I once attended a seminar where one of the speakers, representing project managers, emphasized that communication is most important to managers as they are the people who act as a bond between the senior members of an organization and the wider workforce. They are required to translate business requirements into project activities, report on the project statuses to the customer, and liaise with vendors.

As I thought more about the speech, it made me realize that the speaker was missing the hidden truth about communication in the workplace—there is no central power base, but a complex web of interactions, all of which need to be treated seriously. Many organizations follow a pyramid structure of hierarchy, where staff at a lower level outnumber their superiors; it seems utterly crazy that the core of communication should be confined to such a small cross-section of an organization's structure. If the bottom half of the organization makes up most of...