why business communication is a form of problem solving

How to master communication in problem solving

May 11, 2023 The path from problem to solution is not linear. In fast-moving, complex times, decision-makers can’t effectively act alone when it comes to solving complicated workplace problems; diverse perspectives and rigorous debate are crucial to determining the best steps to take. What’s missing in many companies is the use of “contributory dissent,” or the capabilities required to engage in healthy if divergent discussions about critical business problems, write Ben Fletcher , Chris Hartley , Rupert Hoskin , and Dana Maor  in a recent article . Contributory dissent allows individuals and groups to air their differences in a way that moves the discussion toward a positive outcome and doesn’t undermine leadership or group cohesion. Check out these insights to learn how to establish cultures and structures where individuals and teams feel free to bring innovative—and often better—alternative solutions to the table, and dive into the best ways to master communication in problem solving.

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Why Problem-Solving Skills Are Essential for Leaders in Any Industry

• 17 Jan 2023

Any organization offering a product or service is in the business of solving problems.

Whether providing medical care to address health issues or quick convenience to those hungry for dinner, a business’s purpose is to satisfy customer needs .

In addition to solving customers’ problems, you’ll undoubtedly encounter challenges within your organization as it evolves to meet customer needs. You’re likely to experience growing pains in the form of missed targets, unattained goals, and team disagreements.

Yet, the ubiquity of problems doesn’t have to be discouraging; with the right frameworks and tools, you can build the skills to solve consumers' and your organization’s most challenging issues.

Here’s a primer on problem-solving in business, why it’s important, the skills you need, and how to build them.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Problem-Solving in Business?

Problem-solving is the process of systematically removing barriers that prevent you or others from reaching goals.

Your business removes obstacles in customers’ lives through its products or services, just as you can remove obstacles that keep your team from achieving business goals.

Design Thinking

Design thinking , as described by Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar in the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , is a human-centered , solutions-based approach to problem-solving and innovation. Originally created for product design, design thinking’s use case has evolved . It’s now used to solve internal business problems, too.

The design thinking process has four stages :

• Clarify: Clarify a problem through research and feedback from those impacted.
• Ideate: Armed with new insights, generate as many solutions as possible.
• Develop: Combine and cull your ideas into a short list of viable, feasible, and desirable options before building prototypes (if making physical products) and creating a plan of action (if solving an intangible problem).
• Implement: Execute the strongest idea, ensuring clear communication with all stakeholders about its potential value and deliberate reasoning.

Using this framework, you can generate innovative ideas that wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise.

Creative Problem-Solving

Another, less structured approach to challenges is creative problem-solving , which employs a series of exercises to explore open-ended solutions and develop new perspectives. This is especially useful when a problem’s root cause has yet to be defined.

You can use creative problem-solving tools in design thinking’s “ideate” stage, which include:

• Brainstorming: Instruct everyone to develop as many ideas as possible in an allotted time frame without passing judgment.
• Divergent thinking exercises: Rather than arriving at the same conclusion (convergent thinking), instruct everyone to come up with a unique idea for a given prompt (divergent thinking). This type of exercise helps avoid the tendency to agree with others’ ideas without considering alternatives.
• Alternate worlds: Ask your team to consider how various personas would manage the problem. For instance, how would a pilot approach it? What about a young child? What about a seasoned engineer?

It can be tempting to fall back on how problems have been solved before, especially if they worked well. However, if you’re striving for innovation, relying on existing systems can stunt your company’s growth.

Related: How to Be a More Creative Problem-Solver at Work: 8 Tips

Why Is Problem-Solving Important for Leaders?

While obstacles’ specifics vary between industries, strong problem-solving skills are crucial for leaders in any field.

Whether building a new product or dealing with internal issues, you’re bound to come up against challenges. Having frameworks and tools at your disposal when they arise can turn issues into opportunities.

As a leader, it’s rarely your responsibility to solve a problem single-handedly, so it’s crucial to know how to empower employees to work together to find the best solution.

Your job is to guide them through each step of the framework and set the parameters and prompts within which they can be creative. Then, you can develop a list of ideas together, test the best ones, and implement the chosen solution.

Related: 5 Design Thinking Skills for Business Professionals

4 Problem-Solving Skills All Leaders Need

1. problem framing.

One key skill for any leader is framing problems in a way that makes sense for their organization. Problem framing is defined in Design Thinking and Innovation as determining the scope, context, and perspective of the problem you’re trying to solve.

“Before you begin to generate solutions for your problem, you must always think hard about how you’re going to frame that problem,” Datar says in the course.

For instance, imagine you work for a company that sells children’s sneakers, and sales have plummeted. When framing the problem, consider:

• What is the children’s sneaker market like right now?
• Should we improve the quality of our sneakers?
• Should we assess all children’s footwear?
• Is this a marketing issue for children’s sneakers specifically?
• Is this a bigger issue that impacts how we should market or produce all footwear?

While there’s no one right way to frame a problem, how you do can impact the solutions you generate. It’s imperative to accurately frame problems to align with organizational priorities and ensure your team generates useful ideas for your firm.

To solve a problem, you need to empathize with those impacted by it. Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and experiences. While many believe empathy is a fixed trait, it’s a skill you can strengthen through practice.

When confronted with a problem, consider whom it impacts. Returning to the children’s sneaker example, think of who’s affected:

• Your organization’s employees, because sales are down
• The customers who typically buy your sneakers
• The children who typically wear your sneakers

Empathy is required to get to the problem’s root and consider each group’s perspective. Assuming someone’s perspective often isn’t accurate, so the best way to get that information is by collecting user feedback.

For instance, if you asked customers who typically buy your children’s sneakers why they’ve stopped, they could say, “A new brand of children’s sneakers came onto the market that have soles with more traction. I want my child to be as safe as possible, so I bought those instead.”

When someone shares their feelings and experiences, you have an opportunity to empathize with them. This can yield solutions to their problem that directly address its root and shows you care. In this case, you may design a new line of children’s sneakers with extremely grippy soles for added safety, knowing that’s what your customers care most about.

Related: 3 Effective Methods for Assessing Customer Needs

3. Breaking Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind in which you examine situations through the lens of past experiences. This locks you into one mindset rather than allowing you to consider alternative possibilities.

For instance, your cognitive fixedness may make you think rubber is the only material for sneaker treads. What else could you use? Is there a grippier alternative you haven’t considered?

Problem-solving is all about overcoming cognitive fixedness. You not only need to foster this skill in yourself but among your team.

4. Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

As a leader, it’s your job to create an environment conducive to problem-solving. In a psychologically safe environment, all team members feel comfortable bringing ideas to the table, which are likely influenced by their personal opinions and experiences.

If employees are penalized for “bad” ideas or chastised for questioning long-held procedures and systems, innovation has no place to take root.

By employing the design thinking framework and creative problem-solving exercises, you can foster a setting in which your team feels comfortable sharing ideas and new, innovative solutions can grow.

How to Build Problem-Solving Skills

The most obvious answer to how to build your problem-solving skills is perhaps the most intimidating: You must practice.

Again and again, you’ll encounter challenges, use creative problem-solving tools and design thinking frameworks, and assess results to learn what to do differently next time.

While most of your practice will occur within your organization, you can learn in a lower-stakes setting by taking an online course, such as Design Thinking and Innovation . Datar guides you through each tool and framework, presenting real-world business examples to help you envision how you would approach the same types of problems in your organization.

Are you interested in uncovering innovative solutions for your organization’s business problems? Explore Design Thinking and Innovation —one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses —to learn how to leverage proven frameworks and tools to solve challenges. Not sure which course is right for you? Download our free flowchart .

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1.1 KEY CONCEPT: Problem-Solving Approach to Communications Tasks

In the workplace, many of the communication tasks you perform are designed to solve a problem or improve a situation. Whether you are doing work for a client, for your employer, with your team, or for someone else, you will typically use some sort of organized process to tackle and solve the problem. A clearly articulated design process provides you with a clear, step-by-step plan for finding the best solution for your situation.

Take a moment to search the Internet for the term “design process” and look at “images.” You will find many variations. Have a look at several of them and see if you can find a common pattern.

One commonality you will likely find in examining other people’s design process diagrams is this: the first steps in designing any solution is to analyze the audience and then clearly define the problem . Analyzing the audience allows you to adapt the process to the needs of the audience. When defining the problem, you are also determining, in part, a course of action. Figure 1.1.1 shows Elon University’s basic design thinking process. Think about the kind of communication that each step of this process might entail.

You cannot begin to work on solutions until know your audience and have a clear definition of the problem and the goals you want to achieve. These critical first stages of the design process require that you effectively communicate with the “client” or whoever has the “problem” that needs solving. Poor communication at this stage can derail a project from the start.

Before we examine the step-by-step process to developing a business/research problem, the video below will review the importance of clearly defining a business/research problem.

For our purposes, we will use Barry Hyman’s Problem Formulation model (2002) to clearly define a problem. Hyman’s Problem Formulation model consists of four elements:

• Need Statement: recognizes and describes the need for a solution or improvement to an “unsatisfactory situation.”  It answers the questions, “what is wrong with the way things are currently? What is unsatisfactory about the situation? What negative effects does it cause?” You may need to do research and supply data to quantify the negative effects.
• Goal Statement: describes what the improved situation would look like once a solution has been implemented. The goal statement defines the scope of your search for a solution. At this point, do not describe your solution, only the goal that any proposed solution should achieve. The broader you make your goal, the more numerous and varied the solution can be; a narrowly focused goal limits the number and variety of possible solutions.
• Objectives : define measurable, specific outcomes that any feasible solution should optimize (aspects you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution). Objectives provide you with ways to quantifiably measure how well any solution will solve the problem; ideally, they will allow you to compare multiple solutions and figure out which one is most effective (which one gets the highest score on meeting the objectives?).
• Constraints : define the limits that any feasible solution must adhere to in order to be acceptable (pass/fail conditions, range limits, etc.). The keyword here is must — constraints are the “go/no go” conditions that determine whether a solution is acceptable or not.  These often include budget and time limits, as well as legal, safety and other regulatory requirements.

Knowledge Check

Communication as Solution

While not all business communications, like messages of appreciation and confirmation, respond to problems, this model can apply to communications tasks and more project-related design tasks that focus on problem-solving. In such cases, before you begin drafting the document or presentation, define the problem you want to solve:

• A potential client lacks sufficient information on whether the solution I have proposed to solve the client’s problem will be feasible, affordable, and effective.
• My instructor lacks sufficient examples of my written work to assign a grade for how well I met the course learning objectives. 
• Provide the client with enough information, in an effective and readable format, to make a decision (ideally, to hire you to create a solution for the problem).
• Provide my instructor with samples of my writing that demonstrate my achievement of the course learning objectives (provide relevant and complete  information in a professionally appropriate forma t, using evidence-based argument; earn an A+ grade on the assignment. )
• Review the client’s RFP to see what specific objectives it lists and how your proposal will be assessed.
• Review the Assignment Description and G rading Rubric for your assignment to determin e specific requirements and objectives that your instructor will use to evaluate your work.
• How much time is your audience willing to spend on this? How long can you make your document or presentation? (word length/time limit)
• What format and style do they require? Is there a Style Guide you must follow? A template you can use?
• How much time do you have to create it?  Do you have a deadline? (due date)
• Are there requirements for using sources? (academic integrity rules)

In addition to the process above, the following video provides a slightly different problem-solving process; however, it incorporates many of the same principles described above.

( How to Solve a Problem in Four Steps , 2015)

Keep in mind that the document you produce is evaluated in terms of how well it meets the overall goal and demonstrates achievement of specific objectives while abiding by constraints.

EXERCISE 1.1.1 Define a problem

Think of a problem or an “unsatisfactory situation” that you have recently experienced.  It could be as simple as It’s 8 p.m., I haven’t had dinner yet, and I’m hungry . Use Hymen’s Problem Formulation schema to formally define the problem — without proposing any particular solutions. Your problem definition should ideally allow a multitude of possible solutions that adhere to the following:

• Need/Unsatisfactory situation?
• What is your goal?
• What are some measurable objectives you want to achieve?
• What are your constraints?

Map out your analysis to find the most logical next steps.

00% Effective. (2015). What is a Problem Statement? [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjCCC2kFJcQ&t=43s

DecisionSkills. (2015). How to solve a problem in four steps [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOjTJAFyNrU

Hyman, B. (2002). Ch. 2: Problem formulation. In Fundamentals of engineering design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 40-54.

NASA. (2018, January 30 updated). NASA design process . NASA STEM Engagement.  https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/best/index.html Used for educational and noncommercial purposes.

Communication Essentials for Business Copyright © 2019 by Suzan Last (Original Author) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Why Business Communication is a Form of Problem Solving

May 24, 2022

Problem Solving and Communication: How It Works in Your Business

Many see communication as the glue that binds teams together and enables them to work successfully. Without clearly expressing ideas or business goals, how would you expect individuals to execute them effectively? While this might seem like a no-brainer for some business owners, many still are not aware of the advantages of good communication within an organization.

One of these benefits of effective communication is problem-solving. Effective, clear, and constant communication can resolve some of the most challenging problems your team and organization face. However, every business owner, team leader, executive, or manager should know certain aspects of business communication when utilizing it to solve problems.

Wolf Creek Business Growth Institute dedicates itself to providing practical and professional insight to businesses to help bolster growth. Our coaches believe that communication and problem-solving go hand in hand when you want to increase performance to reach your goals. Contact our business coaches when you want actionable advice to grow your team and business.

[Related: Picking the Best Business Coach ]

The Basics of Communication & Problem Solving

Before you try to solve problems within your company by simply talking to people, you must first understand “the communication pie.” This pie chart breaks down the individual factors of interpersonal communication. This communication model states that communication is:

• 55% non-verbal, including eye contact, posture, facial expressions, etc.
• 38% tonality, which includes pitch, pace, volume, emotion, etc.

Non-verbal and verbal communication is just the start to understanding how we communicate with one another. Another vital aspect of interpersonal communication is an individual’s learning style. This is categorized as how a person absorbs and processes information explained to them. The three learning styles include:

• Visual learners – take in information visually and often visualize scenarios in their minds.
• Auditory learners –understand and process information primarily by hearing it.
• Kinesthetic learners –comprehend information physically, including hands-on exercises and physical expression.

With this basic understanding of how we communicate with each other, you can start to learn how communication helps with problem-solving.

Communicate at Everyone’s Level

To start utilizing communication when problem-solving, you need to tie in your employees’ communication and learning styles. This involves learning the different communication styles of your employees and peers as you’ll want to present problems in a format that they will engage with and properly process. Basically, you’ll want to communicate with them in the way that is recognizable to them.

There are many ways you can start speaking to the people in your organization to accommodate everyone’s learning styles. For example, you can:

• Be flexible when outlining expectations for assignments
• Be open to questions
• Clarifying information when necessary
• Develop individual plans based on their styles
• Play to their strengths
• Take time during meetings to explain the same information in different ways so that everyone can understand it

For problem-solving with communication to be truly effective, you must understand everyone’s communication styles, which is the foundation of problem-solving.

Building Trust and Ownership

When using communication as a form of problem-solving, the last thing you need to know is to build trust and ownership within your team. To do this, leaders need to be open to differing perspectives. Leaders do not have all the answers and need to rely on the judgment and input of staff members.

As a result, there will be disagreements within your team, as everyone will have their own unique way of handling a situation. Healthy conflict is essential when communicating to solve problems. Conflicting viewpoints and explanations for one’s reasonings will bring diverse solutions to the table, which can help resolve problems more efficiently.

Lastly, individuals need to take ownership of their ideas and solutions . Team members should not feel uncomfortable sharing their thoughts or fear conflict. For communication in problem-solving to work, you must communicate to them that they are open to expressing their ideas.

Hopefully, you have cultivated a workplace culture where personal accountability is critical. If not, Wolf Creek Business Growth Institute has worked with many organizations to promote and prioritize workplace accountability. Contact our coaches today to learn how this could bolster your workplace culture.

[Related: How to Make Personal Accountability a Core Value ]

Contact Wolf Creek BGI Today to Integrate Communication with Problem Solving

Do you want to integrate communication styles with solving problems within your organization? Then contact Wolf Creek BGI . We will help analyze the different communication styles of your staff members and create an action plan suitable for effective problem-solving. Contact us today at 225-219-8866 when you are ready to see how communication helps with problem-solving in your business.

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Chapter 1: Effective Business Communication

Venecia Williams

Learning Objectives

• Examine the importance of being a good communicator
• Define the communication process
• Explain 8 essential components of communication
• Discuss the role of ethics in communication

Communication is an activity, skill, and art that incorporates lessons learned across a wide spectrum of human knowledge. Perhaps the most time-honoured form of communication is storytelling. We’ve told each other stories for ages to help make sense of our world, anticipate the future, and certainly to entertain ourselves. The art of storytelling draws on your understanding of yourself, your message, and how you communicate it to an audience that is simultaneously communicating back to you. Your anticipation, reaction, and adaptation to the process will determine how successfully you are able to communicate. You were not born knowing how to write or even how to talk—but in the process of growing up, you have undoubtedly learned how to tell, and how not tell, a story out loud and in writing.

Effective communication takes preparation, practice, and persistence. There are many ways to learn communication skills; the school of experience, or “hard knocks,” is one of them. But in the business environment, a “knock” (or lesson learned) may come at the expense of your credibility through a blown presentation to a client. The classroom environment, with a compilation of information and resources such as a text, can offer you a trial run where you get to try out new ideas and skills before you have to use them to communicate effectively to make a sale or form a new partnership. Listening to yourself, or perhaps the comments of others may help you reflect on new ways to present or perceive, thoughts, ideas and concepts. The net result is your growth; ultimately your ability to communicate in business will improve, opening more doors than you might anticipate.

Importance of Good Communication Skills

Communication is key to your success—in relationships, in the workplace, as a citizen of your country, and across your lifetime. Your ability to communicate comes from experience, and experience can be an effective teacher, but this text and the related business communication course will offer you a wealth of experiences gathered from professional speakers across their lifetimes. You can learn from the lessons they’ve learned and be a more effective communicator right out of the gate.

Business communication can be thought of as a problem-solving activity in which individuals may address the following questions:

• What is the situation?
• What are some possible communication strategies?
• What is the best course of action?
• What is the best way to design the chosen message?
• What is the best way to deliver the message?

In this book, we will examine this problem-solving process and help you learn to apply it in the kinds of situations you are likely to encounter over the course of your career.

Communication Influences Your Thinking about Yourself and Others

We all share a fundamental drive to communicate. Communication can be defined as the process of understanding and sharing meaning (Pearson & Nelson, 2000). You share meaning in what you say and how you say it, both in oral and written forms. If you could not communicate, what would life be like? A series of never-ending frustrations? Not being able to ask for what you need or even to understand the needs of others?

Being unable to communicate might even mean losing a part of yourself, for you communicate your  self-concept —your sense of self and awareness of who you are—in many ways. Do you like to write? Do you find it easy to make a phone call to a stranger or to speak to a room full of people? Perhaps someone told you that you don’t speak clearly or your grammar needs improvement. Does that make you more or less likely to want to communicate? For some, it may be a positive challenge, while for others it may be discouraging. But in all cases, your ability to communicate is central to your self-concept.

Take a look at your clothes. What are the brands you are wearing? What do you think they say about you? Do you feel that certain styles of shoes, jewelry, tattoos, music, or even automobiles express who you are? Part of your self-concept may be that you express yourself through texting, or through writing longer documents like essays and research papers, or through the way you speak.

On the other side of the coin, your communications skills help you to understand others—not just their words, but also their tone of voice, their nonverbal gestures, or the format of their written documents provide you with clues about who they are and what their values and priorities may be. Active listening and reading are also part of being a successful communicator.

Communication Influences How You Learn

When you were an infant, you learned to talk over a period of many months. When you got older, you didn’t learn to ride a bike, drive a car, or even text a message on your cell phone in one brief moment. You need to begin the process of improving your speaking and writing with the frame of mind that it will require effort, persistence, and self-correction.

You learn to speak in public by first having conversations, then by answering questions and expressing your opinions in class, and finally by preparing and delivering a “stand-up” speech. Similarly, you learn to write by first learning to read, then by writing and learning to think critically. Your speaking and writing are reflections of your thoughts, experience, and education. Part of that combination is your level of experience listening to other speakers, reading documents and styles of writing, and studying formats similar to what you aim to produce.

As you study business communication, you may receive suggestions for improvement and clarification from speakers and writers more experienced than yourself. Take their suggestions as challenges to improve; don’t give up when your first speech or first draft does not communicate the message you intend. Stick with it until you get it right. Your success in communicating is a skill that applies to almost every field of work, and it makes a difference in your relationships with others.

Remember, luck is simply a combination of preparation and timing. You want to be prepared to communicate well when given the opportunity. Each time you do a good job, your success will bring more success.

Communication Represents You and Your Employer

You want to make a good first impression on your friends and family, instructors, and employer. They all want you to convey a positive image, as it reflects on them. In your career, you will represent your business or company in spoken and written form. Your professionalism and attention to detail will reflect positively on you and set you up for success.

In both oral and written situations, you will benefit from having the ability to communicate clearly. These are skills you will use for the rest of your life. Positive improvements in these skills will have a positive impact on your relationships, your prospects for employment, and your ability to make a difference in the world.

Communication Skills Are Desired by Business and Industry

Oral and written communication proficiencies are consistently ranked in the top ten desirable skills by employer surveys year after year. In fact, high-powered business executives sometimes hire consultants to coach them in sharpening their communication skills. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (2018), the following are the top five personal qualities or skills potential employers seek:

• Communication skills (verbal and written)
• Strong work ethic
• Teamwork skills (works well with others, group communication)
• Analytical skills

Knowing this, you can see that one way for you to be successful and increase your promotion potential is to increase your abilities to speak and write effectively. An individual with excellent communication skills is an asset to every organization. No matter what career you plan to pursue, learning to express yourself professionally in speech and in writing will help you get there.

What is Communication?

Many theories have been proposed to describe, predict, and understand the behaviours and phenomena of which communication consists. When it comes to communicating in business, we are often less interested in theory than in making sure our communications generate the desired results. But in order to achieve results, it can be valuable to understand what communication is and how it works. All communication is composed of three parts that make a whole: sharing, understanding, and meaning.

Sharing  means doing something together with one or more person(s). In communication, sharing occurs when you convey thoughts, feelings, ideas, or insights to others. You also share with yourself (a process called intrapersonal communication) when you bring ideas to consciousness, ponder how you feel about something, figure out the solution to a problem, or have a classic “Aha!” moment when something becomes clear.

The second keyword is understanding . “To understand is to perceive, to interpret, and to relate our perception and interpretation to what we already know.” (McLean, 2003) Understanding the words and the concepts or objects they refer to is an important part of the communication process.

Finally,  meaning  is what you share through communication. For example, by looking at the context of a word, and by asking questions, you can discover the shared meaning of the word and better understand the message.

Watch the following video reviewing Types of Communication

• Interpersonal communication is any message exchanged between two or more people.
• Written communication is any message using the written word.
• Verbal, or oral, communication is any message conveyed through speech.
• Nonverbal communication is any message inferred through observation of another person.

Communications Process: Encoding and Decoding

In basic terms, humans communicate through a process of  encoding  and  decoding . The encoder is the person who develops and sends the message. As represented in Figure 1.1 below, the encoder must determine how the message will be received by the audience, and make adjustments so the message is received the way they want it to be received.

Encoding is the process of turning thoughts into communication. The encoder uses a ‘medium’ to send the message — a phone call, email, text message, face-to-face meeting, or other communication tools. The level of conscious thought that goes into encoding messages may vary. The encoder should also take into account any ‘noise’ that might interfere with their message, such as other messages, distractions, or influences.

The audience then ‘decodes’, or interprets, the message for themselves.  Decoding  is the process of turning communication into thoughts. For example, you may realize you’re hungry and encode the following message to send to your roommate: “I’m hungry. Do you want to get pizza tonight?” As your roommate receives the message, they decode your communication and turn it back into thoughts to make meaning.

Of course, you don’t just communicate verbally—you have various options, or channels, for communication. Encoded messages are sent through a channel, or a sensory route, on which a message travels to the receiver for decoding. While communication can be sent and received using any sensory route (sight, smell, touch, taste, or sound), most communication occurs through visual (sight) and/or auditory (sound) channels. If your roommate has headphones on and is engrossed in a video game, you may need to get their attention by waving your hands before you can ask them about dinner.

The  transmission model of communication describes communication as a linear, one-way process in which a sender intentionally transmits a message to a receiver (Ellis & McClintock, 1990). This model focuses on the sender and message within a communication encounter. Although the receiver is included in the model, this role is viewed as more of a target or endpoint rather than part of an ongoing process. You are left to presume that the receiver either successfully receives and understands the message or does not. Think of how a radio message is sent from a person in the radio studio to you listening in your car. The sender is the radio announcer who encodes a verbal message that is transmitted by a radio tower through electromagnetic waves (the channel) and eventually reaches your (the receiver’s) ears via an antenna and speakers in order to be decoded. The radio announcer doesn’t really know if you receive their message or not, but if the equipment is working and the channel is free of static, then there is a good chance that the message was successfully received.

The  interaction model  of communication describes communication as a process in which participants alternate positions as sender and receiver and generate meaning by sending messages and receiving feedback within physical and psychological contexts (Schramm, 1997). Rather than illustrating communication as a linear, one-way process, the interaction model incorporates feedback, which makes communication a more interactive, two-way process. Feedback includes messages sent in response to other messages. For example, your instructor may respond to a point you raise during class discussion or you may point to the sofa when your roommate asks you where the remote control is. The inclusion of a feedback loop also leads to a more complex understanding of the roles of participants in a communication encounter. Rather than having one sender, one message, and one receiver, this model has two sender-receivers who exchange messages. Each participant alternates roles as sender and receiver in order to keep a communication encounter going. Although this seems like a perceptible and deliberate process, you alternate between the roles of sender and receiver very quickly and often without conscious thought.

The  transaction model  of communication describes communication as a process in which communicators generate social realities within social, relational, and cultural contexts. In this model, you don’t just communicate to exchange messages; you communicate to create relationships, form intercultural alliances, shape your self-concepts, and engage with others in dialogue to create communities. In short, you don’t communicate about your realities; communication helps to construct your realities (and the realities of others).

The roles of sender and receiver in the transaction model of communication differ significantly from the other models. Instead of labelling participants as senders and receivers, the people in a communication encounter are referred to as communicators. Unlike the interaction model, which suggests that participants alternate positions as sender and receiver, the transaction model suggests that you are simultaneously a sender and a receiver. For example, when meeting a new friend, you send verbal messages about your interests and background, your companion reacts nonverbally. You don’t wait until you are done sending your verbal message to start receiving and decoding the nonverbal messages of your new friend. Instead, you are simultaneously sending your verbal message and receiving your friend’s nonverbal messages. This is an important addition to the model because it allows you to understand how you are able to adapt your communication—for example, adapting a verbal message—in the middle of sending it based on the communication you are simultaneously receiving from your communication partner.

Eight Essential Components of Communication

The communication process can be broken down into a series of eight essential components, each of which serves an integral function in the overall process:

Environment

Interference.

The source imagines, creates, and sends the message. The source encodes the message by choosing just the right order or the best words to convey the intended meaning and presents or sends the information to the audience (receiver). By watching for the audience’s reaction, the source perceives how well they received the message and responds with clarification or supporting information.

“The message is the stimulus or meaning produced by the source for the receiver or audience” (McLean, 2005). The message brings together words to convey meaning but is also about how it’s conveyed — through nonverbal cues, organization, grammar, style, and other elements.

“The channel is the way in which a message or messages travel between source and receiver.” (McLean, 2005). Spoken channels include face-to-face conversations, speeches, phone conversations and voicemail messages, radio, public address systems, and Skype. Written channels include letters, memorandums, purchase orders, invoices, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, email, text messages, tweets, and so forth.

“The receiver receives the message from the source, analyzing and interpreting the message in ways both intended and unintended by the source” (McLean, 2005).

When you respond to the source, intentionally or unintentionally, you are giving feedback. Feedback is composed of messages the receiver sends back to the source. Verbal or nonverbal, all these feedback signals allow the source to see how well, how accurately (or how poorly and inaccurately) the message was received (Leavitt & Mueller, 1951).

“The environment is the atmosphere, physical and psychological, where you send and receive messages” (McLean, 2005). Surroundings, people, animals, technology, can all influence your communication.

“The context of the communication interaction involves the setting, scene, and expectations of the individuals involved” (McLean, 2005). A professional communication context may involve business suits (environmental cues) that directly or indirectly influence expectations of language and behaviour among the participants.

Interference, also called noise, can come from any source. “Interference is anything that blocks or changes the source’s intended meaning of the message” (McLean, 2005). This can be external or internal/psychological. Noise interferes with normal encoding and decoding of the message carried by the channel between source and receiver.

Your Responsibilities as a Communicator – 4 tips

Whenever you speak or write in a business environment, you have certain responsibilities to your audience, your employer, and your profession. Your audience comes to you with an inherent set of expectations that is your responsibility to fulfill. The specific expectations may change given the context or environment, but two central ideas will remain: be prepared, and be ethical.

Preparation

Being prepared means that you have selected a topic appropriate to your audience, gathered enough information to cover the topic well, put your information into a logical sequence, and considered how best to present it.

Organization

Being organized involves the steps or points that lead your communication to a conclusion. Once you’ve invested time in researching your topic, you will want to narrow your focus to a few key points and consider how you’ll present them. You also need to consider how to link your main points together for your audience so they can follow your message from point to point.

You need to have a clear idea in your mind of what you want to say before you can say it clearly to someone else. It involves considering your audience, as you will want to choose words and phrases they understand and avoid jargon or slang that may be unfamiliar to them. Clarity also involves presentation and appropriate use of technology.

Conciseness

Concise means to be brief and to the point. In most business communications you are expected to ‘get down to business’ right away. Being prepared includes being able to state your points clearly and support them with trustworthy evidence in a relatively straightforward, linear way. Be concise in your choice of words, organization, and even visual aids. Being concise also involves being sensitive to time constraints. Be prepared to be punctual and adhere to deadlines or time limits. Some cultures also have a less strict interpretation of time schedules and punctuality. While it is important to recognize that different cultures have different expectations, the general rule holds true that good business communication does not waste words or time.

Ethics in Communication

Communicating ethically involves being egalitarian, respectful, and trustworthy—overall, practising the “golden rule” of treating your audience the way you would want to be treated. Communication can move communities, influence cultures, and change history. It can motivate people to take a stand, consider an argument, or purchase a product. The degree to which you consider both the common good and fundamental principles you hold to be true when crafting your message directly relates to how your message will affect others.

The Ethical Communicator Is Egalitarian

The word “egalitarian” comes from the root “equal.” To be egalitarian is to believe in basic equality: that all people should share equally in the benefits and burdens of a society. It means that everyone is entitled to the same respect, expectations, access to information, and rewards of participation in a group. To communicate in an egalitarian manner, speak and write in a way that is comprehensible and relevant to all your listeners or readers, not just those who are ‘like you’ in terms of age, gender, race or ethnicity, or other characteristics. In business, an effective communicator seeks to unify the audience by using ideas and language that are appropriate for all the message’s readers or listeners.

The Ethical Communicator Is Respectful

People are influenced by emotions as well as logic. The ethical communicator will be passionate and enthusiastic without being disrespectful. Losing one’s temper and being abusive are generally regarded as showing a lack of professionalism (and could even involve legal consequences for you or your employer). When you disagree strongly with a coworker, feel deeply annoyed with a difficult customer, or find serious fault with a competitor’s product, it is important to express such sentiments respectfully.

The Ethical Communicator Is Trustworthy

Trust is a key component in communication, and this is especially true in business. Your goal as a communicator is to build a healthy relationship with your audience and to do that you must show them how they can trust you and why the information you are about to share with them is believable. Your audience will expect that what you say is the truth as you understand it. This means that you have not intentionally omitted, deleted, or taken information out of context simply to prove your points. They will listen to what you say and how you say it, but also to what you don’t say or do. Being worthy of trust is something you earn with an audience. Many wise people have observed that trust is hard to build but easy to lose.

The “Golden Rule”

When in doubt, remember the “golden rule,” which is to treat others the way you would like to be treated. In all its many forms, the golden rule incorporates human kindness, cooperation, and reciprocity across cultures, languages, backgrounds, ad interests. Regardless of where you travel, with whom you communicate or what your audience is like, remember how you would feel if you were on the receiving end of your communication and act accordingly.

Being a good communicator is essential to becoming a successful business person. Therefore, it is important to learn how to communicate well. The first step in that process is understanding what effective communication means. This will help you to evaluate and improve your communication skills.

End of Chapter Activities

1a. thinking about the content.

What are your key takeaways from this chapter? What is something you have learned or something you would like to add from your experience?

1b. Review Questions

Discussion Questions

• Recall one time you felt offended or insulted in a conversation. What contributed to your perception?
• When someone lost your trust, were they able to earn it back?
• Does the communicator have a responsibility to the audience? Does the audience have a responsibility to the speaker? Why or why not?

1c. Applying chapter concepts to a situation

Communicating with a supervisor

Mako is an international student enrolled in a post-degree program in Vancouver. She has been working at a grocery store for the past three months on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays when she doesn’t have class. Mako enjoys working at the grocery store and gets along well with her colleagues and supervisor. Customers often comment on her professionalism and friendliness and she has noticed that her communication skills have improved.

When she applied for the job and filled out her available hours, she made sure to state that she could only work a maximum of 20 hours per week as an international student. She mentioned it once more during the interview and was told it would not be a problem.

Since then her supervisor has asked her to work overtime in a few instances to accommodate a colleague who was running late. That was not a problem. However, recently her supervisor asked if she could pick up an extra shift for two weeks because one colleague was out sick. Mako is not comfortable working so many hours over her maximum, but she is worried her supervisor might be upset and think she is not a team player.

What should Mako do? How should she communicate her decision to her supervisor?

1d. Summary Writing

Read this article from Salesforce.com on the 10 Must-Have Communication Skills for Business Success . Summarize the article and identify which of these skills you would like to improve.

Content Attribution

This chapter contains content from Communication for Business Professionals – Canadian Edition which was adapted from Business Communication for Success in 2013 by  University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing  through the  eLearning Support Initiative . The 2018 revision continues to be licensed with a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) following the precedent of a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution.

Ellis, R. and Ann McClintock,  You Take My Meaning: Theory into Practice in Human Communication  (London: Edward Arnold, 1990), 71.

Leavitt, H., & Mueller, R. (1951). Some effects of feedback on communication.  Human Relations, 4 , 401–410.

McLean, S. (2003).  The basics of speech communication . Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

McLean, S. (2005).  The basics of interpersonal communication  (p. 10). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

NACE. (2018). Employers Want to See These Attributes on Students’ Resumes. Retrieved August 26, 2020, from https://www.naceweb.org/talent-acquisition/candidate-selection/employers-want-to-see-these-attributes-on-students-resumes/

Pearson, J. C., & Nelson, P. E. (2000).  An introduction to human communication: understanding and sharing . Boston: McGraw Hill.

Schramm, W.,  The Beginnings of Communication Study in America  (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997).

Video Attribution

This chapter contains the video Types of Communication Interpersonal, Non Verbal, Written Oral Video Lesson Transcript Stud by Zaharul Hafiq from YouTube.com.

Chapter 1: Effective Business Communication Copyright © 2020 by Venecia Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

When I studied algorithms and data structures in school, one of the first things I learned was that different types of problems were best suited to be solved by different types of approaches. It might sound obvious, but a huge part of being an effective programmer is developing an intuition for which types of problems are solved best by which types of solutions.

Take sorting a list of numbers, for example. A “brute force” approach, like Bubble Sort , might work but is really inefficient. Instead, a ” divide and conquer ” approach like Merge Sort gives way better performance.

This is actually an illustrative example. Lots of software problems are actually quite similar to sorting numbers, and the result is that programmers reach for a “divide and conquer” solution a lot. Think about how teams often take a complex task and break it into smaller pieces, so that they can be worked on efficiently; this is divide and conquer. I think that how common this approach is might say something about programmers, but that’s beside the point. We’re not here to talk about divide and conquer as a problem solving technique, we’re here to talk about communication as a problem solving technique.

Communicating as a way to solve problems is one of the most effective and rewarding techniques I’ve found so far in my career. I don’t think I would have believed this five years ago, but I was solving different problems back then. I was interested in the best way to code things. Nowadays, I’m interested in building the best team to build things.

Let’s walk through a recent example of using communication-as-problem-solving from my job, and then I’ll go into more detail about my technique.

So the example. My team is developing a new feature. We were about halfway done when the marketing team asked the Product Manager for a change, who then asked me to plan for it. I didn’t think the change was a good idea. So there’s our problem: we disagreed about the feature we should be building. My solution: communicate. I didn’t even schedule a meeting, we just jumped on a quick 5-minute call with the PM and designer (right after I took a deep breath).

First I started the discussion by restating what this feature was for: its purpose and its goals. Then I asked the PM for context until I understood both the their perspective and the marketing team’s goals. Next, I asked the designer for their thoughts. I repeated back what I had heard to make sure I really did understand the context, and then I offered my own thoughts. Finally, I recentred the discussion on the feature’s goals. What would be best for the user? I wasn’t sure what the answer would be, but by asking thoughtful questions and keeping an open mind, we all arrived at our solution: we would keep the original design.

So what happened here? Well the problem was that we had to make a decision. I could have pushed back against the proposed change because I thought it was a bad idea, or because work on this feature was already in-progress, or some other reason. But instead, I took a deep breath.

The problem was that we disagreed about the best path forward. The solution was open-minded, non-judgemental communication. It’s really important that you understand that I might not have “gotten my way” here, and that had to be okay. Getting my way wasn’t my goal; my goal was making the best decision, as a team.

Here is my approach to communication-as-problem-solving:

• Keep an open mind. Truly open, staying non-judgemental. People with different perspectives will disagree. That’s okay. In the example above, I accepted upfront that I might not get what I wanted.
• Start from a shared perspective. Whatever the disagreement is, find a place where everyone can agree. In the example above, I started the discussion by stating the goal of the feature we were building, and moved the conversation forward from there.
• Do inquiry work . Actively listen, and verify your understanding. In the example above, I played back my understanding of the other perspectives. This not only makes sure I understand, but it demonstrates to everyone else that I care about what they’re thinking.
• Prioritize your relationships. Your goal has to include maintaining your relationships with the other people in the conversation. In the example above, I could have pushed hard for what I wanted at the expense of damaging my relationship with my team’s Product Manager. In the long term, that’s counterproductive; building up my relationships with colleagues is always a priority for me.
• Maintain self-respect. This is the counterpoint of prioritizing your relationships. You need to respect yourself and respectfully assert your own perspective, too. In the example above, I maintained self-respect by offering my own perspective and proposing the decision that I thought would result in the best user experience.

Communicating as a way to solve problems works well for solving “disagreement” problems. It doesn’t work for every problem. Just like “divide and conquer” approaches are sometimes a bad solution, communication as a problem solving technique won’t always work (or work the most efficiently).

This technique also requires that you start from a place of shared understanding, which is sometimes the hardest part of using it. If you don’t share common ground, or you can’t find it, it will be difficult to communicate through your disagreement to find a solution.

I’ve been thinking more and more about communication as a way to solve problems. Maybe I’m getting older, or that it’s the time I’ve spent as a tech lead, or maybe it’s because I’m writing less code and more emails. But I really think there is something to thinking of communication as a way to solve a problem. It doesn’t always work, but it often works for me.

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Lead an Effective Problem-Solving Meeting

There’s nothing worse than getting a group of smart people together to solve a problem and having the discussion devolve into chaos. This usually happens when people are at different stages of the problem-solving process. To get everyone on the same page, take a methodical approach and conquer one step at a time. First, ask: […]

There’s nothing worse than getting a group of smart people together to solve a problem and having the discussion devolve into chaos. This usually happens when people are at different stages of the problem-solving process. To get everyone on the same page, take a methodical approach and conquer one step at a time. First, ask: Does the team genuinely understand the problem it’s trying to solve? If you can’t clearly articulate it, draft a succinct problem statement. If the group understands the problem, but hasn’t yet produced a set of potential solutions, concentrate on generating as many quality options as possible. If you already have solutions, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and develop a list of pros and cons. Then you can use your time together to do the often difficult work of choosing a solution — and make sure that the final decision is in writing. The last stage, once you’ve selected the solution, is to develop an implementation plan. While conquering just one problem-solving stage at a time may feel a bit underwhelming at first, this methodical approach will often help the group leapfrog ahead, sometimes to the end of the problem-solving cycle.

Source: This tip is adapted from “Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together,” by Al Pittampalli

Partner Center

Why communication needs to be an important part of the problem solving process

By David Kossoff , Kepner-Tregoe

• Decision Making Whitepaper "How Leaders Use Balanced Decision-Making Skills to Move Organizations Forward". Learn more

Problem-solving in modern organizations is a team sport.  Success as a team comes from cooperation (sharing insights and information), collaboration (developing shared ideas), decisiveness and coordinated action. Communications is the glue that binds the team together and enables them to work as a unit. Nowhere in your company is this more critical than the problem-solving process. When the stakes are high is when peak-performance is needed most. You will find that delivering great communication in these areas will pay you and your organization dividends.

Leveraging expertise

Each member of your team brings unique expertise, knowledge and perspectives that can aid in the problem-solving process. Communication is critical, not only to ensure that everyone’s perspectives are captured, but to demonstrate that everyone’s contributions are appreciated and encourage further participation in the problem-solving process.

Assessing impacts and downstream implications

Everyone on the team has a unique point of view on the problem and how it fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Only through communication can the diverse points-of-view be brought together into an accurate and comprehensive perspective of the problem and its impacts on operations and downstream activities.

Making decisions that consider the whole system

Without effective communication, there will be a tendency to make problem-solving decisions that only address immediate symptoms and/or the parts of the system that are directly associated to the issue at hand. By including a broader stakeholder audience in problem communications, decision makers are able to solicit input on the broader impacts to the organization and select actions that benefit the whole system.

Executing as a unit

Solving complex business and operations problems often involves a lot of moving pieces to achieve a desirable outcome. Coordinating the activities of the individuals on the team to ensure efficient use of resources and avoid conflicts or duplication can be a challenge. Effective intra-team communication is essential to ensure that everyone on the team knows what is going on and the role they need to play.

Making impacts stick (real change begins with awareness)

Problem-solving teams work really hard to analyze situations, develop alternatives, make decisions and institute corrective actions to resolve the issue at hand. There is a lot of knowledge gained through this process that can help the organization avoid the situation recurring in the future and/or expedite resolution if the situation does happen again. Organizational communication and building awareness can help make the benefits from problem-solving stick.

Managing stakeholder expectations

Stakeholder confidence in your problem-solving abilities are based more on what you communicate than what you actually do. Ensuring stakeholder communications are deliberate, timely and thoughtful can play a big part in reducing the level of external pressure put on the problem-solving team. To do this, stakeholder communication needs to be a standard part of the problem-solving process and not approached as an ad-hoc activity.

Through effective communication and working as a team, even the most difficult problems can be resolved. Kepner-Tregoe has been working with companies for close to 60 years to solve some of the most difficult problems imaginable. Their experts understand the importance of teamwork and communication in the problem-solving process and can help your team up-level your communications capabilities.

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Chapter 11: Group Communication, Teamwork, and Leadership

75 Group Problem Solving

Source: pixabay.com

The problem-solving process involves thoughts, discussions, actions, and decisions that occur from the first consideration of a problematic situation to the goal. The problems that groups face are varied, but some common problems include budgeting funds, raising funds, planning events, addressing customer or citizen complaints, creating or adapting products or services to fit needs, supporting members, and raising awareness about issues or causes.

While there are many ways to approach a problem, the American educational philosopher John Dewey’s reflective thinking sequence has stood the test of time. This seven-step process (Adler, 1996 ) has produced positive results and serves as a handy organizational structure. If you are member of a group that needs to solve a problem and don’t know where to start, consider the seven simple steps illustrated in Figure 11.2 below:

Figure 11.2 . Problem-solving process .

Define the Problem

If you don’t know what the problem is, how do you know you can solve it? Defining the problem allows the group to set boundaries of what the problem is and what it is not and to begin to formalize a description or definition of the scope, size, or extent of the challenge the group will address. A problem that is too broadly defined can overwhelm the group. If the problem is too narrowly defined, important information will be missed or ignored.

In the following example, there is a web-based company called Favourites that needs to increase its customer base and ultimately sales. A problem-solving group has been formed, and they start by formulating a working definition of the problem.

Example problems:

Too broad:   “Sales are off, our numbers are down, and we need more customers.”

More precise:   “Sales have been slipping incrementally for six of the past nine months and are significantly lower than a seasonally adjusted comparison to last year. Overall, this loss represents a 4.5 percent reduction in sales from the same time last year. However, when we break it down by product category, sales of our nonedible products have seen a modest but steady increase, while sales of edibles account for the drop off and we need to halt the decline.”

Analyze the Problem

The problem-solving group Kevin, Mariah, and Suri analyze the problem and begin to gather information to learn more. The problem is complex and requires more than one area of expertise. Why do nonedible products continue selling well? What is it about the edibles that is turning customers off?

Kevin is responsible for customer resource management. He is involved with the customer from the point of initial contact through purchase and delivery. Most of the interface is automated in the form of an online “basket model,” where photographs and product descriptions are accompanied by “buy it” buttons. He is available during normal working business hours for live chat and voice chat if needed, and customers are invited to request additional information. Most Favourites customers do not access this service, but Kevin is kept quite busy, as he also handles returns and complaints. Because Kevin believes that superior service retains customers while attracting new ones, he is always interested in better ways to serve the customer. Looking at edibles and nonedibles, he will study the cycle of customer service and see if there are any common points—from the main webpage, through the catalog, to the purchase process, and to returns—at which customers abandon the sale. He has existing customer feedback loops with end-of-sale surveys, but most customers decline to take the survey and there is currently no incentive to participate.

Mariah is responsible for products and purchasing. She wants to offer the best products at the lowest price, and to offer new products that are unusual, rare, or exotic. She regularly adds new products to the Favourites catalog and culls underperformers. Right now she has the data on every product and its sales history, but it is a challenge to represent it. She will analyze current sales data and produce a report that specifically identifies how each product—edible and nonedible—is performing. She wants to highlight “winners” and “losers” but also recognizes that today’s “losers” may be the hit of tomorrow. It is hard to predict constantly changing tastes and preferences, but that is part of her job. It’s not all science, and it’s not all art. She has to have an eye for what will catch on tomorrow while continuing to provide what is hot today.

Suri is responsible for data management at Favourites . She gathers, analyzes, and presents information gathered from the supply chain, sales, and marketing. She works with vendors to make sure products are available when needed, makes sales predictions based on past sales history, and assesses the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

The problem-solving group members already have certain information on hand. They know that customer retention is one contributing factor. Attracting new customers is a constant goal, but they are aware of the well-known principle that it takes more effort to attract new customers than to keep existing ones. Thus, it is important to ensure a quality customer service experience for existing customers and encourage them to refer friends. The group needs to determine how to promote this favourable customer behaviour.

Another contributing factor seems to be that customers often abandon the shopping cart before completing a purchase, especially when purchasing edibles. The group members need to learn more about why this is happening.

Establish Criteria

Establishing the criteria for a solution is the next step. At this point, information is coming in from diverse perspectives, and each group member has contributed information from their perspective, even though there may be several points of overlap.

Kevin: Customers who complete the postsale survey indicate that they want to know (1) what is the estimated time of delivery, (2) why a specific item was not in stock and when it will be available, and (3) why their order sometimes arrives with less than a complete order, with some items back-ordered, without prior notification.

He notes that a very small percentage of customers complete the postsale survey, and the results are far from scientific. He also notes that it appears the interface is not capable of cross-checking inventory to provide immediate information concerning back orders, so that the customer “buys it” only to learn several days later that it was not in stock. This seems to be especially problematic for edible products, because people may tend to order them for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. But we don’t really know this for sure because of the low participation in the postsale survey.

Mariah: There are four edible products that frequently sell out. So far, we haven’t been able to boost the appeal of other edibles so that people would order them as a second choice when these sales leaders aren’t available. We also have several rare, exotic products that are slow movers. They have potential, but currently are underperformers.

Suri: We know from a postal code analysis that most of our customers are from a few specific geographic areas associated with above-average incomes. We have very few credit cards declined, and the average sale is over $100. Shipping costs represent on average 8 percent of the total sales cost. We do not have sufficient information to produce a customer profile. There is no specific point in the purchase process where basket abandonment tends to happen; it happens fairly uniformly at all steps.

Consider Possible Solutions to the Problem

The group has listened to each other and now starts to brainstorm ways to address the challenges they have addressed while focusing resources on those solutions that are more likely to produce results.

Kevin: Is it possible for our programmers to create a cross-index feature, linking the product desired with a report of how many are in stock? I’d like the customer to know right away whether it is in stock, or how long they may have to wait. As another idea, is it possible to add incentives to the purchase cycle that won’t negatively impact our overall profit? I’m thinking a small volume discount on multiple items, or perhaps free shipping over a specific dollar amount.

Mariah: I recommend we hold a focus group where customers can sample our edible products and tell us what they like best and why. When the best sellers are sold out, could we offer a discount on related products to provide an instant alternative? We might also cull the underperforming products with a liquidation sale to generate interest.

Suri: If we want to know more about our customers, we need to give them an incentive to complete the postsale survey. How about a 5 percent off coupon code for the next purchase to get them to return and to help us better identify our customer base? We may also want to build in a customer referral rewards program, but it all takes better data in to get results out. We should also explore the supply side of the business by getting a more reliable supply of the leading products and trying to get discounts that are more advantageous from our suppliers, especially in the edible category.

Decide on a Solution

Kevin, Mariah, and Suri may want to implement all the solution strategies, but they do not have the resources to do them all. They’ll complete a cost-benefit analysis, which ranks each solution according to its probable impact.

Implement the Solution

Kevin is faced with the challenge of designing the computer interface without incurring unacceptable costs. He strongly believes that the interface will pay for itself within the first year—or, to put it more bluntly, that Favourites’ declining sales will get worse if the website does not have this feature soon. He asks to meet with top management to get budget approval and secures their agreement, on one condition: he must negotiate a compensation schedule with the information technology consultants that includes delayed compensation in the form of bonuses after the feature has been up and running successfully for six months.

Mariah knows that searching for alternative products is a never-ending process, but it takes time and the company needs results. She decides to invest time evaluating products that competing companies currently offer, especially in the edible category, on the theory that customers who find their desired items sold out on the Favourites  website may have been buying alternative products elsewhere instead of choosing an alternative from Favourites’  product lines.

Suri decides to approach the vendors of the four frequently sold-out products and ask point blank, “What would it take to get you to produce these items more reliably in greater quantities?” By opening the channel of communication with these vendors, she is able to motivate them to make modifications that will improve the reliability and quantity. She also approaches the vendors of the less popular products with a request for better discounts in return for their cooperation in developing and test-marketing new products.

Follow Up on the Solution

Kevin: After several beta tests, the cross-index feature was implemented and has been in place for thirty days. Now customers see either “in stock” or “available [mo/da/yr]” in the shopping basket. As expected, Kevin notes a decrease in the number of chat and phone inquiries to the effect of, “Will this item arrive before my wife’s birthday?” However, he notes an increase in inquiries asking, “Why isn’t this item in stock?” It is difficult to tell whether customer satisfaction is higher overall.

Mariah: In exploring the merchandise available from competing merchants, she got several ideas for modifying Favourites’ product line to offer more flavors and other variations on popular edibles. Working with vendors, she found that these modifications cost very little. Within the first thirty days of adding these items to the product line, sales are up. Mariah believes these additions also serve to enhance the Favourites brand identity, but she has no data to back this up.

Suri: So far, the vendors supplying the four top-selling edibles have fulfilled their promise of increasing quantity and reliability. However, three of the four items have still sold out, raising the question of whether Favourites needs to bring in one or more additional vendors to produce these items. Of the vendors with which Favourites asked to negotiate better discounts, some refused, and two of these were “stolen” by a competing merchant so that they no longer sell to Favourites . In addition, one of the vendors that agreed to give a better discount was unexpectedly forced to cease operations for several weeks because of a fire.

This scenario allows us to see that the problem may have several dimensions as well as solutions, that resources can be limited, and not every solution is successful. Even though the problem is not immediately resolved, the group problem-solving pattern and communication among the group members serves as a useful guide through the problem-solving process.

Communication for Business Professionals Copyright © 2018 by eCampusOntario is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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19.3 Group Problem Solving

Learning objective.

• Identify and describe how to implement seven steps for group problem solving.

No matter who you are or where you live, problems are an inevitable part of life. This is true for groups as well as for individuals. Some groups—especially work teams—are formed specifically to solve problems. Other groups encounter problems for a wide variety of reasons. Within a family group, a problem might be that a daughter or son wants to get married and the parents do not approve of the marriage partner. In a work group, a problem might be that some workers are putting in more effort than others, yet achieving poorer results. Regardless of the problem, having the resources of a group can be an advantage, as different people can contribute different ideas for how to reach a satisfactory solution.

Once a group encounters a problem, the questions that come up range from “Where do we start?” to “How do we solve it?” While there are many ways to approach a problem, the American educational philosopher John Dewey’s reflective thinking sequence has stood the test of time. This seven-step process (Adler, R., 1996) has produced positive results and serves as a handy organizational structure. If you are member of a group that needs to solve a problem and don’t know where to start, consider these seven simple steps:

• Define the problem
• Analyze the problem
• Establish criteria
• Consider possible solutions
• Decide on a solution
• Implement the solution
• Follow up on the solution

Let’s discuss each step in detail.

Define the Problem

If you don’t know what the problem is, how do you know you can solve it? Defining the problem allows the group to set boundaries of what the problem is and what it is not and to begin to formalize a description or definition of the scope, size, or extent of the challenge the group will address. A problem that is too broadly defined can overwhelm the group. If the problem is too narrowly defined, important information will be missed or ignored.

In the following example, we have a Web-based company called Favorites that needs to increase its customer base and ultimately sales. A problem-solving group has been formed, and they start by formulating a working definition of the problem.

Too broad: “Sales are off, our numbers are down, and we need more customers.”

More precise: “Sales have been slipping incrementally for six of the past nine months and are significantly lower than a seasonally adjusted comparison to last year. Overall, this loss represents a 4.5 percent reduction in sales from the same time last year. However, when we break it down by product category, sales of our nonedible products have seen a modest but steady increase, while sales of edibles account for the drop off and we need to halt the decline.”

Analyze the Problem

Now the group analyzes the problem, trying to gather information and learn more. The problem is complex and requires more than one area of expertise. Why do nonedible products continue selling well? What is it about the edibles that is turning customers off? Let’s meet our problem solvers at Favorites.

Kevin is responsible for customer resource management. He is involved with the customer from the point of initial contact through purchase and delivery. Most of the interface is automated in the form of an online “basket model,” where photographs and product descriptions are accompanied by “buy it” buttons. He is available during normal working business hours for live chat and voice chat if needed, and customers are invited to request additional information. Most Favorites customers do not access this service, but Kevin is kept quite busy, as he also handles returns and complaints. Because Kevin believes that superior service retains customers while attracting new ones, he is always interested in better ways to serve the customer. Looking at edibles and nonedibles, he will study the cycle of customer service and see if there are any common points—from the main Web page, through the catalog, to the purchase process, and to returns—at which customers abandon the sale. He has existing customer feedback loops with end-of-sale surveys, but most customers decline to take the survey and there is currently no incentive to participate.

Mariah is responsible for products and purchasing. She wants to offer the best products at the lowest price, and to offer new products that are unusual, rare, or exotic. She regularly adds new products to the Favorites catalog and culls underperformers. Right now she has the data on every product and its sales history, but it is a challenge to represent it. She will analyze current sales data and produce a report that specifically identifies how each product—edible and nonedible—is performing. She wants to highlight “winners” and “losers” but also recognizes that today’s “losers” may be the hit of tomorrow. It is hard to predict constantly changing tastes and preferences, but that is part of her job. It’s not all science, and it’s not all art. She has to have an eye for what will catch on tomorrow while continuing to provide what is hot today.

Suri is responsible for data management at Favorites. She gathers, analyzes, and presents information gathered from the supply chain, sales, and marketing. She works with vendors to make sure products are available when needed, makes sales predictions based on past sales history, and assesses the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

The problem-solving group members already have certain information on hand. They know that customer retention is one contributing factor. Attracting new customers is a constant goal, but they are aware of the well-known principle that it takes more effort to attract new customers than to keep existing ones. Thus, it is important to insure a quality customer service experience for existing customers and encourage them to refer friends. The group needs to determine how to promote this favorable customer behavior.

Another contributing factor seems to be that customers often abandon the shopping cart before completing a purchase, especially when purchasing edibles. The group members need to learn more about why this is happening.

Establish Criteria

Establishing the criteria for a solution is the next step. At this point, information is coming in from diverse perspectives, and each group member has contributed information from their perspective, even though there may be several points of overlap.

Kevin: Customers who complete the postsale survey indicate that they want to know (1) what is the estimated time of delivery, (2) why a specific item was not in stock and when it will be available, and (3) why their order sometimes arrives with less than a complete order, with some items back-ordered, without prior notification.

He notes that a very small percentage of customers complete the postsale survey, and the results are far from scientific. He also notes that it appears the interface is not capable of cross-checking inventory to provide immediate information concerning back orders, so that the customer “buys it” only to learn several days later that it was not in stock. This seems to be especially problematic for edible products, because people may tend to order them for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. But we don’t really know this for sure because of the low participation in the postsale survey.

Mariah: There are four edible products that frequently sell out. So far, we haven’t been able to boost the appeal of other edibles so that people would order them as a second choice when these sales leaders aren’t available. We also have several rare, exotic products that are slow movers. They have potential, but currently are underperformers.

Suri: We know from a zip code analysis that most of our customers are from a few specific geographic areas associated with above-average incomes. We have very few credit cards declined, and the average sale is over $100. Shipping costs represent on average 8 percent of the total sales cost. We do not have sufficient information to produce a customer profile. There is no specific point in the purchase process where basket abandonment tends to happen; it happens fairly uniformly at all steps.

Consider Possible Solutions to the Problem

The group has listened to each other and now starts to brainstorm ways to address the challenges they have addressed while focusing resources on those solutions that are more likely to produce results.

Kevin: Is it possible for our programmers to create a cross-index feature, linking the product desired with a report of how many are in stock? I’d like the customer to know right away whether it is in stock, or how long they may have to wait. As another idea, is it possible to add incentives to the purchase cycle that won’t negatively impact our overall profit? I’m thinking a small volume discount on multiple items, or perhaps free shipping over a specific dollar amount.

Mariah: I recommend we hold a focus group where customers can sample our edible products and tell us what they like best and why. When the best sellers are sold out, could we offer a discount on related products to provide an instant alternative? We might also cull the underperforming products with a liquidation sale to generate interest.

Suri: If we want to know more about our customers, we need to give them an incentive to complete the postsale survey. How about a 5 percent off coupon code for the next purchase to get them to return and to help us better identify our customer base? We may also want to build in a customer referral rewards program, but it all takes better data in to get results out. We should also explore the supply side of the business by getting a more reliable supply of the leading products and trying to get discounts that are more advantageous from our suppliers, especially in the edible category.

Decide on a Solution

Kevin, Mariah, and Suri may want to implement all the solution strategies, but they do not have the resources to do them all. They’ll complete a cost-benefit analysis , which ranks each solution according to its probable impact. The analysis is shown in Table 19.6 “Cost-Benefit Analysis” .

Table 19.6 Cost-Benefit Analysis

Now that the options have been presented with their costs and benefits, it is easier for the group to decide which courses of action are likely to yield the best outcomes. The analysis helps the group members to see beyond the immediate cost of implementing a given solution. For example, Kevin’s suggestion of offering free shipping won’t cost Favorites much money, but it also may not pay off in customer goodwill. And even though Mariah’s suggestion of having a focus group might sound like a good idea, it will be expensive and its benefits are questionable.

A careful reading of the analysis indicates that Kevin’s best suggestion is to integrate the cross-index feature in the ordering process so that customers can know immediately whether an item is in stock or on back order. Mariah, meanwhile, suggests that searching for alternative products is probably the most likely to benefit Favorites, while Suri’s two supply-side suggestions are likely to result in positive outcomes.

Implement the Solution

Kevin is faced with the challenge of designing the computer interface without incurring unacceptable costs. He strongly believes that the interface will pay for itself within the first year—or, to put it more bluntly, that Favorites’ declining sales will get worse if the Web site does not have this feature soon. He asks to meet with top management to get budget approval and secures their agreement, on one condition: he must negotiate a compensation schedule with the Information Technology consultants that includes delayed compensation in the form of bonuses after the feature has been up and running successfully for six months.

Mariah knows that searching for alternative products is a never-ending process, but it takes time and the company needs results. She decides to invest time evaluating products that competing companies currently offer, especially in the edible category, on the theory that customers who find their desired items sold out on the Favorites Web site may have been buying alternative products elsewhere instead of choosing an alternative from Favorites’s product lines.

Suri decides to approach the vendors of the four frequently sold-out products and ask point blank, “What would it take to get you to produce these items more reliably in greater quantities?” By opening the channel of communication with these vendors, she is able to motivate them to make modifications that will improve the reliability and quantity. She also approaches the vendors of the less popular products with a request for better discounts in return for their cooperation in developing and test-marketing new products.

Follow Up on the Solution

Kevin: After several beta tests, the cross-index feature was implemented and has been in place for thirty days. Now customers see either “in stock” or “available [mo/da/yr]” in the shopping basket. As expected, Kevin notes a decrease in the number of chat and phone inquiries to the effect of, “Will this item arrive before my wife’s birthday?” However, he notes an increase in inquiries asking, “Why isn’t this item in stock?” It is difficult to tell whether customer satisfaction is higher overall.

Mariah: In exploring the merchandise available from competing merchants, she got several ideas for modifying Favorites’ product line to offer more flavors and other variations on popular edibles. Working with vendors, she found that these modifications cost very little. Within the first thirty days of adding these items to the product line, sales are up. Mariah believes these additions also serve to enhance the Favorites brand identity, but she has no data to back this up.

Suri: So far, the vendors supplying the four top-selling edibles have fulfilled their promise of increasing quantity and reliability. However, three of the four items have still sold out, raising the question of whether Favorites needs to bring in one or more additional vendors to produce these items. Of the vendors with which Favorites asked to negotiate better discounts, some refused, and two of these were “stolen” by a competing merchant so that they no longer sell to Favorites. In addition, one of the vendors that agreed to give a better discount was unexpectedly forced to cease operations for several weeks because of a fire.

This scenario allows us to see that the problem may have several dimensions as well as solutions, but resources can be limited and not every solution is successful. Even though the problem is not immediately resolved, the group problem-solving pattern serves as a useful guide through the problem-solving process.

Key Takeaway

Group problem solving can be an orderly process when it is broken down into seven specific stages.

• Think of a problem encountered in the past by a group of which you are a member. How did the group solve the problem? How satisfactory was the solution? Discuss your results with your classmates.
• Consider again the problem you described in Exercise 1. In view of the seven-step framework, which steps did the group utilize? Would following the full seven-step framework have been helpful? Discuss your opinion with a classmate.
• Research one business that you would like to know more about and see if you can learn about how they communicate in groups and teams. Compare your results with those of classmates.
• Think of a decision you will be making some time in the near future. Apply the cost-benefit analysis framework to your decision. Do you find this method helpful? Discuss your results with classmates.

Adler, R. (1996). Communicating at work: Principles and practices for business and the professions . Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.

McLean, S. (2005). The basics of interpersonal communication . Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Business Communication for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Blog , Business Communication

How to solve your business communication problems.

• By Clariti Team
• No Comments

Table of Contents

In the dynamic landscape of modern business, effective communication is paramount for success. This blog explores the top 28 ways to tackle common communication problems and presents practical business communication solution.   

From leveraging advanced collaboration tools to implementing streamlined communication strategies, we delve into comprehensive approaches that cater to various facets of business communication.   

Discover how to enhance team collaboration, overcome remote work challenges, and optimize communication processes for a more productive and harmonious work environment.   

Explore innovative solutions that address the diverse needs of businesses, paving the way for improved efficiency, clarity, and overall success.  

Top 28 ways to solve your business communication problems and solutions.

1) defined goals and objectives.

If you are wondering how to solve business communication problems, state clear and concise objectives of business meetings. According to a survey by ClearCompany, 72% of employees say that clear goals and objectives are essential to their job satisfaction.

2) Using most suited web communication tools

There are various tools depending on the types of businesses that create an accessible space and interactions across various platforms to enhance business communications.

Multiple meetings, information exchange, and emails are a part of everyday activities in any business and for managing the projects across teams and customers, an efficient communication tool is vital for solving business communication problems. Participants of a meeting may range from leadership across teams, employees from other departments, employees who have just been added to the project, etc., and hence keeping everyone on the same page in a business meeting is vital for a hassle-free connection.

Make available the required documents, information on projects, status, numbers, etc., to all and concisely present in a managed web communication tool like Clariti that makes all information available with ease in conversations. This not only reduces the struggle of finding and organizing data but enables the participants of the meeting to understand the references and details made in a presentation and add value to the data with ease.

3) Be Proactive to evolving business needs

The world is progressing more towards online engagement. Providing the virtual experience of its current services and scope of developing for future customer needs of its service or product via content creation is vital for solving communication problems. This enhances the online engagement with the customer or stakeholder and paves way for customer retention. A small or medium-sized business providing a service or product thus has to deliver an online experience of its service.

The preparation of this demands multifaceted inter-network communication and project management tools. Also, with the rise of remote-working lifestyle and freelance workforce, businesses are depending more on efficient web-based business communication tools to retain talent and maintain productivity.

4) Attention to detail

Another common communication problem is a large amount of information can be lost in data silos. An integrated tool, that can bring together data distributed across chat, calls and emails to one place increases team productivity . This ensures that miscommunication or deletion of minute details by accident can be minimized.

According to a survey published in “The Cost of Poor Communications”, inadequate communication to and between employees costs a company $62.4 million per year. Be it process updates, rush requests, or new projects; sharing information and data across in a precise, organized and specific manner and making it available across all internal teams or customers as necessary is very crucial.

5) Strive for Teamwork

Efficient communication among internal teams and stakeholders is an indispensable to avoid communication problems. Teams engage with each other through chats, emails, and calls involving process data. It is hence important to keep interaction seamless and make business communication healthy thereby encouraging team collaboration.

Also, a team must tackle issues with a solution-oriented management. Conduct regular team building activities to keep the team connected and increase interdependence. Higher retention of experienced employees increases productivity and delivers faster results. This also facilitates a rich knowledge transfer when training new hires.

6) Prevent Information Fatigue

Often business communication involves a large amount of data and sharing it across chats, emails and social media becomes a daunting task for teams. The information silos created by endless reply-all emails and distributed data make it difficult to manage information and causes communication problems.

For instance, if creating a project presentation necessitates gathering data about a topic that is discussed across many platforms becomes a cumbersome process, employees lose a lot of productive time and suffer from information fatigue.

7) Make the employees heard

In any organization, it is important to have periodic meetings with employees at all levels of the corporate ladder to learn about the communication problems they are facing at work. This analysis on how they operate the procedures of the business shines a light on the efficiency of its processes.

Share the various accomplishments and goals achieved by the business quarterly or yearly as necessary, in an all-hands meeting empowering the workforce to see the big picture of how collective work has helped meet business goals.

Providing feedback is essential to solving communication problems at work. This means providing constructive feedback on what employees are doing well and where they can improve. According to a survey by Office vibe, 65% of employees say that they want more feedback on their work.

8) Keep all information Secure

Data security is of prime importance when it comes to business communication as the various channels and tools involved in data sharing contain confidential data subject to breaches or misuse by external sources. There is a need for stringent measures to secure and maintain confidential data within shared business communication channels.

In the 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon Enterprise, phishing was found to be one of the most prevalent actions of data breaches.

9) Declutter and Integrate

Invest in a robust multifaceted tool that will simplify your business operations and avoid communication problems. The clutter of information distributed and shared across multiple channels not only causes difficulty in analysis but also leads to team time leakage.

Often switching through many trackers, emails and chats, employees struggle to unify information. This can be greatly minimized and made easy, saving time and effort by using tools like Clariti.

10) LIFT your business meetings

The key to a successful business meeting thus should strive to ‘LIFT’- Listen, Integrate, Follow-through and Team-up.

• Listen to the objectives and process requirements
• Integrate all information required to work on the projects
• Follow through with the necessary stakeholders of the project.
• Team-up with others and collaborate

11) Implement regular check-ins

Regular check-ins can be done in different forms such as one-on-one meetings, team meetings, or weekly progress updates. The purpose of regular check-ins is to ensure that everyone is on the same page and any issues can be addressed in a timely manner.

According to a Gallup study, employees who have regular meetings with their managers are almost three times as likely to be engaged in their work. This highlights the importance of regular check-ins as an effective way to solve communication problems at work.

12) Use technology to your advantage

Technology can be a great tool to solve business communication problems at the workplace. Communication tools like Clariti , Slack or Microsoft Teams can help teams collaborate and share information more effectively. According to a survey by Intermedia, 70% of small businesses say that technology has improved their communication with customers and clients.

13) Provide clear expectations

Providing clear expectations is essential for solving business communication problems. Employees need to know what is expected of them in terms of their work, deadlines, and performance.

14) Encourage open communication

Encouraging open communication is important to creating a culture of transparency and trust in the workplace. This means creating an environment where employees feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. According to a survey by Edelman, 71% of employees say that they are more likely to trust their employer if they communicate openly and transparently.

15) Use a variety of communication methods

Different people have different communication preferences, so it is important to use a variety of methods to ensure that everyone is reached. This can include email, phone calls, video calls, and face-to-face meetings. According to a survey by the Harvard Business Review, 81% of respondents say that they prefer face-to-face communication for important conversations.

16) Set up a communication plan

A communication plan can help ensure that everyone is informed and involved in important decisions. This means creating a plan for how and when information will be shared, and who will be responsible for communicating it. According to a survey by Ragan Communications, 54% of businesses say that they have a formal communication plan in place.

17) Train employees in effective communication

Effective communication is a skill that can be learned and improved. Providing training on business communication issues can help employees and remove communication problems in business. According to a survey by Udemy, 74% of employees say that they feel they could be more effective communicators with training.

18) Use visual aids

Visual aids like charts, graphs, and diagrams can help convey complex information more easily. This can be especially helpful in presentations or when communicating with non-native speakers. According to a survey by Prezi, 91% of business professionals say that visual aids are essential to solve business communication problems.

19) Use active listening

Active listening means fully engaging with the person who is speaking and trying to understand their perspective. This can help prevent misunderstandings and ensure that everyone is on the same page. According to a survey by Dale Carnegie, 70% of employees say that they feel more engaged with their job when they feel heard.

20) Practice empathy

Empathy means putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and understanding their perspective. This can be helpful in resolving conflicts and building stronger relationships in the workplace. According to a survey by Businessolver, 92% of employees say that empathy is important to their overall happiness at work.

21) Use plain languag

Using plain language means avoiding jargon and technical terms that may not be understood by everyone. This can help ensure that everyone is on the same page and can understand the information being communicated. According to a survey by the National Adult Literacy Agency, 51% of adults struggle with basic literacy skills, highlighting the importance of using plain language in workplace communication.

22) Be consistent

Consistency in communication means using the same language, tone, and messaging across all communication channels. This can help prevent communication problems and ensure that everyone is on the same page. According to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, consistency in communication is essential to building trust in the workplace.

23) Clarify roles and responsibilities

Clarifying roles and responsibilities can help ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them and can avoid confusion or duplication of effort. This can be done through job descriptions or regular check-ins. According to a survey by ClearCompany, 76% of employees say that clear job descriptions are important to their job satisfaction.

24) Avoid communication overload

Communication overload means receiving too much information or communication, which can lead to confusion or burnout. It is important to be mindful of how much information is being shared and to ensure that it is relevant and necessary. According to a survey by RingCentral, 69% of employees say that they feel overwhelmed by the amount of communication they receive.

25) Recognize and celebrate successes

Recognizing and celebrating successes can help to solve communication problems and build morale and create a positive workplace culture. This can be done through regular celebrations or awards. According to a survey by Globoforce, companies that recognize their employees have employee turnover rates that are 23.4% lower than those that do not.

26) Create a supportive environment

Creating a supportive environment means promoting teamwork, collaboration, and mutual respect in the workplace. This can be done through team-building activities, mentorship programs, or by fostering a positive workplace culture. According to a survey by Gallup, employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work.

27) Address conflicts promptly

Addressing conflicts promptly means resolving issues before they escalate and cause more serious problems. This can be done through mediation, conflict resolution training, or regular check-ins. According to a survey by CPP Global, 85% of employees say that they have experienced conflict at work, highlighting the importance of addressing conflicts promptly.

28) Continuously evaluate and improve communication

Effective communication is an ongoing process that requires continuous evaluation and improvement. This means regularly assessing communication practices and making changes as needed. According to a survey by Ragan Communications, 57% of businesses say that they continuously evaluate and improve their communication practices.

Clariti is the most pragmatic business communication solution for all business communication problems

Clariti stands out as the most pragmatic business communication solution, offering a comprehensive set of features designed to address a myriad of communication problems. With its innovative approach, Clariti seamlessly integrates emails, chats, documents, and more into contextual conversations, ensuring that information is organized and readily accessible.

The platform’s “Bring Email” feature revolutionizes the way emails are integrated, fostering a holistic view of communication threads. Whether tackling collaboration hurdles, remote work complexities, or the need for streamlined communication, Clariti provides a unified solution. Its adaptability to various business communication problems makes it an invaluable asset, promoting efficiency, reducing silos, and enhancing overall productivity in the modern workplace.

Effective communication is critical to the success of any business. Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings, errors, and conflicts, which can ultimately impact the bottom line. By implementing the 28 ways outlined in this article, businesses can solve their communication problems.

From using technology to streamline communication to providing opportunities for feedback and recognition, each of these business communication solutions have been backed up by research and statistics. It’s clear that a focus on communication is essential for creating a positive workplace culture, improving employee satisfaction, and ultimately driving business success.

However, it’s important to note that implementing these business communication solutions require a commitment to ongoing evaluation and improvement. By continuously assessing communication practices and making changes as needed, businesses can ensure that their communication remains effective and impactful.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the issues of communication.

Communication issues often stem from misinterpretation, lack of clarity, and insufficient feedback. These challenges can lead to misunderstandings, hampering effective collaboration and hindering the smooth flow of information within a team or organization.

What do you do for business communications?

Many companies use Clariti, a versatile platform, for streamlined communication, contextual conversations, and efficient organization of emails, fostering enhanced productivity in professional settings.

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Effective Business Communication

Why is it important to communicate well, learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Recognize the importance of communication in gaining a better understanding of yourself and others.
• Explain how communication skills help you solve problems, learn new things, and build your career.

Communication is key to your success—in relationships, in the workplace, as a citizen of your country, and across your lifetime. Your ability to communicate comes from experience, and experience can be an effective teacher, but this text and the related business communication course will offer you a wealth of experiences gathered from professional speakers across their lifetimes. You can learn from the lessons they’ve learned and be a more effective communicator right out of the gate.

Business communication can be thought of as a problem solving activity in which individuals may address the following questions:

• What is the situation?
• What are some possible communication strategies?
• What is the best course of action?
• What is the best way to design the chosen message?
• What is the best way to deliver the message?

In this book, we will examine this problem solving process and help you learn to apply it in the kinds of situations you are likely to encounter over the course of your career.

Communication Influences Your Thinking about Yourself and Others

We all share a fundamental drive to communicate. Communication can be defined as the process of understanding and sharing meaning (Pearson & Nelson, 2000, p.6). You share meaning in what you say and how you say it, both in oral and written forms. If you could not communicate, what would life be like? A series of never-ending frustrations? Not being able to ask for what you need or even to understand the needs of others?

Being unable to communicate might even mean losing a part of yourself, for you communicate your self-concept —your sense of self and awareness of who you are—in many ways. Do you like to write? Do you find it easy to make a phone call to a stranger or to speak to a room full of people? Perhaps someone told you that you don’t speak clearly or your grammar needs improvement. Does that make you more or less likely to want to communicate? For some, it may be a positive challenge, while for others it may be discouraging. But in all cases, your ability to communicate is central to your self-concept.

Take a look at your clothes. What are the brands you are wearing? What do you think they say about you? Do you feel that certain styles of shoes, jewelry, tattoos, music, or even automobiles express who you are? Part of your self-concept may be that you express yourself through texting, or through writing longer documents like essays and research papers, or through the way you speak.

On the other side of the coin, your communications skills help you to understand others—not just their words, but also their tone of voice, their nonverbal gestures, or the format of their written documents provide you with clues about who they are and what their values and priorities may be. Active listening and reading are also part of being a successful communicator.

Communication Influences How You Learn

When you were an infant, you learned to talk over a period of many months. When you got older, you didn’t learn to ride a bike, drive a car, or even text a message on your cell phone in one brief moment. You need to begin the process of improving your speaking and writing with the frame of mind that it will require effort, persistence, and self-correction.

You learn to speak in public by first having conversations, then by answering questions and expressing your opinions in class, and finally by preparing and delivering a “stand-up” speech. Similarly, you learn to write by first learning to read, then by writing and learning to think critically. Your speaking and writing are reflections of your thoughts, experience, and education. Part of that combination is your level of experience listening to other speakers, reading documents and styles of writing, and studying formats similar to what you aim to produce.

As you study business communication, you may receive suggestions for improvement and clarification from speakers and writers more experienced than yourself. Take their suggestions as challenges to improve; don’t give up when your first speech or first draft does not communicate the message you intend. Stick with it until you get it right. Your success in communicating is a skill that applies to almost every field of work, and it makes a difference in your relationships with others.

Remember, luck is simply a combination of preparation and timing. You want to be prepared to communicate well when given the opportunity. Each time you do a good job, your success will bring more success.

Communication Represents You and Your Employer

You want to make a good first impression on your friends and family, instructors, and employer. They all want you to convey a positive image, as it reflects on them. In your career, you will represent your business or company in spoken and written form. Your professionalism and attention to detail will reflect positively on you and set you up for success.

In both oral and written situations, you will benefit from having the ability to communicate clearly. These are skills you will use for the rest of your life. Positive improvements in these skills will have a positive impact on your relationships, your prospects for employment, and your ability to make a difference in the world.

Communication Skills Are Desired by Business and Industry

Oral and written communication proficiencies are consistently ranked in the top ten desirable skills by employer surveys year after year. In fact, high-powered business executives sometimes hire consultants to coach them in sharpening their communication skills. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers  (2009),  the following are the top five personal qualities or skills potential employers seek:

• Communication skills (verbal and written)
• Strong work ethic
• Teamwork skills (works well with others, group communication)
• Analytical skills

Knowing this, you can see that one way for you to be successful and increase your promotion potential is to increase your abilities to speak and write effectively.

In September 2004, the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges published a study on 120 human resource directors titled Writing: A Ticket to Work…Or a Ticket Out, A Survey of Business Leaders . The study found that “writing is both a ‘marker’ of high-skill, high-wage, professional work and a ‘gatekeeper’ with clear equity implications,” said Bob Kerrey, president of New School University in New York and chair of the commission. “People unable to express themselves clearly in writing limit their opportunities for professional, salaried employment” ( The College Board, 2004). 

On the other end of the spectrum, it is estimated that over forty million Americans are illiterate, or unable to functionally read or write. If you are reading this book, you may not be part of an at-risk group in need of basic skill development, but you still may need additional training and practice as you raise your skill level.

An individual with excellent communication skills is an asset to every organization. No matter what career you plan to pursue, learning to express yourself professionally in speech and in writing will help you get there.

Key Takeaway

Communication forms a part of your self-concept, and it helps you understand yourself and others, solve problems and learn new things, and build your career.

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Thursday, january 13, 2011, business communication as problem solving, 2 comments:.

use less, you copy from LESIKAR book . its a crime

Copy from Lesikar business communication book