More often than not I tell leaders they need to communicate more. Employee surveys often confirm this need. However, more isn’t always better and I must argue for quality here also. Just because it is easy doesn’t mean it is effective.

Technology makes sending messages easy but it makes communication difficult. Communication defined as when a message is sent between two people and there is an exchange of ideas or something is comprehended.

There is an organization my family interacts with on a regular basis(Say weekdays from 9-3) and they love to send phone messages to the house. Several times a week we get these, often lengthy, often irrelevant, messages on our answering machine. Several times a week we erase them before we listen to them. They have lost credibility with us and as a result no communication is happening. In fact, annoyance is happening on our part. Yet, I am sure the sender is self-satisfied that communication has taken place.

Don’t make this mistake. Use as many methods as possible to communicate and do not overuse any one of them. Easy isn’t always better it may simply be easy – and ineffective. Leaders need to be effective which means maybe not using the easy way.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 1:21 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.