Booher BanterBusiness Communication Consultant

A bad business environment demands good communication skills. It just stands to reason. When times are tough and businesses stagger between budget cuts and product launches, there’s little margin for misunderstandings and communication blunders. 

The ability to gather information, analyze it, summarize it, and present it in writing and orally so that it’s easily digestible as a basis for decision has always been a core competency of leadership. Not only do you have to write and speak well, you have to think clearly, listen perceptively, and express yourself persuasively. 

It’s gratifying to have other organizations verify what we ourselves routinely discover in our own polling and consulting work. 

The American Management Association (AMA) surveyed more than 2,000 senior managers in 2010 as part of their Critical Skills Survey. Respondents to their survey predicted that communication skills would be the top employee development priority for the immediate future. 

Now, more than ever, you have to:

• Use a variety of media and formats to get your message out
• Speak to globally diverse audiences
• Establish credibility and expertise in a larger context (strategy, business results, overall accountability for your results)

They also examined the importance of communication skills to performance reviews and hiring. Once again, hiring managers told them that their organizations place more emphasis on assessing a candidate’s communication skills than any other competency. 

While executives consider communication critical to business success, these same skills represent the biggest gap in the typical employee’s skill set.

Why? 

Most of us have been talking since age two. And many people think if they can talk, they can communicate. Unfortunately, practice does not make perfect—practicing poor habits simply creates miscommunication.

If executives consider communication the most important business skill—as shown by poll after poll—why do you think communication skills still surface as the weakest skill set in the workforce?

(See related article at Chief Learning Officer, January 2011)

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