Well we're going to talk about how the communication process works here.
The communication process is extremely vital in terms of increasing
your effectiveness in communicating.
And what we find easy if you have an understanding of the different stages of
the process and different parties involved
you will help increase the extent which you communicate more effectively.
Now the communication process starts with in this case the sender.
The sender is the person that is going to be transmitting
a particular message.
Usually if we're going to communicate something we have to decide
what it is that we're going to communicate.
But not only what, we also have to determine
how we're going to communicate that. The means
through which we're going to actually communicate the message. This includes
everything from face-to-face or verbal communication,
this includes email or text,
and a variety of other mediums. Written communication obviously would
fall into this category.
So the sender what they do is they are in charge of what's called
encoding a particular message.
And encoding
is not only determining what it is that you're going to say but how what is
that you're going to communicate it.
This includes nonverbal communication. Things like body language
and the tone of our voice, the pace of our voice, whether or not we make eye
contact
all factors in
to how we send a particular message.
Now the goal here for the sender, or at least it should be
is to communicate something as accurately as possible.
And what that means is you have to take into account
the knowledge and the education and the background of the receiver of that
message. Because if you communicate in a way that cannot be understood
then you really just wasting your time. It's not very effective.
The intent here
is to be understood.
And so obviously we have the message here, and that is what is
encoded.
That message gets sent of course to the receiver.
Depending upon which medium we chose to communicate with
that will transmit a number of different ways. The receiver what
they're in charge of his decoding that message.
And when decoding means
is they're trying to understand it they're interpreting
that particular message and so they're listening to what is being said
and they're trying to assess what that is
and gauge it for understanding
now a problem that you've probably picked up on
is that a lot of times people can hear the same message and take
two completely different things
and that's because there's a lot of noise that gets involved in the
communication process not only do you have to be aware of the understanding
of the receiver
but you also have to take into account
physical noise like surroundings. Are there people involved? If you're
communicating and noisy restaurant there's a there's a physical limitation
there were the actual noise in the restaurant
is going to inhibit the receiver understanding your message.
So that would obviously be a physical sense but you also have to take
into account
the person's mental state. Are they preoccupied?
You can probably think of the time when you were involved in a conversation
and you're communicating with somebody but not really. You're
kind of going through the motions you have your mind somewhere else for thinking
about something you're preoccupied
and although you're physically present mentally you are absent and that
obviously is an obstacle or barrier
to effective to communication
in addition you also have issues with education
you know if you're communicating with someone who is of higher education or
less
you do have to take that into account because if you're sending the message
you do want to make sure
that the person can understand it
if you're going to communicate to a group of
elementary school students it's probably going to look different than if you
communicate to a group of college students because you have to take into
account
the knowledge and education level
of the audience
and so from a receiver standpoint if you're interpreting a message
and that could
also be a
deterrent
to effective communication
you've probably been involved in
a high school setting or in a college classroom
and a professor or instructor is
lecturing on a particular set of material
and you're sitting there and not understanding
a word that they're saying
and maybe just maybe that's because the person communicating isn't doing so
with the actual audience in mind something to take into consideration
Now
the other part here is feedback
and feedback takes
both verbal and nonverbal communication now when I say verbal communication were obviously
talking auditory
things that you're actually saying
nonverbal communication is body language posture eye contact
those different types of things things that you're not actually saying
but communicating
via your body language
and what we know about communication is about seventy percent
of the message is communicated or interpreted via body language meaning that
if you say something to me but your body language says something else I am more
inclined to go off of what your body
says
if there is a inconsistency
between the two
but this feedback piece is very important because for feedback
what happens is is the sender is looking for some feedback to see whether or not
the receiver
actually understood
the material
so let me give you an example. When i lecture in the classroom
one of the things i look for when i'm communicating, I don't have my back
obviously turned the classroom because i'm looking for feedback right
if i am discussing a particular concept i see that eyes are starting to glaze over and people
are yawning and checking their phones
and doing other things
i know that may be what i'm saying is in getting the point across and maybe i
should go at it from a different angle
that's an example of feedback so feedback allows the sender
to insure whether or not their messages being understood
kind fo checking for clarification so to speak
now in addition to being non-verbal it can also be verbal
obviously in this case the receiver
can transmit a particular message to the sender indicating whether or not they
understand
maybe asking clarifying questions if something is little confusing
could be a really good example and so those are all different ways at the
sender of the receiver i'm sorry
can actually transmit feedback
to the sender
now so just to recap here real quick
this process obviously we're looking at is very simplistic involves two parties
the sender and the receiver
obviously a lot of times when we're communicating on the real world where
there are many different parties involved and so that just further
complicates things because you have
more
physical circumstance to take into account you have more mental states to
take into account more educational backgrounds to take
into account of course and that just further complicates
the communication process but looking at a very simplistically we know there's a
a sender and a receiver there's a message
the sender encodes the message provides meaning to it
the receiver then decodes trying to understand that particular message we
know that there are if she was involved with that
and then in turn
the receiver will send feedback
to the sender
where they can confirm whether or not
they've understood that particular message and that is how the
communication process works