Communication is key to any successful business. Communication allows companies to build and maintain relationships with their customers, suppliers, and stakeholders while ensuring everyone is informed about goals, expectations, and outcomes.
The business environment is dynamic. The importance of various forms of business communication in achieving organizational objectives is well-known.
We will examine the four types, upward, downwards, lateral, and external, of business communication today and give examples. Before reading on, make sure you have a basic understanding of business communication.
Upward Communication
Information is transferred from employees at lower levels to employees at higher levels. This involves giving feedback, ideas, and suggestions to the management. Communication is essential to ensure that management is aware of the employee’s concerns, needs, and ideas.
Imagine that you are a customer service representative at a company and receive a large number of complaints from customers about a certain product.
You send an email to your manager outlining the problem and suggesting a solution that could improve customer satisfaction. This email is a good example of upward communication.
Downward Communication
Communication downward is the communication of information between employees at different levels. It involves the communication of company policies, goals, and objectives, as well as performance expectations.
Communication is vital to ensure that employees understand their roles and responsibilities, and work towards the organization’s goals.
Imagine you are a manager at a company and need to tell your team of a new policy affecting their work. You arrange a meeting to present the policy in detail, including its impact and the way it will affect their work. This is an example of downward communication.
Lateral Communication
The flow of information is lateral communication between employees on the same level within an organization. This involves the sharing of information, opinions, and ideas to achieve a shared goal. Communication of this type is essential as it encourages collaboration, teamwork, and innovation.
Imagine that you are part of a team working on a project in your company. You need to coordinate closely with your colleagues in order to complete the project on time. You create a chat group and share project updates, reports on progress, and feedback. This group chat shows lateral communication.
External Communication
External communication is the exchange of information between a company and its external stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, and stakeholders. Public communication involves promoting the company’s values, products, and services. It is vital to the brand, reputation, and loyalty of the company that this type of communication takes place.
Take an example
Imagine you are a marketing manager in a company and you have to market a new product. You create a campaign on social media to increase awareness of the product. It includes eye-catching graphics and slogans as well as interactive content. This social media campaign shows an example of external communications.
Parting thoughts
Communication from the top, down, sideways, and outside is crucial to ensure that everyone within the organization is working together towards the same goal.
