Why
Communications Skills Are So Important
The purpose of communication is to
get your message across to others clearly and unambiguously.
Doing this involves effort from both
the sender of the message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be
fraught with error, with messages often misinterpreted by the recipient. When
this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort and
missed opportunity.
In fact, communication is only
successful when both the sender and the receiver understand the same
information as a result of the communication.
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.
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. You must
also weigh-in the circumstances surrounding your communications, such as
situational and cultural context.
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.
some more information about each
stage of the communication process:
Source...
As the source of the message, you
need to be clear about why you're communicating, and what you want to
communicate. You also need to be confident that the information you're
communicating is useful and accurate.
Message...
The message is the information that
you want to communicate.
Encoding...
This is the process of transferring
the information you want to communicate into a form that can be sent and
correctly decoded at the other end. Your success in encoding depends partly on
your ability to convey information clearly and simply, but also on your ability
to anticipate and eliminate sources of confusion (for example, cultural issues,
mistaken assumptions, and missing information.) A key part of this is knowing
your audience: Failure to understand who you are communicating with will result
in delivering messages that are misunderstood.
Channel...
Messages are conveyed through
channels, with verbal including face-to-face meetings, telephone and
videoconferencing; and written including letters, emails, memos and reports.
Different channels have different
strengths and weaknesses. For example, it's not particularly effective to give
a long list of directions verbally, while you'll quickly cause problems if you
criticize someone strongly by email.
Decoding...
Just as successful encoding is a
skill, so is successful decoding (involving, for example, taking the time to
read a message carefully, or listen actively to it.) Just as confusion can
arise from errors in encoding, it can also arise from decoding errors. This is
particularly the case if the decoder doesn't have enough knowledge to
understand the message.
Receiver...
Your message is delivered to
individual members of your audience. No doubt, you have in mind the actions or
reactions you hope your message will get from this audience. Keep in mind,
though, that each of these individuals 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, and act appropriately.
Feedback...
Your audience will provide you with
feedback, verbal and nonverbal reactions to your communicated message. Pay
close attention to this feedback, as it is the only thing that allows you to be
confident that your audience has understood your message. If you find that
there has been a misunderstanding, at least you have the opportunity to send
the message a second time.
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.).
Removing
Barriers at All These Stages
To deliver your messages
effectively, you must commit to breaking down the barriers that exist in each
of these stages of the communication process.
Let's begin with the message itself.
If your message is too lengthy, disorganized, or contains errors, you can
expect the message to be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Use of poor verbal
and body language can also confuse the
message.
Barriers in context tend to stem
from senders offering too much information too fast. When in doubt here, less
is oftentimes more. It is best to be mindful of the demands on other people's
time, especially in today's ultra-busy society.
Once you understand this, you need
to work to understand your audience's culture, making sure you can converse and
deliver your message to people of different backgrounds and cultures within
your own organization, in this country and even abroad.
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any suggestion on my side