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According to the Bible, the Tower of Babel was an attempt to build a tower that reached all the way to Heaven that was foiled by God changing the languages of all who were building it. The lesson intended by the story is that God doesn’t like anyone trying to crowd into his domain, but there’s an alternate lesson for the world of business, too.

Anyone in a leadership position in the business world knows how something is said is just as important as what is said. Managers can spend hours talking at their employees, but if the words they’re saying don’t connect with those employees, they may as well be speaking a different language. Em­ploy­ees tune out, vital information is miss­ed and plans fall apart, much like the Tower of Babel.

There’s no shortage of advice out there for managers and business leaders to become more effective communicators. Often, this advice will center on the type of language managers use or the tone they take with employees. Some experts believe in being aggressive and to the point, while others en­courage being supportive and quick with a compliment. Some advice centers on stressing the overall goals, and other advice concentrates on narrowing the focus to each employee’s personal responsibility.

All of that is well and good, but it ignores what might be the most im­portant aspect of how managers communicate with their employees – recognizing the gulf that exists between them and finding ways to address it. Many experts on corporate communication believe managers can’t be effective communicators preaching from up on a hill or barking orders from be­hind a desk.

What many believe the key to effective manager-employee comm­­unica­tion to be is an admission that the two sides already speak different languages. Translating what you want to say so that your employees truly hear you may be as simple as keeping your mouth shut.

The Great Divide

The fundamental difference between managers and employees is plain en­ough to see, but that doesn’t mean managers are aware of it when they talk to their employees, says David Levine, author of Don’t Just Talk, Be Heard! He explains that by virtue of the manager’s position over them, most employees assume by default that managers don’t understand them.

“Perception is a big part of effective communication, especially when it has to do with people’s negative expectations of you,” Levin says.

For example, he notes an example from his book about a senior vice president who told a group of 1,000 em­ployees about the difficulty he had finding storage for his 50-foot yacht.

The difference between the two worlds also results in managers often speaking a different language when it comes to context. Ron Ashkenas, managing partner of Schaffer Consulting in Connecticut, says managers often don’t see the big picture when they talk to employees and lose sight of why em­ployees should consider what they’re saying to be important.

“Man­agers get sort of steeped in why they’re doing things and the nuances of it and how it fits into basic strategies, and they just assume everyone else knows that,” he says.

Real Emotion

At first glance, this barrier between managers and employees may seem in­surmountable, but there are ways managers can tailor communication to make themselves understood. Lev­ine suggests business leaders take a page from political leaders and introduce emotion into their communication with employees. Politicians such as John F. Kenn­edy and Ronald Reagan, he says, filled their speeches with appeals to Americans’ emotions, and as such were regarded as great communicators des­pite the gulfs that existed between them and average people.

While planning to speak with em­ployees, Levine suggests managers ask themselves how they would feel if they heard someone else saying those things to them. He says the key is not simply acting more emotional, but articulating emotion more effectively.

For ex­ample, just saying that you rec­ognize how stressed out an employee is can go a long way toward bringing that em­ployee on board with whatever needs to be asked of him or her. He says “leading with the relationship” takes a little extra time, but the results can be well worth it when it means greater understanding and more buy-in from employees.

Authenticity also is important, so Levine says reviewing your comments with a peer can be very important. “The biggest mistakes people make at this level are that they don’t work with some­one else and they become more and more isolated,” he says.

Making a Connection

Ashkenas explains that it also is important for managers to learn to listen as well as they want their employees to if they expect em­ployees to pay attention to them.

“They usually have a full plate of things and priorities, and the manager comes along and gives them something else to do,” he says. “If they don’t help their people reprioritize, their people end up prioritizing on their own, which might not lead to the same priorities the manager has.

“By providing more specifics, managers can help employees avoid feeling overwhelmed by requests and be more comfortable with their new assignments,” he continues. “A significant part of helping employees prioritize is by listening to them. Simply treating em­ployees like intelligent human beings can be the key to establishing strong manager-em­ployee bonds, instead of slick talk and high-minded platitudes about the greater good of the company. A lot of managers think it’s all about what you say, but establishing a dialogue also is important. It’s not a parent-child relationship.”

“We generally regard the best communicators as those who are the best listeners,” says John McKee, life coach and author of Career Wisdom 101: Proven Strategies to Ensure Work­place Success and The Plan.

“The problem is that many business executives haven’t developed very good communication skills, which be­gin with a heightened ability to listen,” McKee stresses.

He suggests asking open-ended ques­tions that better establish a dialogue than simple yes/no questions.