Poor communication costs businesses millions of dollars due to low productivity, conflict, and staff turnover. To be able to do any kind of work together, we need to communicate. We need to learn the skills to be understood and to understand what is being said to us. Any breakdown in communication can have significant costs to your business. Misunderstanding, colleagues who don’t trust each other, feelings that are hurt, a customer being told the wrong thing… All these can occur as a result of a problem in communication and hurt the reputation of your brand. The costs are quantifiable, too. The Holmes Report reviewed 400 corporations and found that in the largest corporations in the U.S. and the U.K., the price for communication barriers were around $62 million in productivity in each corporation. If your business involves more than one person, in any capacity, whether as an employee or a client, you need to be able to communicate effectively. Communication allows you to engage people, build strong relationships and a healthy workplace culture. Ineffective communication is harmful to your business… Let’s take a look!
Time Loss –communication breakdowns lead to significant time losses, during which the client might as well take their business elsewhere. Time losses are often a consequence of miscommunication.
Disputes and conflicts –Workplace conflicts can result in absenteeism and people leaving their job. In fact, according to research, up to 50% of the reason people leave their job is due to disputes and conflict.
Low employee engagement and productivity –Communication breakdowns force people to give their time and attention to fixing the errors that should never have happened in the first place. Poor communication often leads to presenteeism where employees are at work, but they are not fully present, engaged and unified as a team. Poor communication causes frustration and stress.
Project failure –Poor communication, if it’s not detected on time, can lead to project failure. When a mistake is made early in the process and never caught, and thus the project continues on a faulty base.
Decreased revenue –According to The Holmes Report – corporations with leaders identified as highly effective communicators had up to 47% more returns to shareholders within a five-year time span when compared to the corporations with the least effective communicators at the helm. Simply put – good communication pays.
Unsafe and unhealthy work environments –Poor communication contributes to unsafe and unhealthy work environments. Employees need to clearly understand what is expected of them and they want to be on a healthy cohesive team that is working together. Poor communication can lead to a lack of trust, low company buy-in, issues with occupational health and safety and more.
Every Team’s Big Need
Do you sense that communication styles and differences contribute to problems in your workplace? Today the workplace is filled with people with diversity in age, cultural backgrounds, personal values, communication preferences and more. We speak to employers from all types of industries that exclaim that it’s difficult to find committed, capable and character-centred employees. Some employees say that their boss or managers are not ethical or that they lack character as well. Character trumps a person’s education, charisma, social standing, skills and even authenticity.
Six Figure Start in New York is an executive recruitment company and they are one of our clients. Co-founder Connie Thanasoulis-Cerrachio has hired thousands of people at all levels for organisations such as Citigroup, Pfizer and Merrill Lynch and she told us what her criteria is for hiring. Connie said that she would aim her interviews to ask questions that would help her learn about the person’s character. She says that she always hires character over skill.
Individual’s positive, productive communication styles and character qualities attract others to them. This is great for team culture. However, individual’s negative non-productive communication styles and character qualities can either repel people away from them or attract other negative or unhealthy people to them. This can contribute to the toxicity of your team culture. Every team’s big need is to develop character-centred-communication.
Blanket Solutions Don’t Work With Communication
You can find many general tools that work on improving communication. They offer some solutions that can be effective for some people but not everyone. They don’t especially help resolve conflicts between contrasting communication styles. These tools fall short when they simply prescribe what is happening and then they offer a blanket solution, like using a general script to communicate to introverted or extraverted people on a team. Why is this less effective Everybody is different. What works for one individual may not work for another team member. Forcing everybody to adopt a specific communication approach can backfire and make some communication issues worse or create resentment among those team members who don’t feel that their communication style is being respected. Other tools focus only on identifying different personalities but don’t provide enough practical tools and they aren’t sufficiently applicable.
The Holmes Report: total estimated cost of employee misunderstanding (including actions or errors of omission by employees who have misunderstood or were misinformed about company policies, business processes, job function or a combination of the three) in 100,000-employee companies, among 400 surveyed corporations in the U.S. and U.K. (average cost per company is $62.4 million per year) 2. $26,041: cumulative cost per worker per year due to productivity losses resulting from communications barriers 3. Companies that have leaders who are highly effective communicators had 47% higher total returns to shareholders over the last five years compared with firms that have leaders who are the least effective communicators’ – The Holmes Report
https://www.holmesreport.com/latest/article/the-cost-of-poor-communications
Transform your Team Communication, Character and Culture
The Kendall Life Languages Profile™ was developed by Fred and Anna Kendall over 30 years ago and has been taken over 225,000 times with people in over 100 countries. It is accurate and effective regardless of age, race, nationality, ethnicity or gender. Life Languages™ is based on the principle of character-centered-communication which aims to empower you and your team to communicate more efficiently and productively. Now let’s take a quick look at the 7 Life Languages™.
You likely have completed profiles or assessments which tell you about your personality. Life Languages™ is a unique and different profile that gives you a comprehensive picture of who you are and how you communicate, act, and behave. This profile does not single you out into one of 4 quadrants or one of 16 styles but rather expresses how we are all wired with 7 Life Languages™ at varying levels. Each of these 7 Life Languages™ highlights positive communication skills as well as areas for personal growth. When we lead our Life Languages Communication Breakthrough Course we enhance workplace morale, confidence, and communication effectiveness. This all leads to high performing, healthy and cohesive teams.
So now I come back to the question I asked at the start of this article. Please share your insights and comments below: What is Poor Communication Costing your Team?
Learn how our Life Languages Communication Breakthrough Course can help your team reduce the cost of ineffective communication
Live with Passion and Have Abundance in Life!
Scott Epp
Let’s start a conversation
- scott@breakthroughcorporatetraining.com.au
- Mobile: 0481 307 778
- Watch our info video and learn about The Life Languages Communication Breakthrough Course: https://breakthroughcorporatetraining.com.au/communication
