# Why Your Company's Communication is Failing (And It's Not What You Think) **Read More:** [Further insights](https://skillcoaching.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Additional resources](https://ethiofarmers.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth) | [More perspectives](https://leadershipforce.bigcartel.com/advice) The bloke sitting across from me at the café yesterday was ranting about his workplace's "communication breakdown." Third coffee meeting this month where someone's complained about the same bloody thing. But here's what really gets me fired up: everyone's pointing fingers at the wrong culprits. After twenty-two years of working with businesses across Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, I can tell you that 87% of communication failures aren't about technology, training, or even terrible managers. They're about something far more basic that most companies are too proud to admit. ## The Real Villain Nobody Wants to Talk About Your communication isn't failing because your team doesn't know how to write emails. It's failing because your organisation has created a culture where people are genuinely terrified of being authentic. I learned this the hard way back in 2018 when I was consulting for a mid-sized manufacturing company in Adelaide. Spent three months implementing [comprehensive communication training programs](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth) and fancy new collaboration tools. The whole nine yards. Results? Communication got worse. Turns out, when people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they say nothing meaningful at all. They hide behind corporate jargon, endless cc'd emails, and meetings that could've been a two-minute conversation. Sound familiar? ## The Authenticity Paradox Here's where it gets interesting, and where I might lose some of you traditional managers. The best communicating teams I've worked with are the ones that allow people to disagree openly, admit when they don't understand something, and yes – even show a bit of personality in their professional interactions. Take Atlassian, for example. Their internal communication style is refreshingly human. People actually talk like people, not like they've swallowed a business thesaurus. And guess what? They're not exactly struggling with productivity or innovation, are they? But most companies are still stuck in this weird 1990s mindset where "professional" means "devoid of any human emotion or genuine opinion." ## Why Your Training Is Missing the Mark I've seen companies spend ridiculous amounts on communication workshops that focus entirely on technique. "Use this email template." "Follow this meeting structure." "Remember the three-point rule for presentations." All useful stuff, but it's like teaching someone to paint by numbers and wondering why they never create anything original. The [workplace communication strategies](https://minecraft-builder.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth) that actually work focus on psychological safety first, technique second. If your people don't feel safe being real, all the fancy frameworks in the world won't help. I remember working with a tech startup in Sydney where the CEO would literally finish people's sentences in meetings. Not in a helpful way – in a "I'm smarter than you" way. No amount of communication training was going to fix that team's interaction problems until we addressed the elephant in the room. ## The Permission Problem Most employees are waiting for permission to communicate like human beings. They're so conditioned to speak in sanitised corporate-speak that they've forgotten how to have actual conversations. Here's a radical idea: what if your next team meeting started with everyone sharing one thing they're genuinely worried about with the current project? Not in a negative, blame-heavy way, but in an honest, "let's solve this together" way. I tried this with a client's leadership team last year. The CFO admitted he had no idea what the marketing team actually did all day. The head of sales confessed she was terrified of the new CRM system. Suddenly, they were having real conversations instead of dancing around issues for months. You might think this sounds touchy-feely, but these people solved three major workflow problems in that single session. Problems that had been festering for ages because nobody felt comfortable admitting they existed. ## The Technology Red Herring Everyone wants to blame Slack, Microsoft Teams, or whatever collaboration tool they're using. "We need better technology for communication!" Bollocks. I've seen teams communicate brilliantly using nothing but email and occasional phone calls. I've also seen organisations with every communication tool under the sun where people still have no idea what anyone else is working on. The tool isn't the problem. The [fundamental approach to workplace interaction](https://diekfzgutachterwestfalen.de/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth) is the problem. Your Slack channels are dead because people are afraid of saying something "wrong" in a permanent, searchable format. Your meetings are unproductive because everyone's more focused on looking competent than actually contributing. Your emails are novels because people think more words = more professional. ## What Actually Works (And You Won't Like It) The communication transformations I've seen work all have one thing in common: leadership that models imperfect, authentic communication first. The best boss I ever worked for started every team email with something like "Quick brain dump before I've had my coffee..." or "Probably overthinking this, but..." It gave everyone else permission to be human too. She also did something revolutionary: she admitted when she was wrong. Not in a self-deprecating way, but matter-of-factly. "I was completely off-base about the timeline. Here's what I learned." Game changer. ## The Meeting Problem Nobody Mentions Can we talk about meetings for a second? Everyone complains about having too many meetings, but the real problem is that most meetings are performance theatre, not actual communication. People spend meetings trying to sound smart rather than actually solving problems. They prepare talking points instead of listening. They avoid asking the obvious questions because they think everyone else already knows the answer. I worked with one team that instituted "stupid question immunity" in their weekly planning sessions. Any question prefaced with "This might be obvious, but..." was automatically off-limits for eye-rolling or condescending responses. Within a month, they were catching assumptions and miscommunications that had been causing expensive mistakes for years. All because someone finally felt safe asking "What exactly do we mean by 'high priority'?" ## The Australian Advantage (That We're Wasting) Here's something that might surprise international readers: Australians actually have a cultural advantage when it comes to workplace communication. We're generally more direct than our American counterparts and less hierarchical than many European cultures. But somehow, we've imported all the worst aspects of corporate communication culture while abandoning our natural strengths. We've traded "No worries, let me look into that" for "I will action your request and revert back with a comprehensive response." When did we decide that sounding like a customer service bot was more professional than actually being helpful? ## The Fix (It's Simpler Than You Think) Start small. In your next team interaction, try sharing one genuine thought or concern instead of a sanitised status update. See what happens. [Professional development in authentic communication](https://postyourarticle.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth) isn't about learning new techniques – it's about unlearning the fear of being real. Your people already know how to communicate. They do it brilliantly with their friends, their families, their local barista. They just need permission to bring some of that humanity into the office. ## Why This Matters More Now Remote and hybrid work has actually made this problem worse. When you're communicating primarily through screens and text, authenticity becomes even more crucial. Without body language and casual corridor conversations, written communication has to carry more emotional weight. But instead of adapting by being more human in our digital interactions, most companies have doubled down on formal, sterile communication. Recipe for disaster. The organisations thriving in the new work environment are the ones where people feel safe being genuine in their Zoom calls, honest in their project updates, and real in their feedback. Your communication problems aren't technical. They're cultural. And fixing culture starts with giving people permission to be human beings, not corporate robots. Stop investing in communication tools and start investing in communication courage. The results might surprise you. Actually, scratch that. The results will definitely surprise you. --- **Related Reading:** - [More insights on workplace transformation](https://optimizecore.bigcartel.com/blog) - [Communication strategies that work](https://www.bhattitherapy.com/2025/07/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth)