During a typical day a manager is likely to encourage team members, tell them about a change in their future work or conditions, take part in a formal meeting, have an informal conversation at the water cooler or coffee machine, study a strategy planned by senior management, send e-mails to customers or suppliers, and search the Web.

All of those actions come under the general heading of communication. It’s an essential element in every manager’s work.

Because it’s so important, it is essential for managers to communicate effectively and efficiently. Think about it for a moment: when you send an e-mail does everyone understand it immediately, or do some people get back to you with queries? When you are attending a meeting, do you try hard to understand exactly what a speaker is saying or are you really focusing on the point you are trying to make?

This module begins by looking at communication in general, at the process of transmitting information from a sender to a receiver. We will look at the idea of ‘noise’: the factors that may reduce the effectiveness and accuracy of the transmission. We will also look at how good and bad communication can affect the public image of your organisation, with some recent examples of disastrous communication such as that of BP during the oil spill in theGulf of Mexico.