Chapter 1: Professional Business Communication Show
Sharing means doing something together with one or more person(s). In communication, sharing occurs when you convey thoughts, feelings, ideas, or insights to others. You also share with yourself (a process called intrapersonal communication) when you bring ideas to consciousness, ponder how you feel about something, figure out the solution to a problem, or have a classic “Aha!” moment when something becomes clear. The second key word is understanding. “To understand is to perceive, to interpret, and to relate our perception and interpretation to what we already know.” (McLean, 2003) Understanding the words and the concepts or objects they refer to is an important part of the communication process. Finally, meaning is what you share through communication. For example, by looking at the context of a word, and by asking questions, you can discover the shared meaning of the word and better understand the message. Watch the following 8 minute video reviewing Types of Communication
COMMUNICATION
This is the person who starts the process of communication in operation. He is the source or originator of messages. He is the sender of messages. He is the first to give expression to message intended to reach an audience in a manner that results in correct interpretation and desirable response. When a communicator does not hold the confidence of his audience, communication as conceived will not take place. The following are the good qualities of a good communicator : 1. The Communicator Knows -
2. The communicator is interested in -
3. The communicator prepares -
4. The communicator has skill in
In contrast to the above, the following are the qualities of a poor communicator :
2. Message or content
In contrast, poor communicators often commit the following which mar the effectiveness of message sending :
Selecting and 'packaging' messages so they have a good chance of being understood, accepted
and acted upon when received is a crucial step in the communication process. It is one of the six keys to success in efforts to influence people to change their ways of thinking and of doing, that lead to social and economic improvement. Sources and causes for noise:
4. Treatment of Messages A. Matters of general organisation:
Contrast of ideas.
C. Matters of symbol variation and devices for representing ideas: 5. The Audience The importance of clearly identifying an audience cannot be over-stressed. The more homogeneous an audience, the greater the chances of successful communication. Likewise, the more a communicator knows about his audience and can pin-point its characteristics the more likely he is to make an impact. The following are some of the issues to clarify the nature of audience:
It is useful to a communicator to understand these and other traits of an audience in making his plan for communication. 6. Audience Response COMMUNICATION MODELS Fig.18. Aristotle ModelAristotle’s Model of Communication (Devito, 1978)
(Source: Public Opinion and Propaganda by Harold Lasswell, 1948) Fig.20.Lasswell'scommunicationmodel It was Harold Lasswell who first precisely delineated the various elements, which constitute a "communication fact." According to him, one cannot suitably describe a "communication action" without
answering the following questions: who said what, by what channel, to whom and with what effect? 3. Shannon and Weaver model (1949) Shannon and Weaver’s mathematical theory of communication (1949) is widely accepted as one of the main seeds out of which communication studies have grown. It is a clear example of the process school, seeing communication as the transmissions of messages. The work developed during the Second World War in the Bell telephone laboratories in the US and their main concern was to work out ways in which channels of communication could be
used most efficiently. For them, the main channels were the telephone, cable and the radio wave. They produced a theory that enabled them to approach the problem of how to send a maximum amount of information along a given channel to carry information. This concentration on the channel and its capacity is appropriate to their engineering and mathematical background, but they claim that their theory is widely applicable over the whole question of human communication. Fig.22. Shannon and weaver communication model (Source: The Mathematical theory of communication. Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, 1949). Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver gave this model. As the diagram above indicates, this communication model comprises four elements. A source of information, with a greater or lesser number of messages to communicate; a transmitter or sender with the
capacity to transform a message into a signal; a receiver which decodes the signal in order to retrieve the initial message, and finally, the destination, a person or thing for whom the message is intended. Communication, according to this model, follows a simple left to right process. The information source (say speaker), selects a desired message from all the possible messages. The message is sent through a transmitter (microphone) and is changed into signals. A receiver (say earphone),
changed back into a message and given to the destination, a listener, receives the signals. In the process of transmission, certain distortions are added to the signal which are not part of the message and these will be called noise. C.E. Osgood-Schramm Communication model5. Katz and Lazarfeld's Model
(1955) (Source: Personal influence by Eliha Katz and Paul Lazarfeld, 1955) Fig. 25. David Berlo's Model Berlo more than the others emphasized the idea that communication was a process, and the idea that “meanings are in people, not in words….” SOURCE MESSAGE CHANNEL RECEIVERCommunication -
Elements Seeing Communication - (Source: "The process of communication - An Introduction to Theory and Practice" by David Berlo, 1960). Fig.26. Rogers and Kincaid communication model (Source : Communication networks by Everett M. Rogers and D. Lawrence Kinacid, 1981). BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATIONIn between the communicator and the receiver, certain barriers considerably affect the quality of information transmission. Some of the major barriers are discussed below.
Because of the many other concerns which constantly influence our ability to concentrate on what we hear, the average listener will normally "filter out" certain things that he hears. They will simply ignore a point made by the speaker, as though it had never been presented. This can be deliberate or unintended.
For the same reason, the human mind can also distort what it hears. It is an unconscious process. Every person tends to remember best what agrees with his own values.
Our minds can receive and retain only a limited amount of information without showing strain. This is called channel capacity. This ability can vary with different audiences. Overloading the system will in effect below the mental fuse and defensively shut down the communication process.
It is the use of repetition. Even under the best condition an audience can have problems grasping or fully appreciating the significance of something new which has been presented to them. By repeating it, or by illustrating it or by restating the same point in different ways a speaker can make it easier for an audience to understand and retain the information passed on by the speaker. ` What is called the process of transferring information from one person to another?Communication is simply the act of transferring information from one place, person or group to another.
Is the process of sharing or transferring our thoughts emotions and ideas to one person or more?Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms.
What process is known as the process of exchanging and processing of thoughts and ideas?Communication is a process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions through speech, signals, writing, or behavior.
What is the transfer of thought or message from a source to a receiver through a particular medium?The transmission model of communication describes communication as a one-way, linear process in which a sender encodes a message and transmits it through a channel to a receiver who decodes it.
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