1.1 The Importance of Communication

Communication is key to your success—in relationships, in the workplace, as a citizen of your country, and throughout your lifetime.

Business communication is essentially a problem-solving activity. Communicators 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, you will use this problem-solving process as you apply business communication strategies to the challenges you will encounter in the workplace. Communicating effectively is important for developing and maintaining relationships, for representing you and your employer professionally, and for moving forward in 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 understand the needs of others?

Being unable to communicate might even mean losing a part of yourself because 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 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.

Your communications skills also help you to understand others. Their words, tone of voice, 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 speech. Similarly, you learn to write by first learning to read and 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 more experienced speakers and writers. Take their suggestions as challenges to improve; don’t give up when your first speech or first draft does not communicate the message you intended. 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.

Communication Represents You and Your Employer

You likely want to make a good impression on your friends, family, instructors, and employer. They all want you to convey a positive image because this image 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

Employers seek employees who are proficient in human (or “soft”) skills. Zety (Buffet, 2021) asked employers whether “hard” skills or “soft” skills are more important. Hard skills are skills developed through formal education and training and include technical skills, computer skills and language skills. Buffet defines soft skills as “transferable skills that are mainly related to the way you work with other people. They include social skills, communication skills, emotional skills, and people skills” (para. 6). Most employers (61%) ranked soft skills as more important. Your  ability to communicate with colleagues, supervisors, and customers is a valuable asset.

The Toronto Financial Services Alliance’s report Unlocking the Human Opportunity: Future-proof Skills to Move Financial Services Forward (PwC, 2018) looks at the skills critical for the financial industry sector’s success. The report focuses on financial institutions in Toronto. Leaders in the financial sector identify “the ability to understand and deliver meaningful value to customers” (p. 8) as critical for everyone in the organization. Because information about finance is available online, customers stay with financial institutions because of “the quality of their experience and how they feel after each interaction” (p. 12). Online interactions provide digital self-services while human to human interactions address more complex issues. The report confirms that future talent  must have the ability to understand, communicate with, empathize with, and influence others. Although online activity and automation have increased the number of contacts with financial institutions, human connections through meaningful interaction create a personalized experience and value for the organization.

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.