The Essence Of Effective Communication For Managers

In today’s world, one of the biggest problems that supervisors face is a lack of effective communication with their teammates. The main reason behind this problem is that most supervisors and managers neglect the necessity to evaluate or even think about their communication abilities. Most of them ignore or don’t realize the fact that the hospitality industry is heavily based on communication skills. One small error in passing the message can cause chaos and can turn into a problem that then the supervisor has to invest their time to solve. So, it is rightly said, “Prevention is better than cure”. It is advised that managers should periodically evaluate and enhance their communication skills so that the employees feel free to approach the supervisor whenever in need.

I figure out new ways to improve my communication skills. Initially, I started to develop a habit of learning new languages and ended up learning languages such as English, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, and Tamil, and still in the process of learning Arabic and Punjabi. My interest in languages helped me serve my guests in various languages. I would like to share an incident from my experience with the Taj group of hotels back in India. I was undertaking my training for room division management and was often available at the front desk. There was a guest complaint from one south Indian guest. The situation was that the guest could not speak English and my supervisor had zero knowledge of the language that the guest spoke. Due to this, the supervisor was finding it difficult to understand what the guest was trying to say. I decided to handle this complaint since I was familiar with the language that the guest spoke. I spoke to the guest and he was happy to find someone who could help him out in his language. We managed to solve the issue that the guest was facing. This incident opened my supervisor’s eyes and he realized that the ability to communicate in various languages is very necessary for our industry to take quick and prompt action. Learning languages alone does not help in effective communication. The way the message is put across also plays an important role. A conversation consists of an introduction that gives short information about the topic, the main body, and a conclusion that summarizes the entire message. This is similar across all modes of communication, let it be verbal or written. By following this, the message can be effectively sent across to the audience.

The supervisors should focus on their communication skills such as writing, speaking, listening, and body language. These skills can make or break their efforts to become successful in their respective job roles. There can be several communication challenges. They can be classified into three major categories, namely; communication myths, communication barriers, personal biases, and communication. In my view, the most common barriers in communication are distractions at the workplace, differences in the background of the sender and the receiver, closed-mindedness, and differences in assumptions between the receiver and sender. Distraction at the workplace is one of the most common among the rest of the challenges. For example, the guest placed an order for steak that is rare. While this information is sent to the chef in the kitchen, there is a good chance that he might cook a steak to medium-rare if he got distracted by the chaos in the kitchen.

If we could conclude, that managers and supervisors should periodically evaluate their communication skills. Furthermore, they should think twice about what they need to convey and how they need to present it. Without good communication skills, there is a huge chance that the sent message is prone to be interpreted in the wrong sense.

References

1. Supervision in the Hospitality Industry by Jack D. Niemeier Sixth Edition. Chapter 11: Effective Communication Pg.26 – Pg.41