a manager telling an employee to “finish the report soon” without specifying a hard deadline, a required page count, or the exact data to include
My Interpretation of The Situation
In this case there’s clearly a lack of specificity.
You have several levels of communication that could be observed to create more clarity with whatever project you’re looking to complete.
In only 4 simple words, the amount of vagueness is extremely high because there’s most likely confusion on what it means to have the project finished.
You’re not getting the name of what specific project it is that has to be completed either. Ambiguity could easily be argued here.
And last is the timing aspect. When you’re saying “soon” it doesn’t put an actual time with when the project should be done.
The ambiguous title continues even further with having an unclear endpoint for when the project should be finished.
Final Thoughts
Unclear communication can be a detriment to put it as mildly as possible. In most cases, it should be seen as a very serious aspect of whatever mission has to be completed.
It contributes to a much larger scale of operations and chain of commands when you’re looking to build a team.
Understanding what’s unclear in communication makes being effective that much more possible.
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