The communication process

• The process of initiating communication is

said to have six basic stages
• Sensing a need for communication
• Encoding
• Choice of communication media
• Selecting the communication channel
• Decoding
• Feedback
1. Sensing a need for communication

• A problem has come to your attention

e.g an Idea on how to achieve a certain
goal, an email or letter that requires a
response, recognising that action is in order
 2.The sender encodes the idea
• Putting the idea into a message (words, images, a
combination)
• Encoding can fail because:
-poor word choices that confuse or anger the
audience
-imagery that evokes unintended emotional
responses
-Cultural differences that result in same words
and images meaning different things to different
people
3. Transmission- choice of medium

• This is the form a message takes

• There is need to consider the way to
transmit your idea to the intended
audience
• Media can be divided into oral, written,
visual, electronic
• Step requires careful decision making and
some technical skills.
4. Transmission- choice of a channel

• This is the system used to deliver the

message
• Can be face to face, the internet, another
company etc
5. The audience receives the message

• The message arrives at the intended

audience
• Note that mere arrival of the message is
no guarantee that the message will be
noticed or understood correctly.
• Many messages are either ignored or
misinterpreted as noise.
6. The audience decodes the message

• If the message is actually received the

audience needs to extract the idea from
the message, known as decoding.
• Audience need to remember your
message long enough to act on it, they
need to be able to act on it, and be
motivated to respond.
 7. The audience responds to the
message
• Audience may give feedback that helps to
evaluate the effectiveness of the
communication effort.
• Feedback can be hard to interpret,
sometimes feedback is direct and easy to
interpret
• Qn: Discuss the role of feedback in
communication.
 Communication barriers
The existence of barriers to effective
communication limits the effectiveness or
perfection of communication. These barriers
can be summarised as follows:
• Noise and distraction
External distractions can be:
-Uncomfortable meeting rooms
-crowded computer screens
-
internal distractions such as thoughts and emotions that
prevent audience from focusing on incoming
messages
Often called Physiological barriers
(How audience decodes messages)
A well crafted communication can fail at the decoding
stage because assigning meaning is a highly personal
process affected by culture, experience, learning and
thinking styles, hopes, fears, moods.
 These mainly emanate from an individual’s emotions,
attitudes and perceptions.
 Emotions cloud judgements and limit
objectivity e.g love, affection, hatred all affect
our reasoning.
 Attitudes are tendencies to react against, or
respond negatively or otherwise towards an
idea or object
 Perception refers to the way a person
selects, sorts, arranges processes and
interprets information into a meaningful form.
 Selective perception occurs when the receiver selects what
to understand or hears what he wants to hear.
 When people ignore or distort incoming information to fit
their preconceived notions of reality
 E.g a manager who believes wholeheartedly in a particular
strategy might distort or ignore evidence that suggests the
strategy is failing.
 Audience tend to extract the meaning they expect to get
from a message even if it’s the opposite of what the sender
intended.
 Religious differences: values, morals and attitudes are
affected by religion.
Semantic barriers
 Arise from differences in the use / meanings of words
in the communication process.
 Specialisation creates jargon and specialist languages,
which tend to block effective communication between
say two departments.
 Use of unambiguous terms/unclear/ indefinite terms
and different connotations
 Eg as soon as possible. Meaning 10 minutes, 5
minutes?????
Cultural barriers
 These relate to differences emanating from
traditional/ethnic groups.
 Culture shapes people’s views of the world in profound ways
 E.g. determination of right or wrong, symbolic meanings
attached to different colours etc
 Different cultures attach different meanings to different
words and or actions.
 Ethnocentricity refers to judging people according to one’s
own culture, and may also block communication.
Physical barriers
These incorporate:
1. The physical appearance of the communicator.
2. The delivery of the speech
3. The physical appearance of the audience.
4. The context of the document to be presented.
5. Physical noise
Competing messages
-Audience always have divided attention
-too many messages trying to get to an audience at
the same time results in information overload
-makes it difficult to discriminate between useful and
useless information

Filters
-any human or technology intervention between
sender and receiver (intentional or intentional)
Channel breakdowns
-sometimes the channel simply breaks down
and fails to deliver the message
Colleague may fail to deliver a message
A brochure to a customer might get lost
A computer server might crash
 Overcoming communication barriers

• Crafting messages that get noticed

-Consider audience expectations
-deliver messages using media and
channels that the audience expects
-ensure ease of use
message should be easy to find. Poorly
designed websites with confusing
navigations are an example
-Emphasize familiarity
use words, images, designs that are familiar to
the audience

-practice empathy
make sure message speaks to the audience by
clearly addressing their wants, needs and not yours
People are much more inclined to notice
messages that relate to their individual concerns
Design for compatibility
Be sure to verify technical compatibility
with your audience e.g. the need for adobe
software to access documents
-Sharing experiences with another person,
you are likely to share perception and thus
same meaning
 Minimising distractions
• Using common sense and courtesy
-Shouting / talking across cubicles
-Be sensitive to personal differences (others can read in a
noisy environment but others can’t)
-Take measures to insulate yourself from distractions
-Don’t let emails, cellphones etc interrupt you every minute
of the day
Se aside time to attend to a number of messages at once
so you can focus
Send necessary messages (be careful, email, whatsup etc)
• Advise people of messages that are not urgent
• Too many so called urgent messages that aren’t
particularly urgent will lead to annoyance and anxiety,
not action.
• Consider the example of beeping.
• Try to overcome emotional distractions by recognising
your own feelings and by anticipating emotional
reactions from others.
• When a situation may cause tempers to flare choose
words carefully (inzwi rakanyorovera rinopedza hasha)