You’ve probably heard this before: Good communication is the key to successful operations, or something like that! Internal communication processes is just as important as the external. A business will not be able to succeed without both areas of communication working in tandem, but first you have to perfect the internal in order to make external communication efficient.

Looking into the Core of the Problem

Miscommunication between a business and its client can be avoided if the internal communication processes are executed more efficiently. It’s easy to feel swamped in your own little cubicle of responsibilities. Climbing out of the sea of tasks and responsibilities may seem impossible and even frustrating. Whether you realize it or not, this comes across in how you communicate.

It’s not what you say that can be interpreted the wrong way. It’s also how you say it. Stress and frustration is a perfect pairing for a strong personality—and that’s putting it nicely! You might be able to get away with your “strong personality” traits internally, but it may not fly so well when you are dealing with a client. After all, these people are trusting you with their money. So no matter how pressed and stressed you are with responsibilities, there needs to be some poise in how you communicate.

On the flipside, you might be the recipient of these strong personalities. You might feel like you’re being disrespected. You might also want to consider that not everything is about you! You might want to just grow a couple layers of thick skin and not take things so personal!

Just my opinion.

At any rate, it could be said that the driving force of such strong personalities is just the pressure of meeting deadlines.

Getting Stuff Done

Deadlines need to be met. When the responsibility is on you to meet them, things start to get real. The closer those deadlines approach, the more intense a work environment can become and nothing else in the office matters except what you are doing. As true as this may be, as a collective, it’s the wrong way to think.

Looking at the big picture, if your team doesn’t meet their deadline, then it doesn’t mean a hill of beans if you meet yours! Organize your tasks into realistic list of priorities to determine which deadlines are most urgent—as a team. In order to do this, it’s necessary to re-wire the “me first” way of thinking and start concerning yourself with what the entire team is doing to meet the client’s needs. This means getting off your own little island of deadlines and paddle over to your co-workers to discuss which tasks within a project need to be handled first. This is what leaders do!

Don’t Be Afraid to Speak Up

Overcome intimidation quickly. What you don’t do will ultimately come back to haunt you. You’re at work, not school. This is not a popularity contest. If anything, it’s a productivity contest. If one person loses, everybody loses! People who are considered to have strong personalities understand this, which is why they are constantly in your face about deadlines. They are not afraid of confrontation because the consequences of not communicating may result in a loss of revenue. People’s paychecks are on the line.

What if You’re the Strong Personality? 

Wait a minute, what?

It’s so easy to want to forward this article to your work buddy as a little hint that he or she needs to step up their communication game. The hard truth about broken communication is that if you are having a problem with a certain personality, chances are, that person has no clue that you have an issue with them. In this case, you are the only one who is frustrated and…that might come across as somewhat terse… a strong personality.

Just saying.

Think Before You Speak

Whatever deadline you’re trying to meet with your team, whether you are the leader or assisting, it is important to take note of the bigger picture in terms of what needs to be done—whether it’s your own tasks or someone else’s. Ask yourself what’s best for the company? Which priority will have the most impact on the company as a whole? Next, consider the full workload before communicating. By doing this, you will have stumbled upon the art of sincerity. I know, you didn’t mean to do it, but there it is!

Even with the weight of the world on your shoulders, by communicating with sincerity, your work buddies will better understand that you have a task to carry out and need their help to execute it. They will see that you respect what they’re doing but understand that certain tasks—even the urgent ones must be prioritized, meaning they may have to put aside their own in order to help you complete yours, and vice-versa. Sincerity will earn you respect and most importantly an increase in productivity, which is what you wanted in the first place, right?

It All Circles Back to Good Communication

When it comes to delivering a message, it’s only as complicated as you make it. Most failures in the workplace can be attributed to lack of communication. Whether the reasoning is stress or intimidation, both parties need to learn to overcome these things in order to run a successful operation. There needs to be a strong internal communication process. The process doesn’t have to be complicated either. Sure, we have instant messaging, emails, and management software available, but there’s also the old-fashioned way: talking!

Once you organize your internal communications, it will be nothing to correspond with a client. As long as one party understands the other, it’s a beautiful thing and professionally speaking, a beautiful thing such as great communication, if done right results in a beautiful balance in your bank account!

Creating Every Project with a Good Communication

Sometimes it’s just necessary to go back to the basics. We tend to get caught up in our day-to-day processes and scrambling to meet deadlines, that the way we communicate ends up being terse and not thorough at all. The consequences of such abrupt communication can lead to wasting time trying to decode what’s being said and worse, miscommunication between the you and the client.

Miscommunication between a business and client can often be avoided if the internal communication process is executed more effectively. If you’re dealing with a difficult personality, learn how to really deal with such uncomfortable situations once and for all. Read, Conquering Haters, Dealing with Negative People.