Internal communications can make or break the success of a company. Highly effective communications motivate your employees and ensure that they know what is expected of them. When communication is lacking, you wind up with employees who don’t understand the expectations, and this can lead to apathy and conflicts within the organization.

Without explaining your expectations clearly and concisely, an employee can become disillusioned and unmotivated quickly. Things such as clearly defined job descriptions and goals can serve to motivate employees in remarkable ways. This, coupled with an open-door policy whereby you freely answer questions and make yourself accessible, can lead to improved productivity and greater successes than you ever envisioned for your employees or the company.

Effective communication is a learned skill. To ensure that your communication efforts are effective, you have to consider the subjective elements involved. Not all communication is verbal: Your tone, body language, and timing are critical factors also, and if your stress level is high, you may come across as abrasive when you don’t mean to. If you keep this in mind when communicating with your employees, they won’t just hear you – they will listen.

These open lines of communications between business leaders and their employees not only help to minimize conflicts within the work environment but has a lasting and profound impact on promoting a positive and nurturing company culture. In this scenario, an employee can go straight to his boss and openly discuss the issues without fear of being turned away or reprisals. In turn, the issue can be resolved swiftly before it becomes a much bigger problem.

Efficient communications within and between teams are just as critical. Open dialogue in the workplace will make teams function more efficiently, which in turn fosters an environment that thrives on new ideas. Employees become more open to brainstorming, strategizing, and innovating current practices. Open dialogue ensures that the whole team works in unison to stay on target in reaching stated business goals and objectives.

Even more important than leadership to employee or team communication is leadership’s communication with each other. If leadership isn’t communicating well, then you can wind up with different goals and no clear path for the company to follow. A company without a clear path will send mixed messages to their clients and struggle to grow.

If you are struggling with effective communications internally, you should try these basic steps:

Make sure you are an active listener
Keep your message clear and concise as to avoid any misinterpretation
Control your emotions and pay attention to your own body language

As a business leader, these are just a few things you can do to make sure that the lines of communication in your business remain open and effective.