Communication Coach: Communication Mistakes to Avoid in the Workplace
Tanya Raina is a hardworking Team Lead of 45 team members of leading MNC. She is highly enterprising and doesn’t intend to be bad to anyone as such, especially about her team.
This story is about that one day in the office, where everything went wrong for her.
10.00 am Her junior team member Noori calls Tanya on her phone. Voice of Noori is really hoarse and down on the call. She asks for leave on medical grounds. As Tanya had a minor dependency of Noori and hence unknowingly expressed angst but surely approved the leave
10.30 am Her Super boss, the MD of the company told her to prepare a PPT for a potential client, which was suddenly fixed at 2 pm
With good preparation and energy, Tanya presents the proposal to the client.
But she ended up using too many jargons in the verbal and PPT content.
3pm Another existing client called her to provide the current update of the last application of the project. Tanya in the quest to promptly reply, sends the short update over a WhatsApp chat instead of email.
She had it in mind to send it via email too later, but completely forgets it
5pm For an intra company meeting with a counterpart Mr. Travis Martin from another country, she unknowingly and innocently mentioned about the politics in his country. Travis, who had a certain political bias for a certain party didn’t enjoy Tanya’s viewpoint.
While all these might not seem like major blunders or heinous mistakes, it did cost Tanya something.
- Noori was highly upset with the way Tanya behaved, but Noori didn’t tell Tanya about it. This is a bigger problem as the resentment remained within the team member itself. Noori was expecting Tanya to show little amount of concern for her as she was ill
- The Super Boss, the MD informs that the client didn’t like PPT as they didn’t understand it well because of too many jargons used. It was too complicated for the clients to understand.
- The 2nd existing client raised a complaint to Tanya that it was very unprofessional of her to send official communication outside the company formal modes i.e. WhatsApp
- The counterpart Mr Travis Martin raised a mild complaint to HR about Tanya about not following basics code of conduct
Tanya didn’t mean any wrong to anyone, but it all eventually came out wrongly.
Who is guilty – Tanya or her communication skills?
Communication is not just about what you say, but more importantly how you say it.
In today’s world, people have become extra sensitive to anything they hear or are being told. So there are many communication mistakes to avoid in the workplace.
Communication skills are not limited to oral communication for any employee. Even for e.g., emailing your office colleagues and more importantly your clients, a very sensitive and important message can get very tricky. That’s where communication plays an important role, as you can’t write very long email and yet have to pass the message across seamlessly.
Ways to avoid these mistakes:
- Good communication is a habit – Irrespective of your experience, you need to daily work on it
- Keep learning from everyone – Always keep an eye on your mentors in the office, on how they are conducting themselves daily and keep learning from them.
- Keep upskilling – Keep undergoing various workshops and online courses, to keep yourself updated on the latest communication challenges and solutions
Communication is an insanely wide topic and hence the mistakes made in communication are also insanely varied.
Tanya is not at all guilty for her bad day. All such knowledge and skills are needed to be imparted to her.
It is highly recommended for HR to organise communication lessons from a communication coach to team leaders like Tanya.
We conduct various kinds of communication workshops. Reach out to us to discuss the issues you are facing!
