Communication is the key to success

Effective communication is not only an important requirement in a corporate job but it also plays an important role in your career growth. Here are few tips that will help you!

Written communication:

Written communication in current digital era is mostly in the form of emails and instant messaging. It is imperative to understand the email etiquette to effectively communicate in your job. 

Important items of email etiquette are:

• Have "Hi/Hello/Dear" followed by the name of the target recipient in the beginning of your email.

• Have a valid subject line which gives a hint of what this email is about. If there was already a subject line but the context has changed now, don’t hesitate to update the subject relative to current email’s context.

• Try to avoid the words “Tell You” or “Tell me” and prefer “Let you know” or “Let me know”.

• Respond promptly to an email. If you need to go over the email and analyse a problem/data/situation, acknowledge with target timelines.

• If the email content is huge, try to use bullet points to summarize it or prefer to attach a file with the details.

• Re-read your email from recipient perspective and see if (s)he can understand what you intend to communicate.

• Make sure you don’t have any spelling mistakes. Most of the current day email clients have spell and grammar check options, put them to the best use.

• Have a valid email signature with contact information.

• Avoid using CAPITAL (Uppercase) letters. It means "shouting".

• Ensure you have enabled out of office reply during your vacation.

• If you are including email groups, understand those groups and if your content is relevant to those groups' members?

• Do not show emotions through email. If you are emotional, take some time to relax and then send the email.

• Do not use official email for personal communication. Keep in mind that, all emails may be monitored.

Instant Messaging:

• Few corporate companies use instant messaging applications for interaction with-in the team(s) or with-in the corporate. Here are few things to keep in mind while communicating through them.

• Try to avoid emoticons or special symbols in your chat.

• See the target recipients current status and try not to disturb if the status indicates he/she is busy, unless it is also very urgent for you to chat with him/her.

• Make sure you have updated your status appropriately.

• While you can start with greeting the recipient, try to keep your communication short and simple. Lot of people don’t prefer to read long messages in instant messaging tools.

Verbal Communication:

• We talk to our team members or our bosses or other teams. Everything you communicate verbally including your casual discussion with a colleague to a discussion in a meeting room is important in a way. 

• Understand the purpose of the every communication you have and be prepared. 

• For organised meetings, most of the times an agenda for discussion is shared before hand. If so, go through that and understand your involvement in it and do your ground work before going to the meeting.

• Make sure you are not shouting and at the same time you are not too low.

• Maintain eye contact with the person you are talking to. If you are talking to a group of people, share eye-contact with all of them in turns.