Communication determines how people think, feel or act, therefore leaders need to consider this before communicating to staff.
A 2011 CIPD Employee Outlook survey found that less than half of respondents felt either “fully” or “fairly well” informed about what was going on in their organisations. Think this doesn’t apply to you and that you do communicate well? Read on and find out.
Listen – The true art of communication is to listen. This means being proactive to find out what people think and not assuming that you already know. People who listen first are more likely to be listened to when they do eventually speak.
Say in one word, not five – People are busier than ever. Fact. They simply do not have time to labour at length over organisational matters. Therefore say what you want to say in one word and not five. Stick to ‘headlines’ and ‘newsworthy’ information and grab their attention.
Say it, and say it again – Information retention is difficult in this fast-paced world, therefore make it easy for people to remember what you want to communicate by saying what you want to say, and then saying it again and again until the message is heard.
Face-to-face – Employees often value face-to-face communication ahead of broadcast or purely written updates, particularly when the stakes, ambiguity, or emotion are high. If you want to be heard clearly, say what you need to say directly and leave space for questions.
Two-way communication – CIPD’s work on employee engagement has long stressed that people need a genuine voice, timely information during change, and confidence in line managers—themes that depend on how organisations listen, explain, and follow through. In practice, two-way communication is how those expectations are met or missed.
You said, we did – Two-way communication is only effective if you act on employee requests. In fact the more you act on feedback, the more feedback people will be willing to give you.
Measure your results – How do you know if you are communicating well? How do you know if new measures are working to improve communication? Employee engagement surveys, focus groups, and tracking use of your intranet and website can all form part of how you judge whether messages are landing and where confusion persists.
Why communication shows up in performance first
People rarely disengage overnight. More often, uncertainty builds when messages are vague, late, or missing, and when leaders talk often but say little that helps colleagues prioritise. Strong communication does not remove hard trade-offs, but it makes the rationale for them understandable—which in turn supports focus, teamwork, and sound judgement when attention and patience are both in short supply.
Intent in listening – Listening is not only silence while someone speaks; it is curiosity with a purpose. Good practice includes short summaries (“What I’m hearing is…”), checks for meaning (“Have I got that right?”), and questions that invite specifics rather than polished soundbites. That discipline builds trust faster than reassurance alone, because people feel their reality has been taken seriously before a decision lands.
Clarity over cleverness – Headline-style messages help busy teams, yet clarity also means naming decisions, dates, and owners—not only themes. Where you can, swap abstract nouns for verbs: what starts, what stops, who does what by when. Ambiguity forces everyone to guess, and guessing creates rework, duplicated effort, and the rumour mill you later have to unwind.
Signal versus noise – Repeating a message only works if you are repeating something worth remembering. Before you broadcast again, audit what is competing for attention: parallel projects, overlapping announcements, and “just in case” emails that bury the priority. A simple communications rhythm—a short weekly snapshot, a monthly deep dive, and a clear place for detail—often beats another all-staff essay.
Making communication work in hybrid teams
Face-to-face remains powerful for trust and nuance, yet many organisations now blend office time with remote work. The aim is not to copy an old cadence blindly, but to design a fair default: which conversations need in-person presence, which are effective async, and how you protect focus time so messages actually get read.
Handoffs between teams – Many breakdowns are not charismatic failures; they are handoff failures. When ownership, deadlines, and interfaces between teams are left implicit, even conscientious people drop balls. Communication improvement often starts with naming interfaces: shared definitions, one shared record of what was agreed, and a cadence where representatives from each team hear the same briefing—then translate it locally without inventing different versions.
Channel choice – Urgent operational fixes, sensitive feedback, and complex judgement calls usually deserve direct conversation (often live). Documentation, reference data, and decisions people must revisit belong somewhere searchable. If the “source of truth” keeps moving between chat, slides, and email, people will work from outdated versions—and you will hear “nobody told me” even when you sent twelve messages.
Inclusion in the room – Hybrid setups can accidentally favour the loudest in-person voices. Facilitation habits help: rotate who speaks first, use structured rounds, capture actions visibly, and offer a written follow-up so the conversation does not disappear when the laptop lid closes.
From feedback to follow-through
Two-way communication is not only a channel; it is a contract. When colleagues raise real issues—safety concerns, customer friction, process blockers—they are handing you early warning. What happens next determines whether the next person bothers to speak up.
Visible commitments – Where you can, share what you are doing, what you are not doing (and why), and realistic time horizons. People accept “not now” far more calmly when the boundary is honest and the alternative is credible. Small, reliable follow-through beats occasional grand promises.
Managers as translators – Senior intent rarely lands cleanly on the front line without translation. Team leaders who can connect strategy to the next two weeks of work—and surface genuine blockers upwards—are communication multipliers. Investing in those skills is one of the fastest ways to reduce confusion without adding more corporate broadcast volume.
Measuring what matters (beyond click counts)
Surveys, focus groups, and intranet analytics can all help, yet the best measurement mixes numbers with narrative. Look for trends: recurring questions in town halls, repeat themes in exit interviews, sudden spikes in rework, or teams stuck waiting for decisions. Those signals often reveal a communication gap before it shows up as a formal engagement score.
Qualitative discipline – Short, regular listening exercises—structured interviews with a sample of frontline colleagues, or a rotating “shadow” day for leaders—surface what polished dashboards miss. The goal is not theatre; it is evidence you can act on.
When the message is difficult
Restructuring, programme failure, tightened budgets, and customer incidents all test organisations. In those moments, calm specificity matters: what you know, what you are still establishing, what support exists, and how people can ask questions safely. Avoiding the conversation rarely protects people; it usually prolongs anxiety and damages credibility.
Tone and respect – Even firm messages can be respectful. Lead with the impact on people, separate facts from interpretation, and separate roles from personalities. Give line managers enough time and language to hold local conversations well—otherwise leaders may “communicate” while teams still feel blindsided.
Change and onboarding – New starters and newly formed project teams pay a tax in missing context. A crisp induction narrative—why the work matters, how decisions are made, where to find answers, and who can unblock what—cuts weeks of quiet confusion. During change, leaders often underestimate how long it takes for a revised story to land; plan reinforcement deliberately rather than assuming a single launch event did the job.
Building the habit in your organisation
Communication is a skill set, not a personality trait. Teams improve fastest through practice: rehearsal for tricky conversations, feedback on clarity, and shared standards for meetings and written updates. Immersive, human interaction–led learning—where people try approaches in realistic conditions with facilitator support—often accelerates the shift from good intentions to reliable behaviour.
Take Effect Training are a Learning and Development Consultancy, providing immersive learning experiences on leadership and people skills with a focus on human interaction. They build the leadership and complex human-centred skills that AI cannot replace. For more than a decade they have been creating learning and development experiences for many well-known, successful companies. Clients can choose from ready-to-go courses or bespoke training programmes, delivered by a high-energy team of unconventional trainers with a record of proven results and a fresh, creative twist—supporting teams that need to move from ad hoc messaging to consistent, credible communication under real organisational pressure.
