement.
Table of Contents
- What Information am I Seeking to Share or Gain?
- Modes of Communication:
What is workplace communication? It involves the transfer of information through a variety of channels: in-person, video call, phone call, chat / messenger, text message or email. Every team member at a company has a set of responsibilities they are expected to perform. These responsibilities can vary greatly based on the level of seniority and the actual role. For example, the responsibilities and expectations of the Director of Accounting are much different from that of an entry level member of the sales team. The commonality for all roles is that effective workplace communication, with peers and higher ups, is required in order to successfully perform your job. There are two factors to consider when it comes to effective workplace communication: 1) What information am I seeking to share or gain? 2) Which mode of communication is best suited to share or gain this information?
What information am I seeking to share or gain?
Many jobs involve communication with colleagues at your company as well as outside your company.
- If you are looking to communicate short, factual pieces of information or ask basic questions, email can be an effective vehicle to accomplish this. The recipient(s) can reply and provide the information you need.
- If you are leading an initiative at work that requires open communication with colleagues, a video call or in-person meeting is going to the preferred communication vehicle. If I am scheduling a strategy session with colleagues related to a topic, I may send a short email or chat message explaining the purpose of the meeting, but the email is short and brief. Avoid sending overly long emails, which could result in a lot of back and forth, when an in-person or video meeting is the right vehicle. It will make the best use of everyone’s time.
- When discussing sensitive information such as a challenge you are encountering with a colleague or personal information that needs to be communicated with a manager (e.g. pregnancy announcement or a medical issue requiring extra time off), opt for an in-person or video discussion even if it feels easier to send an email. These topics often warrant back and forth dialogue which is best served in a live discussion.
- Anything related to career advancement, salary discussions or goal setting should take place in person.
- Any difficult conversations that involve performance issues, constructive feedback or personnel issues should always take place via face to face communication in the form of in-person or video call.
- Peer to peer conflict should absolutely be discussed via face to face meetings as well. A poor communication strategy would be venting to other team members about a particular issue you are having with a colleague. That is gossip and can be toxic for a company culture.
Now that we have discussed in broad strokes the type of communication to use for various situations, let’s dig deeper into effective communication strategies within each particular mode.
When it does make sense to send information via email, it’s important to maintain a professional tone with the written word, always. This includes emailing with peers, managers or leadership within the company. Professional emails in the workplace should follow these guidelines:
- Address the person(s) by name in your correspondence: “Hi Brad,” or “Paige and Davis,”. If there are more than three people on an email you many begin with starters such as “Hi Everyone,” or “Hi Team,”. The reason we are maintaining this formality is that it conveys respect and professionalism. If you are emailing someone outside your organization this is even more important and might include “Dear Claire” or even “Mr. McCourt” – the latter should be reserved for the most formal of email correspondence.
- End with a salutation. Again, we are talking about professional communications and therefore maintaining an element of formality reinforces your professionalism and polish. I end virtually every single email with “Best, Meg” or Thanks, Meg” and I do this on top of having a digital signature at the bottom of every email.
- Avoid cliches that are added fluff. Sayings such as “I hope you are well” and “thanks in advance” have become clique and generic sounding. Respect the other person’s time and get to your point quickly. “Dear Dan, I recently reviewed your campus master plan and see that a new lab building is planned for the center of campus. My firm recently completed three lab building at peer institutions across the country. Could we schedule a time to share best practices from those projects?”
- Correct grammar and punctuation. Spelling and grammar check are thankfully a part of most word processing and email platforms today so there is virtually no excuse to send an email with spelling mistakes or incorrect punctuation. Just because you are sending internal communication, that is not a reason to become lax with your sentence structures. Always take a moment to re-read an email before hitting the send button so that you can make any corrections needed. If good writing skills are an area of development for you, there are numerous online tools such as Lavender.ai and Grammarly that can help you bolster your writing.
- Be succinct. Good communication skills encourage you to deliver your message in as few sentences as possible. Often you will lose the intended audience’s attention if you have much more than two paragraphs in a message. Brief, clear communication is the name of the email game.
- Avoid using slang that may not be universally understood especially if emailing with individuals who speak different languages natively. Be respectful of potential language barriers that may exist in email exchanges and exercise patience if asked to clarify any information shared via email.
Phone Calls
A phone call can be an amazing way to get quick answers and just make a connection with colleagues whom you may not see very often. I would often call my former manager when I knew he was in the car and had time to answer questions, discuss projects etc. It was an incredibly efficient way to cross items off my “to do list” in a fraction of time. If you plan to share your cell phone number with colleagues and clients and use it for business communications, follow these guidelines:
- Answer phone calls professionally every time. If you don’t recognize the inbound caller by name, use the greeting “Hi this is Meg” or even just identify yourself by name “Meg Brickle.” What this does is confirm to the person on the other end of the call that they have in fact dialed the correct person.
- Ensure that your voice mail greeting has a professional tone. Many people have one cell phone number for both personal and professional use and therefore it is not necessary to state the name of your company in your recording. The standard “Hi, you’ve reached Meg Brickle, please leave me a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible” works perfectly fine.
Video Calls
If you are the organizer of a video call, of course start the meeting on time. The quicker you can get down to business the better though it is ok to exchange a couple minutes of pleasantries on the front end of a call. Own the agenda of the call and keep the entire team on task. I like to kick off calls by saying “the purpose of this call is to discuss next steps for the New Science Building Proposal at Illinois State University. I’d like to discuss which team members and projects we want to include and make assignments for the remainer of the sections. Does that work? Anything else you would like to add?” Being super clear and confident with your agenda is an effective communication strategy. Keep the meeting moving so that all agenda items are addressed. I like to reserve the final few minutes to recap any action items discussed. “Mark, you are going to get a draft of the schedule to the team by Friday; Carrie, you are leading the approach section…” Always end meetings on time, even if you haven’t made it through the entire agenda. It is extremely important to practice time management and be respective of other people’s times.
Other tips: Be sure and speak into the monitor that has your camera. I’m always perplexed at people who appear to be speaking to the ether vs. directly looking at their camera. Give other members of the call your full attention when you are not speaking and trust me, I know this is hard. Avoid distractions such as looking at another screen, looking at your phone or looking at emails People can tell…especially when you are looking down at your phone.
Chat – Slack, Teams, Instant Messaging
Internal chat platforms have taken the business world by storm. They are a great way for professionals to efficiently collaborate and share important information in a less formal way. While it is acceptable to be less formal via chat than in email, you still want to maintain professionalism in your workplace communication regardless of the vehicle. If messaging an individual, I like to start a thread using a person’s name “Hi Katy…” but a salutation isn’t necessary. Correct grammar and punctuation should still be in place. Because it is so easy to send a quick message via chat, I admittedly will hit “enter” before proofreading my message only to realize seconds later that my statement had a typo. The good news is that most platforms have an edit function so you can quickly adjust any style errors in your text. It is important to remember that with both email and chat, your intended tone of voice, facial expressions and body language are absent from the conversation. This reinforces why this communication vehicle (along with email) should be reserved for the factual transmittal of information vs. anything that would be better served by open dialogue in real time.
Practice Active Listening
Maintaining two-way communication is a hallmark of effective communication skills. Listening to others speak is equally as important as the words you speak. It can be easy to fall into a trap of not really listening to another person speak and instead just waiting for your turn to talk. This leads to ineffective communication as you aren’t valuing or processing what the other person is contributing. When we truly listen to what another person is saying, it can shape the response that we give and lead to more meaningful conversations. Active listening involves making strong eye contact during the conversation rather than looking at your phone, computer or other people in the group. Eye contact is a powerful tool to connect with another person. Nonverbal cues and facial expressions such as a nod, smile or laugh let the other person know you are actively listening and play a vital role is relationship building.
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