Four communication styles in business: from passive to assertive

“60% of business problems are the result of poor communication”.”, Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management and leadership experts of recent times, asserts. This element is the vehicle in which ideas, messages, values, guidelines, feelings, etc. are exchanged. using the right communication styles in each case will help the company and its management to improve understanding of the messages.

Communication is a complex process, where not only people are involved -with their greater or lesser ability to convey or interpret the message - but rather The environment in which the message is produced, the objectives of the message and the media used also play a role..

Communication in business

According to Fernando Martín Martín, author of Business and Institutional Communication, business or corporate communication consists of the “prevention, creation, coordination, management, edition, dissemination and control of any internal or external information management action that takes place on a daily basis in a company or institution both at the level of activities, services or products, which affects a certain public or social group concerned, and which is transmitted through its own and external media, in order to enhance its public image”.

For his part, Carlos Fernández Collado, in ‘Communication in organisations’, conceives business communication as “the set of techniques and activities aimed at facilitating and streamlining the flow of messages between the members of the organisation, between the organisation and its environment; or to influence the opinions, skills and behaviour of the organisation's internal and external audiences, all with the aim of enabling the organisation to achieve its objectives better and faster.

Irene Trelles, PhD in Communication Sciences and author of the book Organisational communication points out that corporate communication “refers not only to messages, but to actions, to the behaviour by which all companies transmit information. about its identity, its mission, its way of doing things and even its customers.

Styles of business communication

Within this complex process of content transmission, the company and the leaders have the possibility of use different communication styles. In this sense, we can speak of:

• Passive style. This type of organisational communication is characterised by the fact that the sender limits himself to letting the facts evolve on their own, without directly and openly conveying his message, which can lead to situations of confusion and uncertainty in the organisation. It is common in people who are insecure, indecisive, fearful of the possible reaction or with a high level of ignorance of the work. This would be, for example, a team leader who is unable to point out to a worker certain errors in his or her work.
• Aggressive style. In contrast to the previous case, in aggressive communication styles there is a clear message; the sender transmits all his or her thoughts and ideas, but does so without taking into account the circumstances and feelings of the receiver, without any empathy, and may offend or irritate the other person. Managers with an aggressive discourse tend to impose their criteria as the only valid one and, therefore, their messages become orders for the employees. Following the previous example, in this case, the superior would not hesitate to reprimand the employee for his or her mistakes, without caring if there are other colleagues in the room or if he or she uses words that may be offensive.  
• Passive-aggressive style. This is a mixture of the previous communication styles, where the sender omits his opinion on a certain fact, although he uses other indirect ways of expressing it, generating toxic situations in the company. In the case of an employee who is making mistakes, his or her boss will not take up the problem directly with the employee, but will bring it to the attention of his or her superiors or take action against the professional.

Assertive style. Within the styles of communication in the company, the latter type is the one used by the genuine leaders, This allows the sender to express his or her ideas clearly, but demonstrating a high degree of empathy in this process, seeking, on the one hand, not to hurt or harm the receiver with his or her words and, on the other, to obtain feedback. Thus, the assertive manager would look for a good moment in which to talk to the employee to comment on the failures detected in his or her performance, delve into the professional's motives that have caused his or her performance to drop and propose solutions to improve the situation.