Poor Communication Skills—the Death of an Organization

Isn’t it curious how everyone talks about how important good communication skills are, yet no one talks about how poor communication skills impact an organization’s success? To me, poor communications skills can cause the death of an organization. Have you ever considered how many customers you might have lost due to poor communication skills in your customer service department? Or how many sales you lost because your sales people couldn’t effectively communicate? I’m convinced poor communication skills have a greater bearing on the success or failure of companies than good communication skills do.

Think about it for a minute. Leaders with poor communications skills don’t inspire teams; in fact, they may even cause teams to be dysfunctional. Because their messages aren’t clear, individuals and teams go off in different directions than the leader expected or wanted. Confusion becomes the norm and blame becomes the way people interact with one another. Poor communication skills affect every part of an organization. Sales, marketing, productivity, team dynamics, customer service, planning—pick it, all are impacted by poor communication skills. If you have parts of your company that aren’t working as well as you’d like, examine communication skills. I bet they are the root cause of most, if not all, your problems.