What communication message are you sending? What professional
communications skills do you want to develop? What actions are you
willing to take in order to commit to this development and are you
willing to practice these communication skills?
These are
important questions. Why? The reason is it is crucial to know how to
communicate in business. People receive messages that involve feelings,
thoughts and emotions. Our messages are not being heard in the way it
was intended. What we send goes through a process known as "noise."
Here is how the communication cycle works:
Sender
- Receiver. However. The sender "thinks" the Receiver is receiving the
message in the way it was intended, but the receiver has "noise" going
on, such as attitudes, biases, family issues, personal issues that slow
up the communication and they simply are not listening.
Between
when you send a message, it is going through a cycle of noise, such as
emotions, thoughts, feelings and perceived communication. The Receiver
has a perceived meaning as to what they hear, think and feel. It is
their reality.
So, how do we get our messages across?
In the
book, SYMBOLS: The Art of Communication, it is stated that we live in a
world of signs and symbols. Street signs, logos, labels, pictures and
words in books, newspapers, magazines and now on our mobiles and
computer screens; all these graphic shapes have been designed. They are
so commonplace we seldom think of them as a single entity, 'graphic
design.' Yet taken as a whole they are central to our modern way of
life.More often than not, people miscommunicate. They hear what they
choose to hear. They hear "selectively. In our social networking world
of texting, tweets, and posts, there are many nuances to consider the
electronic forms of communication offer great value in the communication
process.
What first comes to mind is the immediate gratification
of sending and receiving messages When people used to write letters,
they had to wait for a response and now you can reach worldwide access
in seconds. Another point is that "real time" electronic communication
is what we are living in---the real world. Businesses can now send
messages via office email, quickly and efficiently.
In the book, "
Multiple Intelligences"
by Howard Gardner, it suggests that we, now, have the opportunity to go
beyond stated expectations and explore specific interests.
So,
since getting a message immediately does have good traits, we seem to
have lost the actual communication in real life. No longer do your
children call every week; they text. Everything has moved in a direction
of "I need information right now." It concerns me that we are losing
our opportunity to communicate on the telephone, in-person in lieu of
these electronic advances in technology.
The majority of the population is born with the ability to hear, but
not
to listen. There are several reasons that people do not or cannot
listen or remember, ranging from physical conditions to cultural
beliefs. Albert Mehrabian pioneered the art of communications since
l960. He established an early understand of body language and nonverbal
communication. His research has been quoted worldwide. His message was:
- 7% of a message is the spoken word.
- 38% of a message indicates feelings and attitudes, also known as paralinguistic (the way words are said.)
- 55% of a message has to do with facial expressions.
His model of communication relates to the feelings and
attitudes shown in the graphics above. This involves facial expressions.
This model has become a widely used reference for communication.
If
you want to become a professional communicator, read all that you can
about verbal and nonverbal communication. See yourself in a conversation
as if you were just listening in and practice using Mehrabian's
Findings. You'll be glad you did.
This article was written by Dr.
Joyce Knudsen, Ph.D., AICI CIM, a leader in the field of
communications, a published author and originator of home study program,
worldwide.
Communications is my specialty. I believe that reading this
article will help readers to understand how the communication process
works.