Why Communication is So Important

Source: Insight, the Magazine of the Illinois CPA Society

Plante & Moran, a large CPA firm in Southfield, Michigan, has designated communication as a core competency, and believes it must be an essential element of firm culture.

One of the major flaws in communicating is to fail to adapt your communication to the people you are addressing. People too often base their communications on their own need to express themselves rather than the audience’s need to know. So if you are communicating to people who are highly analytical, you may include a great deal of data, whereas, if you are communicating to people with a proclivity for action, you must get their attention quickly. It is important to determine how the information you supply will affect the listener. What you need to convey is clarity, not quantity.

You can evaluate the effectiveness of your communications. At the conclusion of a meeting you can ask others to give you their observations on how people reacted to what you said.

In today’s high-tech environment, people are easily distracted by devices such as cell phones and pagers. So you must deliver your message quickly or risk not delivering it at all.

Here are some ideas to improve communications:

• Staff should be able to express themselves with impunity. Staff should also feel their communications are confidential.
• For staff members who may have to give public presentations, create a series of scripts—they will promote good communications skills.
• Leadership training programs should include communications skills.
• Reinforce successful communications events with public praise.
• On the other hand, poor communications should be criticized in private.

From Insight, the Magazine of the Illinois CPA Society, September 2005. For the complete article, click on the following link: http://www.insight-mag.com/insight/05/09/col-3-pt-1-HireLearning.asp.