Photo by: eyeRmonkey 

Recently, I was very busy with a mishap happened in my company. This made me traveling to my customer place and my company factory for quite a number of times. However, I enjoyed doing that. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not a bad-hearted employee who always tries to make troubles to the company. More importantly, the mishap was not created by me. I said I enjoyed doing that is because I have learnt a lot of things throughout the process and I have discovered that communication is still playing the most important role when mishap happens. Miscommunication is the killer to a good relationship. Miscommunication happens in our daily life. In fact, it happens very often. And the good news is they are actually avoidable.

Here are the lessons that I have learnt throughout the mishap to avoid miscommunication.

Receive the correct information
In case you need to convey your message to “party A” and that message you have to get from “party B”, you have to make sure that the information that you get is absolutely correct information. It happened to me quite a number of times that the information that I got from my supplier was totally wrong information and the worst thing was I have already conveyed that information to my customer before it was found out that the information was wrong.

Verify the received information
You may want to verify the information that you got with another person who knows about the situation. Look for someone who is more trustable and seek his help to verify the information.

Check the information
Before you reveal any information to another party, make sure that you know inside out what is happening.

Summary of meeting
During a formal meeting, there is a secretary who will prepare the minutes of meeting. However, in a daily meeting or casual meeting, minutes of meeting will not be provided. In this case, to safe-guard yourself that whatever is conveyed by the other party is what you heard, send out a summary of the meeting immediately after the meeting. If possible, ask both parties to sign on the summary of meeting.