The very fabric of our social, cultural, and economic worlds is organizationally based, thus the need for us to be competent communicators in organizational settings is undeniable. Organizational communication practices can enhance, or diminish, our role in inventing a better future and maintaining some degree of control over our work environment. In this chapter, we introduce you to workplace communication by emphasizing characteristics of competent communication in the workplace. Specifically, we explore how characteristics of different types of organizations affect workplace communication, we discuss several characteristics of communication competence in the workplace, and we identify two undesirable forms of workplace communication.