From the course: Project Management Foundations: Communication

Formal communication

From the course: Project Management Foundations: Communication

Formal communication

- In your career, you'll see that if you're wearing a suit and tie, people are more likely to listen to you. Consultants know this, project managers know this, and politicians know this. Formality matters. It's the same way with how we communicate. When we communicate, we can do it either formally or informally. A formal message should communicate professionalism. It's communication dressed up in a suit and tie. So a formal message might be a standard office memo. It also might be a slide presentation. Some message channels are more formal than others. Formal communication comes with its own set of assumptions. When someone reads an office memo, or sits in a presentation, they'll have a different set of assumptions. These assumptions show the listener how to respond. If an executive receives an office memo that the project's over budget, it will have a different effect than if they say it when you bump into them in the elevator. Formal communication is appropriate depending on the intended receiver and the content of the message. So you should really think about formal communication in two parts. There's a people part and a message part. If you're deciding whether to use formal communication, you should think about both of these parts. You'll want to use formal communication if your supervisor asks for an update. But you might just choose to send off an email with the same message if it's someone outside of your organization. So you would change the medium to be formal based on the person who requested the message. In general, messages that are consequential should always be sent using formal communication. Formal communication can be delivered in two ways. There's formal written communication and formal verbal communication. Some communications should always be delivered using formal written communication. If you're negotiating a contract, you'd usually use formal written communication. But check with your manager for the company's standards. Formal verbal communication is usually a presentation or demonstration. This helps show that you care about what you're communicating and that it's important to the organization. Say you wanted to give a status update on a project. If you give an update to the project stakeholders, you'd certainly want to use formal verbal communication. So in this case, you'd probably want to do a slide presentation and answer follow up questions. You'd also want to dress formally to communicate professionalism. If the audience were different, you might want to change the way you communicate. Let's say that you hired a new developer. In that case, you'd be fine with informal communication. You just take them out to lunch, and update them on the project's status. So even though the message was the same, you'd change the delivery based on the person. If the project went over budget, you'd likely want to use formal written communication. Just remember that formal communication signals a higher level of professionalism and seriousness that you'd need for certain messages.

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