Introduction
Understanding The Communications Process
How To Communicate With Different Types Of People
How To Build Up Rapport With Anyone
How To Make Small Talk
How To Give And Receive Feedback
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A partner of a leading firm comes back to his office and says to his manager, "Did you get my message where I said, 'Ship the Enron documents to the Feds?’” The manager goes white. "Oh My God! I thought you said rip the Enron documents to shreds!”
That’s what happens when there is an error in communication. How can you make sure it never happens?
Communication is without doubt the most important skill required to live successfully. The world around you is competitive to say the least. Whether at home or at the work place, at a mall, or with friends, if you can communicate well, you have got most things going your way. People do not just listen to a good communicator; they are ready to bend or unbend to the person’s needs.
Not everybody is privileged to gain communication skills from the word ‘go’. However, all one needs is a goal to become a successful communicator and find the right source to pick up the skills, half the job is done.
One such source from where you can pick up communication skills from scratch or refine those you already have is this “Effective Communication Skills” e-course.
This e-course is divided into 6 modules inclusive of exercises and assignments that will teach you the essence of effective communication and enable you to express yourself more clearly and confidently. Moreover, the modules are simple and going through this course will be smooth-sailing.
Now go ahead, and COMMUNICATE!
Communication is vital to all of us, for without this skill we will be quite helpless and the world around us would be blank. After all every person, be it a worker, manager or a teenager, have interactions with other people almost all throughout their life.
It is easy to tell a person to do a task but the person may not interpret your command properly, thus resulting in a task that may not match your exact requirements.
That is where the difference between communicating and communicating effectively becomes apparent.
Always remember that an effective communication goes far beyond the words you say. For a communication process to be effective, one has to know the other person’s views and the style of absorbing information.
In short, if you want to convey your message across to the other persons’ mind, you need to adopt a style and approach that will evoke the desired response.
Effective communicators are well versed in the action signals and communication strategies that can be brought out from a person and adopt their style to make sure that their communications are effective.
In this chapter we will cover the basic process of communication and the issues that lead to miscommunication.
Before we go ahead, how about we do an exercise? After all it is practice that makes one perfect.
* EXERCISE *
Take a blank piece of paper and write your name in the middle and then around your name write down the names of people with whom you have frequent communication or communication. This list will include friends, family, work colleagues, etc.
As you work through this course keep referring back to this diagram of the people whom you interact with the most and apply what you learn from them as individuals. Effective communication is all about tailoring your communication strategy for different people. NO TWO PEOPLE ARE ALIKE!
The Communication Process
The purpose of communication is to get your message across to others. This is a process that involves exchanging information between a sender and a receiver. Communication is the process of exchanging information through a common system of symbols, signs, behavior, speech, writing and signals.
Let us analyze how this exchange works:
To start the exchange we need a sender who has information that needs to be conveyed and then we need a receiver who is to accept this information.
Now the sender prepares the information in an organized manner and passes it to the receiver through a proper channel (text, speech etc).
So that’s how easy it is! Just think, arrange and express!
Easy it is but the process leaves room for error, often causing unnecessary confusion and counter productivity between the sender and the receiver.
Say, for instance the case of an employee you heard “You are fired!!” instead of “You are hired!!”
Let’s consider the incident we mentioned at the beginning of this course - the business partner and his manager. The conversation was a very simple one but because of certain discrepancies ending up with disastrous consequences. So where did it all go haywire?
In that particular episode, the partner (sender) wanted the documents shipped to the feds (information). Now according to the definition the sender has arranged his information in an organized manner and passed it onto the receiver (the manager). Now the receiver seems to have got the message but he had a rather distorted interpretation of the message.
Let us bring up the partner and his thought process that lead to this conversation.
He thinks of the idea “ship the documents to Feds” then he represents this thought in form words or text and expresses it through speech.
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