The Art of Effective Communication

What are the implications of what you learned from this exercise for communicating effectively with members of a project team?

Ninety percent of a project manager’s time is spent communicating, whether it is to the team members, vendors, clients, or stakeholder. One of the project manager’s main focuses is to effectively communicate the status of the project with everyone. When working with stakeholders, it is imperative to know how communication can influence the message interpretation.

According to Portny et al. (2008), the key to successful project management is effective communication, sharing the right messages with the right people in a timely manner. Through communication people exchange and share information with one another, and influence one another’s attitude’s behaviors, and understandings (Portny, et al., 2008).

Most communication is done via email. Expressing your tone via email is not easy. There is not an accurate way to convey a message via email.

There are several ways to communicate effectively with a team of people, along with stakeholders, for instance, many people are used to communicating via telephone or voicemail. However, in the days of advanced technology, people find the easiest way to communicate. Communication can be distributed many ways. Anything can be communicated formally, informally, written, and/or orally. It has been found that the most productive form of communication is face to face. In organizations, face to face communications consists of presentations, reports, and conference calls. With large organizations, it is hard to connect with all employees in the same place, so many organizations use web-conference calls to communicate project statuses. When communicating using the telephone, keep the communication clear and thorough, not to leave a lot of room for interpretation (Luckey & Phillips, 2006).

Even though web-conference call is the best way to communicate with the entire team if everyone cannot meet, I believe that face to face is the most appropriate way to communicate. With face to face interaction, no one can misinterpret what is been said during the meetings. All parties included will have a clear understanding of what is being expected.

References:

Luckey, T., & Phillips, J. (2006). Software Project Management for Dummies. Hoboken: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008). Project Management: Planning, scheduling and controlling projects. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.