Communication is a key to success

Communication is a key to success

Do you wonder why? I’ll give you an insight through real-life example, but as for the wondering here is an advice: “Never stop wondering”. Now let’s go back to the subject of this blog post.

Communication is a very important process, no matter what you do in your life.

Let’s go through the following situation together: You are on the street, holding your bag full of papers about your project (your ideas) waiting for the taxi and you’re in a hurry. After a couple of minutes, the taxi is there and you are on your way to do a great presentation in front of a potential investor. You are ready like never before, have a ton of papers with diagrams, a lot of math, everything you need to do a great presentation. The taxi driver asks you about your destination and which route you prefer to take and BOOM — Murphy starts laughing, the Earth stops moving. But no worries — the sun is still shining. Finally, you tell the driver to take route X which by your calculations it means getting 15 minutes earlier. The taxi driver listens to your commands but he decides on his own to take Y route. After 10 minutes you realize that you are already late on presentation. The taxi driver starts apologizing about his fault, getting the wrong route — but your project failed and you are on the street again. Now let’s back through the situation and see what went wrong. You tell one thing, the taxi driver listened but he didn’t respond according to your commands and that is a classic definition of what communication is not. Okay, we know what communication isn’t, now let’s learn what is:

“Two-way process of reaching mutual understanding, in which participants not only exchange (encode-decode) information, news, ideas and feelings but also create and share meaning. In general, communication is a means of connecting people or places. In business, it is a key function of management — an organization cannot operate without communication between levels, departments and employees.

Yep, read the definition twice or more and we are ready to continue. What would happen if the taxi driver has listened carefully, asked questions and gave suggestions on the most appropriate route based on your needs? He would be asking, you would be answering and the process of mutual understanding would have been reached. You would have been at your destination on time, the taxi driver would be paid for that, your presentation would have been great (hope so, or course). Maybe the investors would have been satisfied (hope so too) and the Earth would have never stopped moving.

As a conclusion: Never go to presentations by taxi. Take a bus. Of course, I am kidding. Always listen carefully, imagine, try to make a visual perception in your head, ask questions, ask even if you have nothing to ask. In that way, through communication, you will show others that you have understood the topic. Also, have a good habit to confirm everything before you close the communication.

Now I have to go. Taaaxiiiii !!!

Share this article

Stay updated with HASELT by signing up for our newsletter

Don't worry, we hate spam too!

Keep reading

2018 highlights

2018 highlights

Among the miles of lines of code written throughout the year, 2018 was a year filled with meeting brilliant new people, attending & organizing productive…

Read more
2018 Summer Internship closure @ HASELT

2018 Summer Internship closure @ HASELT

Transparency, trust and care, curiosity, knowledge and commitment – these are some of the values strongly incorporated in the HASELT’s culture, which greatly…

Read more