To me, communication is a two-way process of interchanging information, through various different channels. Be it a casual conversation between two friends, or addressing a conference, the basic principles of communication still hold. Being able to understand and be understood may seem simple, but in fact, there are many factors that play a part in effective communication.
Below are a few factors that may affect communication:
1) Know your audience.
-Knowing who you’re addressing to, allows you to set the tone that you should be using, which will allow both you and the receiver to communicate in a more comfortable setting.
2) Know your purpose and your topic.
-Knowing clearly what message you have to send across, generally allows your message to be clearer and more concise. Having sufficient knowledge in the topic that you are talking about also enables you to be more confident while communicating.
3) Anticipate objections.
-Keep in mind that not everyone thinks and agrees on what you have to say. Always have an open-mind on how the audience may respond to you, even if the response might be negative.
4) Present a rounded picture.
- By presenting the big picture, it allows the audience to not feel that you are biased, and also gives the audience a better understanding of the topic from another point of view.
5) Follow through on what you have to say.
- Never negate what you are saying, failing which would result in your audience being confused.
6) Communicate a little at a time
- Always try not to overwhelm the audience with information. If due to time constraints, summarize your points and present in a short and concise manner.
7) Have several communication channels.
- Try to present your message in various forms, so as to hold your audience’s attention.
8) Develop ways to get feedback from audience
- By getting feedback from the audience, you are able to make sure that the message is being sent across to the audience, and if not, gives you a second chance to say it again.
Communication is a life-skill that many fail to grasp the importance of it. Being able to communicate effectively allows me to better understand by peers, and also to be better understood by them.
During my free-time, I help out at a wakeboarding school as an instructor. In the course of my work, I have come to realize that sometimes making someone understand my instructions is not as easy as it seems to be. A particular instruction may seem so simple and redundant to explain for me, but to a complete beginner, my words may seem like Greek to him or her. As such, it is important to put myself in the shoes of the listener, gauge his or her skill level, and make appropriate changes to my set of instructions.
Problems like this are actually omnipresent, just that many of us fail to see it as a problem and hence fail to rectify it, resulting in communication breakdown. To conclude, I strongly believe that effective communication is a skill whose importance can hardly be over-emphasized.
Hi Andy,i agree with the 8 factors that will affect communication, but i would like to add some point to it.For the factor know your audience, i think we not only set the tone that you should be using, but we also can avoid saying something or showing body language that maybe is a bad sign in their culture or understanding.Different people with different background or culture have different definition for some word and body language.For the factor Have several communication channels,if the person is doing a presentation, it is best that he or she uses a Slideshow with video, and sounds instead of pure vocal presentation.
ReplyDeleteHi Andy,
ReplyDeleteGood points on elaborating the points.Your post would have been better if you had talked about the importance of good communication and teamwork.You write about how to communicate well but you did not emphasize on the importance of it and the importance of communication in a team which is very crucial in the working industry.Good job overall.
Regards,
Joon Wai.
Dear Andy,
ReplyDeleteIn your sixth point, you mentioned that we should summarize our points and present them in a short and concise manner if we do not have enough time. I beg to differ. As a rule of thumb, the human mind works about four times faster than listening. Therefore, our minds have a tendency to wander. Hence, we should always be presenting our points concisely and not only when there is a lack of time.
In fact, I think that when we are lacking of time, we should just leave out the less important points. The main points still have to be elaborated so as to prevent the audience from becoming confused. We could always send an email or provide handouts to the audience that contains the points that we have left out.
As Joon Wai has mentioned in the comment above, you did not talk about teamwork at all. Perhaps you have misread the topic that we are supposed to be posting about?
Placing that comic in your post really makes the post less boring. I should do that too. Good job overall with your very interesting post.
Regards,
Russell
Hey Andy,
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of your points on communication. But #7 bugs me slightly. It's good to consider using different channels of communication on get your message across. If you're a manager working in a company, and you send out a memo to your workers, first in the form of a post-it, then you make personal phone calls, write up an email, maybe even send them a video animation of what changes to expect in the company. I may be drawing the wrong conclusion from this, but that's what your point seems to indicate, and this is highly disturbing to say the least. Different messages should be transfered differently to ensure the essence of the message is not lost, perhaps rephrasing to say: "Practice using different channels of communication to find the most effective delivery" would be a better way to state your point.
Besides that, your post was a lovely read :)
-Anni
P.S You forgot about TEAM! (It's the same link on my post :P)
Hi Andy,
ReplyDeleteI liked the way you listed the 8 factors that may affect communication in point form, giving a short explanation after each point. This makes reading not only very easy but helps to bring across the points strongly.
I agree with your eighth point that we should always have a means of getting feedback. Like we discussed during tutorial, communication is a two-way process and hence the importance of knowing if the target audience has received our message. Even if it is supposed to be a speech where you are doing all the talking, there are still ways to know if the audience is following you. For example, we can inject humor to see if they respond to it. One thing to note is that the joke must be relevant or else it just defeats the purpose.
Maybe you could have used another word instead of audience as it makes readers think that this post targeted towards people who are giving speeches instead of just communication between two parties in general. A very informative post on the whole :)
Regards
Corn
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ReplyDelete