Dealing with General and Specific Communication Issues at Work

Everyone has communication issues from time to time. You may be getting along very well with nearly everyone in your life and suddenly, things might start going wrong. Usually, when you start having issues communicating with one person, you’re likely to start having them with others too. There’s a snowball effect involved. Or else, you may find that you’re having communication issues with just one or two people while your relationships with everyone else are normal.

Evaluating Your Communication Issues

The first thing to do is to evaluate what type of communication issues you are having. For example, are you having communication issues with a certain employee or a certain colleague? Or are you having communication issues with everyone in your office?

Communication Issues with Everyone

If you’re having general communication issues, then it could be that there is something troubling you. Is your business doing badly? Are your sales down? Is product development not going the way that you like? Or are you just having some issues in other areas of your life which are now affecting work?

If you can pinpoint the thing that’s troubling you, then you can do something about it. You can try to resolve the problem in some way. Think about what you could do to make yourself feel calmer. For example, if you were to lower your sales targets, would that help? Have you set the targets too high, considering the state of the market? If you were to quit developing a certain product and focus more on another, would that make you feel calmer? Think about what positive action you can take to improve your state of mind and your communication with others will also improve.

Communication Issues with Specific People

On the other hand, if your communication issues are only with a certain person or group of persons, then you can think about exactly why that person seems to upset you so much. Are they doing anything wrong or unethical at work? Or are they just generally hard to get along with? If everyone else is having the same problem with that person, then you know that it’s not your fault if you are having communication issues too.

But there are times when you have to get along with someone; you have no choice. Maybe they’re too important to the company for you to let them go. Maybe they perform an important function. In that case, try and introduce as much clarity as you can into your communication with them. It also doesn’t hurt to try some calming methods like yoga, deep breathing, meditation etc. By doing these, you are able to brush off the minor irritations and focus on what’s important.