We can probably all agree that communication is a fundamental aspect of organizational practice and performance. At the same time, it is important not to view this simply as an act of message-passing from those who are formally in charge, and supposedly “in the know”, to other participants.
However well-crafted, information-rich, and skilfully presented such messages might be, these communicate nothing. Instead, they serve as an invitation for those on the receiving end to communicate amongst themselves. And this is something that they do informally, in small-group and one-to-one interactions; seeking to make sense of what they’ve heard and deciding how, if at all, they’re going to respond. Communication takes place only in real-world; U ‘n I interactions - with all of the informality, messiness and ‘hidden agendas’, etc. that these entail. And this applies equally well, of course, to those in formal management roles as it does to everyone else.
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