Effective communication at work is about knowing your employees and choosing the right message and channel for transmission. It may be necessary to develop a communications plan to outline strategies. The company’s culture is reflected in the nature of office communications, and business can hinge on effective communication.
Importance
1) Important for the development of human civilization
2) The ancient world depended heavily on oral communication
3) With the evolution of human civilization, the art and science of written communication were developed
4) Writing became more important as a means of keeping permanent record of communication
5) The origination of communication principles can be traced back to the bureaucratic traditions of China.
Benefits
A Valuable Job Requirement
1) Managerial career requires mainly intellectual inputs to perform tasks effectively and hence an ability to communicate effectively becomes a valuable asset.
2)Communication is a primary responsibility in many careers, such as marketing, sales, public relations, human resources, customer relations, financial services, and teaching.
3) Even if your work is mainly with figures, as in the accounting profession, the ability to communicate to those who read your financial reports is essential.
An Essential for Promotion
1) Managers spend 60 to 90 percent of their working days communicating – speaking, writing, and listening.
2) Ability to communicate is one of the very important aspects of becoming successful in managerial career.
3) Develop the right attitude
4) Be flexible
Components
Context
1) Every message, whether oral or written, begins with context.
2) It is a broad field that includes country, culture, organization, and internal stimuli.
3) Every country, culture and organization has its own conventions for processing and communicating information.
4) Your attitudes, opinions, emotions, past experiences, likes and dislikes, education, etc. influence the way you communicate.
5) Especially important is your ability to analyze the culture, viewpoint, needs, skills, status, experience and expectations in order to communicate effectively.
6) Words alone have no meanings. They are meaningful in a given context.
Sender - Encoder
1) As a sender-encoder, you use symbols that express your message and create the desired response.
2) Alphabets are verbal symbols, which are used to design a message.
3) Posture, gesture, eye contact, facial expressions, silence, etc. are some of the non-verbal symbols managers use to encode a message.
Message
1) It is the core idea that on wants to communicate and it contains both – verbal and non-verbal symbols.
2) A communicator’s first task is to decide exactly what the message is and what other information to include.
3) Choice of medium is crucial in determining the effectiveness of the message being communicated.
Medium
1) The selection of communication channel depends on all the contextual factors and the nature of the message itself.
2) The choices of medium include oral conversation, presentation, meeting, on one hand and e-mail, letter, memorandum, report, proposal, on the other hand.
Receiver-Decoder
1) The receiver of the message - either a reader or a listener – is also known as decoder.
2) The receiver-decoder is influenced by the context and by the external and internal stimuli.
3) The receiver decoded the whole message – the verbal and non-verbal contents of the message.
Feedback
1) The receivers’ response to a message depends on the meaning that is communicated through the message.
2) The receiver gives feedback using either a verbal or non-verbal or both symbols.
3) Feedback can be an oral or a written message, an action or simply silence.
