The Art of Communication: Understanding the Professional Communication Pendulum
Walter L. Simmons
National Workforce Development Expert, Professional Motivator, Economic Equity Leader, and Innovator serving as a Local Workforce Development Board Director, Nonprofit Executive & Licensed Consultant
Young professionals eager to exceed and excel commonly look for mentors, articles and networking groups. From each source they are looking for that golden key to their growth, success and long term prosperity in the workplace. As a young professional, and in recent years a young leader, I was and still am looking for the “golden key”.
What I have learned is that their are many golden keys! It’s hard to determine or solely designate one key being greater than another, but one of greatest keys to success, for ME, has been understanding and perfecting my skill at the Art of Communication.
I say “Art of Communication” because I believe communication is a skill and in professional settings it’s an “Art”. The first lesson is understanding that the Art of Communication operates on a pendulum based on an organization’s structure and staff duties.
I have generalized common organizational structures into a Communication Pendulum with 5 levels:
Level 1 - Operations: Front line staff performing the day to day operations of an organization.
Level 2 - Implementation: Front line managers implementing the vision of the organization through front line operations.
Level 3 - Middle Management: Leadership level staff assisting in the development of organizational goals and deciphering those goals into operational strategies.
Level 4 - Senior Leadership: Leaders who possess the ability and skills to be visionaries while being able to understand that every vision isn’t practical and shouldn’t be converted into a goal.
Level 5 - Executive Leadership: Staff whose number 1 goal is to ensure the organization is on a path of long term sustainability, increasingly productive and consistently ahead of its competitors. This individual, or individuals, live in the “what if...” world, constantly looking for the organizations next opportunity.
Level 1 should always be a primary focus to leaders because it represents the most important individuals in any organization, front line staff. This article isn’t about Stakeholder Importance, but understanding and knowing Stakeholder Importance is one of the Golden Keys. Those who don’t know this will fail!
Back to the Art of Communication. Understanding the Communication Pendulum is a key to understanding the Art of Communication. Each level has to be communicated with differently and the same at the same time. Each level also communicates with each other. To Art of Communication novices this probably seems confusing, but with further analysis it will be become simplistic.
The next article will provide my take on the role of each level within the pendulum and how they communicate with each other.
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6 年Apart from being knowledgeable of the levels which exist within an organisation regarding "tiers of communication" , it is also key to understand that each level operates with it's own unique "communication culture" . Those able to gracefully navigate within and between the levels are indeed on a progressive path.
onderzoeker
6 年Thanks you
Wastewater / Pretreatment Operations
6 年Nice dissection of the chain of communication. It’s so important that all of the links work together!
Senior Terminal Leader at Katoen Natie | Rep. Director | Plant & Regional Operations | Sustainable Development | Change Management | Operations Excellence | Lean Management | Organization & Talent Development | P&L
6 年Great article. Communication is definitely an Art. It is situational when communicating with different level of stakeholders.?We often see the level 5 and 4 using top down communication approach, lack transparency and fail to communicate the Purpose. It is true to say that not every vision are practical enough to be converted into goals yet such goals are formulated. Perhaps the issue lies with poor? stakeholders engagement upfront. The level 1 and 2 are often impacted the most without knowing what's going on within the organization while the middle level are sandwiched in between.? Look forward to the next article.?