Most of the times, we do not realize the importance of communication in our day-to-day professional life and is mostly overlooked. It is important that we put across our views and opinions effectively to the people in our organization so that everyone is on the same page towards the goal. A goal-oriented group of individuals in a team or organization can reach success in an easier way than others.

Communication is the medium or the process by which one can convey or express his thoughts, views and feelings. Whatever be the mode of communication, the effectiveness of the communication is very important for the success of an individual or a team.

Ineffective or bad communication is equivalent to not exhibiting your opinions. Hence the key factor for success is communication, especially effective communication. Communication can be of 5 types in nature.

Very popularly described as WOVEN, the five types include written, oral, verbal, electronic and non-verbal communication. But why is effective communication important or rather how does communication help in achieving success?

1. Communication will help strength relationships and will improve bonding among the people in a team or organization. The more you communicate openly and frankly, the listener will tend to build his levels of comfort and confidence in you. Once the confidence level increases among the team members, the goal turns into a common one and thus can be easily achieved.

2. Effective communication will prevent many misunderstandings in general. Assumption is a major adversity as many people tend to think that others know what they are thinking. But when opinions clash, it turns into misunderstandings and conflicts. Such problems can be resolved by taking time to convey across thoughts and feelings in an accurate manner. Thus communicating is important so as to make sure that everyone is in synchronization to avoid misunderstanding and conflicts.

3. It is a must that important decisions and factors are documented for reference in future. This kind of written communication can be held as a proof for future use. Also such kind of documentation helps in keeping the team members in synchronization with the goals and standards that were formulated even before they joined the team.

4. Communication is always not necessarily from the top management. It also needs to be equipped by every member of the team to send their thoughts and views. When there are cases of complaints or misunderstandings, team members need to communicate that to their leaders following the right hierarchy so as to reduce the level of frustration and friction within the team.

5. Decision making in an organization hugely depends on the thoughts and ideas that are communicated from all the employees. Strategies like brainstorming and other kind of decision making tools need thoughts and views of all the involved members as the prime input. Such kind of methods require effective communication processes to make the entire process a success.

6. In a huge team, it is mandatory that all the team members are on the same levels in terms of information knowledge and messages conveyed. In these scenarios, team meetings and discussions will help resolve misunderstandings and communication gaps. So to ensure the success in a team effort, the information needs to be effectively communicated to all the members. Oral communication followed by verbal communication will ensure that the information passed to all the members is same and accurate.

7. Job delegation and responsibility assigning is a frequently encountered act in organizations and teams. But if the job details are not effectively passed on, the work will not be completed satisfactorily and would cause failure of the job. Thus communication plays an important role again in this regard. Communicating the job details accurately is important and necessary so as to get the job done as per requirements.

Thus based on the above factors and discussions, we can conclude that communication is not just a necessary ingredient for success but is also needed for maintaining harmony and a peaceful professional relationship within the organization.