It is important how you speak and how you listen

Time really flies; it feels as though Kenan Doğulu first performed his hit song “Aşk ile yap,” which he released as a single, two or three years ago. Yet it has been 11 years. The music and rhythm are beautiful, and even the music video released later was very successful. But what struck me most when I first heard it were, of course, the lyrics. Released in the summer of 2015, this song’s lyrics feel almost like a lesson in marketing. Shall we recall the chorus?

Ne yaparsan yap, aşk ile yap. (Whatever you do, do it with love)

Ne dediğin değil, nasıl dediğin olay! (It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it of)

Açılır kapılar ardına kadar; (Every closed door will open up wide)

Kalpten gülersen, kalanı detay, gerisi kolay… (Smile from the heart, let the rest slide)

I will share four different cases that have taken place in Türkiye with you, followed by my thoughts and commentary on each of them.

The Sales Director of a major company sent a brief email to the entire team at 10:47 p.m. on a Friday evening: “This month’s performance is unacceptable. Everyone must prepare an explanation by Monday.” His intention was to motivate the team, but the tone was harsh, the timing was wrong, and the language was accusatory. Throughout the weekend, panic spread among employees. One employee decided to meet with a competitor firm. Another applied aggressive sales pressure to customers he reached over the weekend. By Monday morning, no one in the office was talking about “strategy”; everyone was busy defending themselves. Three weeks later, the company lost one of its biggest clients.

A young engineer working at a factory noticed that a minor technical issue on the production line could turn into a serious quality problem in the future. During a meeting, he took the floor: “I believe this component may create long-term risks.” However, the production manager interrupted him: “Right now, we should focus on delivery deadlines, not negative scenarios.” The matter was dismissed that day. Six months later, thousands of products were recalled due to the same issue. The company suffered millions in losses. At the crisis meeting organized by management, everyone was asking the same question: “Why didn’t we notice this earlier?”

A major e-commerce company experienced a significant disruption in its logistics system, causing delays in the delivery of hundreds of thousands of orders. The management initially decided to focus on resolving the issue first, and say “Let’s wait a little longer, then make a statement.” However, customers interpreted the silence differently. Comments quickly spread on social media: “Is my order lost?” “Have we been scammed?” “Why is no one making a statement?” The company issued an explanation five days later, but by then, customer trust had already been significantly damaged.

A family-owned company was growing rapidly. Revenue was increasing, new investments were being made, and everyone was telling success stories. However, the finance team was quietly seeing a different picture: cash flow was starting to deteriorate. No one wanted to tell the boss—who is also the board chairman—this directly, because in the company, those who brought bad news were labeled as “negative.” In meetings, everyone spoke positively, reports were softened, and risks were postponed. One year later, the company entered a severe financial crisis. At the crisis meeting, the boss said: “No one told me the situation was this bad.”

Can an email—or any written message—have a tone? Of course it can. In the first case, the company’s loss of its most important client was not caused by sales performance, but by an internal environment of distrust. Sometimes, the atmosphere of an entire company and the motivation of a whole team can be reshaped by a single email written in the wrong tone. In the second case, the reason the company suffered millions in losses was not that management failed to notice the production issue in the factory—because it had, in fact, been noticed. The real problem was that a risk which could have been prevented with a small amount of time and a modest budget was simply not allowed to be discussed. In the third case, the real crisis was not the delivery delay itself. The real crisis was that customers felt abandoned and alone. The company’s management should not have waited five long days to make a statement. Because in times of crisis, people do not first expect a perfect solution; they expect transparency, sincerity, and honesty. Finally, in the fourth case, the family business’s biggest problem was not financial, but cultural. In an environment where the truth cannot be spoken, you may silence or ignore the signals of problems for a while; but with this approach, you cannot prevent them from growing even further.

When we look at the recent history of the business world, we see that many major organizations have suffered their greatest losses not due to poor strategy, but due to “poor communication.” A manager not listening to an employee, an engineer failing—or being unable—to adequately communicate risks, a brand remaining silent during a crisis, or senior leadership hearing only what they want to hear… In today’s business world, none of these are “small problems.” Because communication is no longer merely a matter of human relations; it is a direct determinant of financial performance, brand value, and corporate sustainability. Nokia’s collapse cannot be explained solely by Apple’s rise. It later emerged that, due to a “culture of fear” within the company, middle managers were reluctant to bring bad news to top management. In other words, the company was not unaware of reality; the reality simply did not make it to the top. In fact, this reflects a familiar pattern seen from family businesses to large holding companies: organizations sometimes suffer their greatest blows not from competitors, but from the “silence” within their own structures. Unfortunately, similar examples are far more common in Türkiye. One of the most significant challenges many large companies face, especially during times of crisis, is a “communication gap.” Employees do not know what is happening, customers cannot obtain clear information, investors feel uncertainty, and uncertainty becomes one of the most expensive costs in business. People can tolerate bad news; however, they cannot endure uncertainty for long. In the digital age, this reality has become even more critical. In the past, companies could manage crises for days. Today, even a few hours of silence can quickly turn into a loss of trust on social media. The discussions surrounding Yemeksepeti’s data breach in 2021 provide a recent example of this reality. A significant portion of users reacted not only to the data breach itself, but also “to the way the process was communicated”. This highlights a critical truth: a company’s fate is shaped not only by the crisis itself, but also by “how that crisis is communicated”. Communication failures do not occur solely in interactions with the outside world. The language used within organizations is equally important. In many companies, employees do not feel comfortable expressing their ideas openly to their managers. In meetings, everyone acts as if they agree, risks are downplayed, problems are postponed—in other words, reality is filtered. Yet in healthy corporate cultures, the most valuable employees are not those who bring good news, but “those who can tell management the truth”. When the world’s strongest organizations are examined, one common characteristic stands out: a culture of transparent communication. Because effective communication is not merely about sharing information; it is about building trust. Where trust is absent, team spirit weakens, customer loyalty declines, the quality of strategic decisions deteriorates, crises escalate, managerial capacity shrinks, and the organization’s internal energy is quietly drained away.

In the business world, many financial losses have a “balance sheet”; however, most communication losses do not appear on the balance sheet. Lost motivation, ideas left unspoken, risks that go undetected, talented employees who quietly leave, and a brand reputation that gradually erodes over time… The total cost of these losses is often greater than the cost of factories, machinery, or even major investments. Perhaps that is why, in today’s business world, one of the most critical management skills is no longer simply “the ability to speak”, but the ability to say the right thing, at the right time, in the right way—and to listen just as effectively. It is important how you speak and how you listen.

Ekonomi Newspaper