by Sam E. Jones

Created on: September 14, 2010

During my time working in corporate America making my living in management, I found out that most managers don’t really want to communicate all that much with employees, but wish that other managers in the company would do so. And those managers that did want to communicate with employees wanted to do so mostly in informal ways, where it didn’t have to be about work, which meant that they wanted buddy’s to talk to because they were bored with talking with other managers.

Seeing this caused me to wonder if management in general really ever does want to improve communications with employees, and if so why; or conversely, if not, why not?

From my perspective, most manager’s simply want to get the job done; it’s as simple as that. They want to go home at a reasonable time every day and see their family’s and watch some television. They want to do the things they enjoy doing on the weekends and to take a vacation or two every year. And, at work, they want things to hum along nicely so they don’t have to deal with issues or problems; and for my money, this is where most managers see an opportunity for making their own lives better by having some open channels between themselves and those that work for them; which in real-world terms generally came to mean, they (and I) hated to be blind-sided by some out of the blue problem that made them look bad in front of the employees or worse, in front of upper management. Each and every time it would happen, I’d hear some manger say he or she wished someone had of just talked to them so that they’d of known that something bad was brewing. To me, this is really the only time management wants to hear from employees.

And then, before I was a manger, I worked for managers, and for me personally, the only time I wanted to hear from management was if they were going to tell me I was getting a raise or a promotion; any other time usually meant they wanted something done better, or a different way, or to not be done at all any more; or in short, bad stuff.

So, in my opinion, most of the talk about improving communications comes down to just a few areas; areas that can only be improved upon if both sides come to see that wanting communication to improve so that it improves your quality of life at work is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to overlook the fact that if it’s the only time you communicate with someone, it’s likely to not happen as you want it to.

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