Communication – A journey from fear to strength!

Part A – Communication and its impact

Communication had always been the last in my list and I will do my best to avoid; something that had caused a lot of stress and anxiety and always made me think thousands of times before I wrote a single email. Now there is a time and something which is always on my mind and I want to do as often as necessary and I always want to make sure I do it effectively.

In this article, I will be writing about the role of effective communication and some side-effects of poor communication or when not communicating. In the part B of this article, I will be writing about some key things to consider while communicating. Once you have read this article, I would love to get your feedback and would welcome any tips that might help me and any other reader.

Before I go further with this article, I am trying to think about the root causes of not being able to communicate. The first thing which comes to my mind is the language, but is it the only cause? I don’t think so. To me, it is one of the many key factors and things are made worst by personality, perception, environmental factors, so on and so forth.

Some of the aspects depend on you as an individual and you can work hard to learn and improve but you still can be impacted by various other factors which can either help with your learning or have an extremely negative impact. I am writing this sentence for a reason; and the reason is that almost all of us have gone through the same journey in one way or another; it is very important that we not only think about ourselves but others as well. Nobody is perfect and we are one team and we should give others room to improve and always appreciate their effort and help and encourage them to get better. It’s your team.

I could possibly write few more pages highlighting the impact of lack of communication and it is very important to understand that it is not just one aspect e.g. like the pain in one part of the body can impact your ability on the whole. Similarly, lack of communication causes various problems which can easily be avoided with effective communication. The other key part of effective communication is time and understanding its importance. If we don’t communicate on time that means others will have no understanding or knowledge about the given task, bug, or feature. This could result in the team informing other stakeholders who then might have to arrange training for the team. As you can see, the result of poor communication such as not sending an email can delay the team’s process, causing a lot of stress and anxiety within the working environment.

Therefore, it is very important to understand that we are not individuals; we work as a team to achieve one common objective. Every member of the team is important and has to play its role to achieve common objective. That brings the idea of team mindset; where you consider yourselves as part of the team and try your best to help yourselves by helping others.

Effective communication solves many problems from informing others for the state of your project to avoiding future risks to the project. This one aspect has the potential to decide the fate of your project and fate of your team and fate of you as an individual. But how can we better at communicating?

To the best of knowledge, there is not shortcut. One thing which I learnt during my MSc at Oxford University that if you are not good at something do it often.

I don’t think we should try to become perfect. We just need to be better than what we were previously. Therefore, take the fear out and do it as often as you think necessary and if something is important then start with written communication then follow it with a phone call to make sure it is communicated properly. Also, explain your situation to your colleagues and get help where necessary and overcome your fears!

It is very important that along with looking at our strengths; we also look at our weaknesses and work on them. This mindset has not only made my whole experience stress free but enjoyable at the same time.

In the part B, I will be writing about some things that I consider are important and should be considered while communicating. Please feel free to give your valuable feedback and I always welcome constructive criticism.

Thank you!