One of the foundations of a healthy workplace is good communication. Leaders with poor communication skills subsequently do not help maintain a harmonious work environment, rather, they often have the opposite effect. Review the issues such leaders can cause to help your office or other workplace avoid them.
Increased Tension & Resentment
When team members do not feel like they can approach their managers about various work issues, tension and resentment can build. Employees can also feel like their supervisors are cold and do not care about helping their teams do the best job possible. As resentment and tension increase, the entire office can become an unhealthy place to work. Team members might start dreading going to work every day, as they don’t want to experience the negativity energy that affects their moods. Their families can feel the effects as well, because employees come home irritated and short-tempered.
Decreased Productivity
Unanswered questions, ignored emails, and a general lack of communication between a team and a supervisor often affects the workplace’s productivity level. If employees are unclear about their assignments or projects, their work can be incomplete or not as thorough as it could be. Team members might also put projects on hold until they get responses, then rush to finish and deliver sloppy results. A decrease in productivity eventually affects the business’s bottom line, because the product(s) or services take a hit. This can result in questions from the busines’s owners, clients, affiliates, and partners that can be challenging for the manager to answer without placing blame on innocent parties.
High Turnover Rates
As team member frustration increases over leaders with poor communication skills, they can reach their limits and quit. Other employees may follow suit, because they are also frustrated and do not want to work in an increasingly-toxic environment without their favorite coworkers. High turnover rates are never a good thing, since they indicate ongoing problems in the workplace. Potential hirees typically have questions about why the company struggles to keep positions filled, which can result in uncomfortable interviews. Such hirees might decide to look elsewhere, or stay with the job a few days, then quit. Either way, it does nothing for the company. What it does do is affect productivity, because people are constantly getting trained and quitting. This cycle can affect revenue streams as a result.
Company Reputation Issues
Tense work environments, productivity and revenue issues, and high turnover rates add up to one thing: a bad reputation. The best companies with communicative leaders enjoy excellent reputations, because they are increasingly known as wonderful places to work with high productivity rates. Conversely, a poor reputation can take years to undo, in part because it dissuades people from applying. It can also make partners, affiliates, and clients disinterested in continuing to work with the company.
Wrapping Up
Leaders with poor communication skills can take numerous steps to fix the issues within their businesses. Registering for seminars about healthy communication, doing research about the practices of effective leaders, and encouraging employees to approach with questions and concerns are all fantastic starts. By taking such initiatives, business leaders with communication issues show that they want to do better and care about maintaining a healthy work environment. Employees will likely appreciate this and be interested in helping foster good communication.
Improving communication skills is a process, but one that helps you on professional and personal levels for the rest of your life. If you think you could benefit from communication help from experienced professionals, contact People Leaders Academy today to get started.
