Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Define Communication
Define Communication
Answer.
Giving, receiving, and exchanging information — in other words, talking, writing, and
listening or reading — is the act of communication. Good communicators pay attention to
what others are saying, speak or write clearly, and respect differing viewpoints.
Strong communication skills can help children interact both in person and online.
Understanding how words and visuals affect others is essential to texting, talking, and
publishing appropriately. Teaching kids to use social media safely, modelling positive
communication, and viewing movies and TV shows that emphasise the benefits of healthy
communication can all help children develop their communication skills.
A sender, a message, and a recipient are all part of every communication. This may appear to
be a simple concept, yet communication is actually a very complicated topic.
A wide range of factors can influence the message's passage from sender to destination.
These factors include our emotions, cultural context, communication medium, and even
geographic location. The difficulty is why employers all over the world prize good
communication skills: accurate, effective, and unambiguous communication is incredibly
difficult.
The sender, the message, and the recipient are the three components of a communication.
The message is 'encoded' by the sender, who uses a combination of words and nonverbal cues
to do so. It is sent in some form (such as voice or writing), and the recipient 'decodes' it.
Of course, there could be multiple recipients, and due to the complexity of communication,
each one could get a slightly different message. Two people may interpret the same words
and/or body language in completely different ways. It's also likely that neither of them will
comprehend the message in the same way that the sender did.
The sender and recipient do not have separate roles in face-to-face communication. The two
roles will switch back and forth between two people who are conversing. Both parties interact
with one another, even if it is in very subtle ways like eye contact (or lack thereof) and
overall body language.
BARRIERS:
Attitude is the first and most difficult barrier to good communication. It's complicated
since it contains so many aspects that influence one's mental state, such as:
Gender Social and economic circumstances Culture
Personal convictions
Religious convictions
Selective perception due to a lack of familiarity or credibility (the act of filtering what
we see and hear to suit our own agenda)
Language and medium are the second impediment to good communication. It's just as
broad as attitude and includes things like:
Selection of words (including pitch, intonation and volume)
Nonverbal clues include body language and gestures.
Listening and feedback are the third obstacle to effective communication. The sender
of a message will not know if the recipient gets it unless they have good listening
abilities. Without feedback, the sender will have no way of knowing if the recipient
understood the message correctly. Many variables can obstruct this critical process,
but they mostly fall into the following categories:
Inattentiveness
Defensiveness
Preliminary conclusions
Precision is lacking.
Fluency and clarity
Inaudibility
Filtering
Filtering is the distortion or withholding of information to manage a person’s
reactions. Some examples of filtering include a manager who keeps her division’s
poor sales figures from her boss, the vice president, fearing that the bad news will
make him angry. The old saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger!” illustrates the
tendency of Receivers (in this case, the vice president) to vent their negative response
to unwanted Messages on the Sender. A gatekeeper (the vice president’s assistant,
perhaps) who doesn’t pass along a complete Message is also filtering. The vice
president may delete the e-mail announcing the quarter’s sales figures before reading
it, blocking the Message before it arrives.
Since people tend to filter bad news more during upward communication, it is also
helpful to remember that those below you in an organization may be wary of sharing
bad news. One way to defuse the tendency to filter is to reward employees who
clearly convey information upward, regardless of whether the news is good and bad.
Information Overload
Emotional disconnects
Semantics
Gender Differences
Another difference that has been noticed is that men often speak in sports metaphors,
while many women use their home as a starting place for analogies. Women who
believe men are “only talking about the game” may be missing out on a chance to
participate in a division’s strategy and opportunities for teamwork and “rallying the
troops” for success.
“It is important to promote the best possible communication between men and women
in the workplace,” notes gender policy adviser Dee Norton, who provided the above
example. “As we move between the male and female cultures, we sometimes have to
change how we behave (speak the language of the other gender) to gain the best
results from the situation. Clearly, successful organizations of the future are going to
have leaders and team members who understand, respect and apply the rules of gender
culture appropriately.
Being aware of these gender differences can be the first step in learning to work with
them, as opposed to around them. For example, keep in mind that men tend to focus
more on competition, data, and orders in their communications, while women tend to
focus more on cooperation, intuition, and requests. Both styles can be effective in the
right situations, but understanding the differences is a first step in avoiding
misunderstandings based on them.