What is your style of communication?

Hello Everyone! It had been a raining weekend here in Singapore! Hope you didn’t get drench!


Today, I will be blogging on the topic of communication. I know it is an old topic as some of our classmates had blogged about it. However, this isn’t about the importance of having early and constant communication, instead it is the style of communicate; how one convey a message across; how one talk to a client and colleagues.

I personally feel that, the style you use to communicate comes from observing and learning from the role models in the company. It can be the directors, managers or colleagues that you admire.
At work, as an intern, I have seen how my colleagues communicate to me. In terms of instructing or guiding me to do a task or telling me I did something wrongly.

During my first week in office, I had a colleague that sent me a few emails telling me the things I did wrong in media monitoring. She listed the things I did not do properly and things I missed out. The tone of her email wasn’t nice, it made me felt stupid.

On a separate email, another colleague spotted a mistake I made for media monitoring too, her email was a nice. It went something like, “take note of the spelling of tabla! as it will be auto correct to table! ”Her communication to me was informal but it made me felt better plus understood where I went wrong.

In the first place, none of the colleagues taught me to do media monitoring, I had to ask another fellow intern to help me.

A learning point is, in the future, if there’s an intern in your company, it is always good to give clear instructions first before asking him/she to do it on their own; verbal instruction is always better than emails.

I came across this article on yahoo - 18 Common Work E-mail Mistakes http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/18-Common-Work-Email-usnews-1004018741.html

These are good to remember points when sending out an email!

Some of the interesting points are below,

1. Sending before you mean to. Enter the recipient's e-mail address only when your e-mail is ready to be sent. This helps reduce the risk of an embarrassing misfire, such as sending an important e-mail to the wrong person or e-mailing a half-written note.

2. Expecting an instant response. Don't send an e-mail and show up at the recipient's desk 30 seconds later asking if they've received it. They did, and they'll answer at their convenience. That's the point of e-mail.

3. Failing to include basic greetings. Simple pleasantries do the trick. Say "hi" at the start of the message and "thanks" at the end. Be sure to use the recipient's name. Be polite yet brief with your courtesy.

4. E-mailing when you're angry. Don't do it. Ever. Recall buttons are far from a perfect science, and sending a business e-mail tainted by emotion is often a catastrophic mistake. It sounds cliche, but sleep on it. Save the message as a draft and see if you still want to send it the next morning.

Jessie Chee
14525157
Curtin Singapore