Effective Communication

When the message is understood by the receiver in the same meaning as it was conceived in the brain of the sender that is effective communication.

The ability to do that is, unfortunately, with a few people; it is, however, not a gift with one is born with, it’s an art. To some it does come naturally but it’s not something that cannot be acquired.

Effective communication does require a great degree of being ‘rhetoric’ but that alone does not help. Rhetoric communication always has to be coupled with gestures; enough gestures that help in getting the point across rather than appearing to be speaking with a ‘lah-dee-dah’ accent. Simply, rhetoric communication is what we all refer to as Verbal Communication and the gestures are known as Non-verbal Communication.

A speaker may use verbal communication to transmit his message without any non-verbal tools but then you would notice that apart from the use of words there is a variation in voice, stress on specific words and change in facial expressions. An example of this is the head of state making a televised address to the country.

There are those, who when speak have no facial expressions, no voice variations. An example here is the ex-US President George W Bush.

Communication does not mean just talking nor does it mean the inability to talk fluently in a given language. You would have come across people who cannot speak English very well yet they are able to tell you exactly what they mean and what they want in the first go. That is because they structure their sentences in a way that the message is concise, clear and comprehensive. Language does not remain a barrier anymore. This is what effective communication is all about.

Knowing your target audience, knowing the sensitivity of the message, knowing the distortion and misinterpretation it can go through, you have structure your message in a way that it is well received and understood. This fact is better understood when Nissan had to withdraw its TV commercial last year. Nissan launched their fuel efficient model. It showed Arab sheikhs smashing windows and denting the car’s body just because it was too fuel efficient. Nissan had to apologize and withdraw. Do not try this with your message. People, the receivers of the message may not want to appreciate the creativity if you have hurt their feelings. It will certainly dent if not take away your credibility.

For your message to be well received you need to be credible. Credibility comes over years when your words are backed by your actions and it goes away with one-slip-of-the-tongue. Unless you, like Nissan, want to apologize and withdraw your statement. How well would that do to your credibility?

Speaking purely in terms of business and how communication affects businesses. Communication is the life blood of the business, operationally speaking. Where management does not communicate its goals, its decisions and the logic of its decisions across the organization and also does not make an effort to ask for feedback, especially from people who are on ground doing the job it causes frustration and loss in morale. Where such communication happens, planning is effective and the execution of the plans is efficient. Employees also feel being a part of the organization and the idiom “employees owning the business” actually makes sense.

I read this somewhere and will conclude on with this line, “Communication is the secret of success. Pass it on.”