The Importance of Professional Communication
James Cherry III
GS1145/Strategies for the Technical Professional
Instructor: Chioma Semanas
April 17, 2016

The Importance of Professional Communication
Professional communication is of tantamount importance in the workplace, because without it supervisors and employees alike would be in constant conflict with each other. They would spend more time putting out fires of conflict than they would doing their jobs. Professional communication keeps the workplace safe from various forms of workplace infractions, such as sexual harassment and bigotry.
Unprofessional Communication: Many years ago, I was an assistant supervisor in the receiving department at the Burlington Coat Factory’s main distribution center in Burlington, New Jersey. I had an employee under me that drove a custom made Mercedes convertible, and wore expensive clothes all the time. He was only making minimum wage at the time ($5.35), yet he had all the money and things of someone wealthy.
I finally deduced that the young man was a drug dealer, using the job as a cover for his erroneous activities. Since I was immature at the time, I set out on a campaign to expose him verbally in front of the rest of the receiving crew. I did this for a few days before, the young man finally grew tired of the harassment and snapped saying, “Call me a drug dealer again and I will slap the shit out of you!” I was so, stunned by the ferocity of his response that I said nothing and walked away to ponder the situation.
My immaturity showed again when I later came back to him and pulled him aside to talk. Instead of apologizing and smoothing things out with the employee, I told him how I did not like being threatened, and that it would be me and him fighting all over the warehouse if he followed through on his threat. I was just beginning my martial arts training at the time, so I was overly confident that I could whip the man in an all-out fight.
However, I was not thinking about the consequences. If I had fought the employee, both of us would have lost our jobs. Not only would we lose our jobs, but we would have faced assault charges as well. The whole scenario could have been prevented if I was more mature, and knew professional communication skills.
What I could have done was just keep silent about my opinions and watch to see if he brought his extracurricular activities of drug dealing into the work place. An even better thing I could have done professionally, was not to assume the worst about the employee, and believe he had legitimate reasons for the wealth he was displaying.
As a result of my unprofessional communications, tensions were high in the receiving department and a pecking order of “who could whip who” in a fight began. Bullying even had to be addressed. The employee I accused of being a drug dealer was tense and angry thereafter, and was eventually fired. I was too immature at the time to realize fully what my unprofessional communications had done.
Today, I am more mature and would not accuse an employee of anything in front of other employees. I would take them aside and talk to them about the facts of the matter and not assumptions on my part. Professional communication should be free of assumptions and accusations in order to accommodate an atmosphere of cooperation, respect, and understanding in the work force.
In the future, I will use professional communication in the workforce, because it will help me stay away from communication that is unprofessional and damaging to the company. Using professional communication, will aid me by helping me stay away from my tendency to assume things about others. It will also prevent me from making accusations which could cause conflict on the job.