Your audience will provide you
with feedback, verbal and nonverbal reactions to your communicated message. Pay
close attention to this feedback as it is crucial to ensuring the audience
understood your message.
Context...
The situation in which your
message is delivered is the context. This may include the surrounding
environment or broader culture (i.e. corporate culture, international cultures,
etc.).
No doubt, you have in mind the actions or reactions you hope your
message prompts from this audience.
Keep in mind, your audience also enters
into the communication process with ideas and feelings that will undoubtedly
influence their understanding of your message and their response.
To be a
successful communicator, you should consider these before delivering your
message, acting appropriately.
Messages are conveyed through
channels, with verbal including face-to-face meetings, telephone and
videoconferencing; and written including letters, emails, memos and reports.
Written, oral and nonverbal communications are effected by the sender’s
tone, method of organization, validity of the argument, what is communicated
and what is left out, as well as your individual style of communicating.
Messages also have intellectual and emotional components, with intellect
allowing us the ability to reason and emotion allowing us to present
motivational appeals, ultimately changing minds and actions.
www.asktenali.com - HRD Trainers Communications Skills - The Importance of
Removing Barriers:
Communication barriers can pop-up at every
stage of the communication process (which consists of sender, message, channel,
receiver, feedback and context - see the diagram below) and have the potential
to create misunderstanding and confusion.
To be an effective communicator and
to get your point across without misunderstanding and confusion, your goal
should be to lessen the frequency of these barriers at each stage of this
process with clear, concise, accurate, well-planned communications.
We follow
the process through below:
Sender...
To establish yourself as an effective
communicator, you must first establish credibility. In the business arena, this
involves displaying knowledge of the subject, the audience and the context in
which the message is delivered. You must also know your audience (individuals
or groups to which you are delivering your message). Failure to understand who
you are communicating to will result in delivering messages that are
misunderstood.
The purpose of communication is to get
your message across to others.
This is a process that involves both the sender
of the message and the receiver.
This process leaves room for error, with
messages often misinterpreted by one or more of the parties involved.
This
causes unnecessary confusion and counter productivity. In fact, a message is
successful only when both the sender and the receiver perceive it in the same
way.
By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and
ideas effectively.
When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you convey
do not necessarily reflect your own, causing a communications breakdown and
creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and
professionally.
In spite of the increasing importance placed on communication
skills, many individuals continue to struggle with this, unable to communicate
their thoughts and ideas effectively – whether in verbal or written format.
This inability makes it nearly impossible for them to compete effectively in
the workplace, and stands in the way of career progression.
Getting your
message across is paramount to progressing. To do this, you must understand
what your message is, what audience you are sending it to, and how it will be
perceived.
