Failure to Communicate Within a Small Business

When small business owners are asked about the biggest problems they are experiencing within their company, a failure to communicate is rarely mentioned. This key problem area frequently slips under the radar for several reasons such as the following:

• Lack of awareness
• Perceived lack of importance
• Absence of key communication skills
• Lack of understanding
• Too many other higher priorities

When any of the above reasons are present within companies, the problems tend to remain unresolved and typically morph into even more complicated difficulties. This undesirable scenario is present in a surprising number of small businesses everywhere. The good news is that there are three practical business strategies which will usually help reduce the worst of the communication problems. The bad news is that such solutions can be meaningless if key people such as small business owners do not realize that they have a problem in the first place.

To get to a critical point of acknowledging that a communication difficulty exists will require some candid evaluation and introspection. Even when business owners and managers are willing to engage in this sort of process, a common impediment is simply a lack of time. In such cases, the only remaining practical strategy is for companies to select a business communication expert to help them get past these obstacles.

So if we can tentatively assume that the impacted small business owner has done whatever it realistically takes to get to the point of identifying what the problem is, the next step is to solve the problem. A secondary goal will be to ensure that the difficulty is prevented from appearing in a recurring role within the company.

Three of the most promising strategies for addressing a failure to communicate within a small business are the following:

• Business Negotiating
• Business Training
• Business Writing

For purposes of this discussion, the focus will be on negotiating because it is often the most difficult skill to add. If small businesses can implement a process to address how to improve negotiating, it should be a more reasonable step to accomplish the other two strategies. The use of effective business training can play an instrumental role in alleviating a failure to negotiate. However, the primary concern with this approach is that a small business owner must effectively give up at least a perceived sense of control for an area that many managers are unwilling to relinquish any control whatsoever. This will not be an easy task to accomplish, so some mistakes are likely to be made along the way.