How to Avoid Miscommunication at Work


Intro


Miscommunication is a common issue within the workplace as people communicate thoughts, feelings, and issues differently. HRMatrix is here to provide you with quality information in order to guide you towards success within the workplace by achieving healthy forms of communication, but before doing so we must confront the simple mistakes we make day today at work that supplies the issue of overall miscommunication. There are many reasons why miscommunication happens and in order to circumvent these issues you must be alert and you must be willing to actually listen to your employees and colleagues in order to get a clear picture of the subject that is being discussed. 


Not buy into gossip


While this may sound quite silly, office gossip is actually profusely integrated within workplace communication because that’s typically a facet of basic socialization. People hear one thing and play the telephone game to transfer information to the next person as it is exciting to participate in petty gossip. As management, it is your responsibility to circumvent gossip by either confronting the entire office/workplace or by confronting those who bring gossip into the office separately in a more private dynamic. Gossip can either target major subjects and sometimes it can just be petty information about one another but the fact of the matter is that gossip is unhealthy as releases information about employees and colleagues that were not intended to be publicly discussed. Often people end up making fun of each other or expressing lies about their fellow coworkers. Not only is gossiping damaging it also leads to severe miscommunication as some of the information that spreads around the office is not true. 


Not understanding body language 


Body language is one of the most important facets of communication and many people rely on it to express what they think and feel as opposed to using their words while that might not always be the most successful way of communicating it certainly does take part of general socialization. So when you’re communicating with someone and you overlook their body language you may not be able to understand where they are exactly coming from. Let’s say an employee is an introvert and in order to maintain their job, they claim that they are completely OK with being in an environment that forces them to communicate more than necessary. While they may be verbally expressing a positive response towards their workplace environment, if you look at their displayed 



How to Resolve Miscommunication


There are three simple steps you should plug into your communicative methods to help improve matters regarding miscommunication. Listen, repeat, and discuss. These three steps will definitely help you navigate through miscommunication in the workplace.