Communication in business is essential for many reasons.

Your organization’s planning and monitoring of business processes require you to convey the information required to facilitate getting the task completed . This can take many forms and may include modern electronic methods or a simple office circular .

What is important is that your message is comprehended by the recipient . Communication is based in encoding your message in a manner that people can decode it and still know the exact meaning of what you said.

The English language is crammed with ambivalent words that can have many interpretations subject to the circumstances they are used in. It’s a bit like the children’s game called Chinese whispers. A classic example is “Send reinforcements we’re going to advance” which is eventually transformed into “Send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance”.

This is fun in a child’s game a business owner needs more than fun to survive .

So… What is a way that you can check that your message has got through so that you get the exact results you expect ?

It’s quite easy …

Simply ask !

By ascertaining that your instructions is clearly decoded in the way that you needed it to be simply ask the receiver of your email what they understood about your meaning and the reason for sending it .

You can also train your teams or other business associates to reflectively listen to what you have said or written .

eg : You have just sent out an email to all of your team telling them that sales are down and if the sales revenues aren’t increased then your quarterly income targets won’t be met .

Active communication is where the person who gets your communication will reflect back to you what they understood about what you said .

” So, John , what you are telling the team is that we have to increase our sales this month or we will be out of business “

Your options are then to either make the message clearer , If it isn’t received correctly or you can state that Yes that’s correct . The advantage of active listening is that all parties are clear right from the start and this will reduce lost time, later when you have to rectify the mistakes created by bad communication .

There are so many ways that you can have more powerful business communication.