Communication and why it’s important.

You can be the best at what you do; have the best qualifications and have the best ideas in the world. But if you can’t tell anybody, then what good is it? That’s what the importance of communication is to me.

Communication takes on many forms; written, oral, body language and even within these categories. In writing, there is a difference between writing a blog on the internet, to writing an application to a government agency. Oral communication also varies and may include handing out the daily tasks on the golf course or speaking at a conference.

I feel that in order to get a message across you must first know who you are talking to. As a golf course superintendent, you may be the boss of your department, but you still report to someone ranked higher in the company. This could either be the owner of the facility, or if it is a members own facility, the board of directors. This puts the superintendent in the middle of the hierarchy; he is reporting upwards and giving orders downwards to his crew.

Depending on the golf club, these two groups can be very different in social and cultural background. Golf club memberships often consists of a highly variable group, with different backgrounds. This ma nclude lawyers, business men or women and CEO´s or it may include construction workers, postal workers and so on. These individuals work in different working environments and have their own set of unwritten rules and communication styles with one another. They are used to communicating in different ways. If you as a superintendent want to get a message across effectively you must communicate in a way that is understandable by these various groups.

The other direction of communication is downward directed from you to your crew. The crew is different from your membership and are used to a different way of communicationIn order to get your message across effectively you must understand their way of communicating. It makes no sense to write a report for guys raking the bunkers and have them sit down and read it before getting out to 1st fairway.

Being a effective communicator can save you a lot of trouble. It is importnt to be precise to your crew about how you want things done or how the outcome of a project must be, simply by keeping people informed on how you spend their money! The members pay a due to the club, so they have a right to know how you spend their money. Keeping members informed regularly about the state of their golf course can be turned to your advantage. Educating the members, that are not professionals in turf, about how this organism they play on lives, gives them a sense of being informed and involved. You may even find some that are very interested and start to pass on your information to others. Informing them and being open might just give them a chance to shine in their 4-ball, by knowing something the other 3 partners don’t!

In the July209 edition of “Golf Course Industry”, David Tierney, a project coordinator,states this about communication: “You cannot do enough of it. Superintendents succeed by helping members understand what’s going on, what’s going to happen next, where we stand and why we are doing it.”