Guideline: How to establish a healthy communication
climate
Communication Climate
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Communication Climate
is the atmosphere of a team or an organization. More specifically, climate is the atmosphere of
supportiveness or defensiveness that people feel within an organization.
According
to communication scholar, W. Charles Redding the communication climate in any
organization is composed of five components. You can create a positive
organizational and communication climate through:
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Supportiveness:
To build a supportive communication climate you need to send messages that
acknowledge effort, creativity, and teamwork. A supportive communication
climate allows for a better exchange of information and a more positive work
environment.
-
Participative Decision Making:
To create a positive communication climate you need to engage people in the
decision making process. You can do this by having employees participate in
identifying and solving problems that affect them and their working
conditions. Participative decision-making means that you assist your
employees in setting standards and goals for the work they do.
-
Trust:
Before there can be effective employee communication, there must be a
climate of trust (the feeling that another’s motives are what he or she says
they are). An employee trusts in superiors when they have confidence in the
superior’s intentions and motives, when the superior has proven to keep his
or her word, when they are sincere not only in their dealings with
themselves but with other people, and when the employees are not afraid that
they will be met with retaliation for supplying negative information.
. See
Building a Climate of Trust ;
Communicating Credibility;
Behaviors that Endanger Trust;
Factors that may block the
flow of information
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Openness:
Openness refers to the candid disclosure of information, particularly
negative information and the sharing of feelings and opinions regarding the
organization and its activities. Open communication in terms of expressing
your ideas and feelings through verbal channels in organizations has led to
higher production and better performance within the organization. However,
simply “showing” feelings and not discussing them openly, is viewed as
dysfunctional and can be very counter productive. See
Encouraging
Openness
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Emphasis on High Quality Goals:
Placing importance on high quality and high performance goals has to do with
the content of the communication that you have with your employees. Such an
emphasis is the most important focus of the content of your messages to your
employees. It is not enough to be a nice manager and create a nice
environment in which to communicate and work. You must also communicate a
sense of challenge to your employees.
Another
important elements of the communication climate are
A
basic assumption of this manual is that only organizations that are
projectized and
that empower their
employees create a communication climate such as
to work strategically, collaboratively and cost-effectively, being innovative
and accountable.
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See also: