Definition of communication

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Definition of communication

Communication is the exchange of messages between peoples for the purpose of achieving common meaning. Or it can define as the process by which information is exchange and understood by two or more people. A fundamental of principles communication is that the symbols the sender uses to communicate messages must have essentially the same meaning in both the sender’s and receiver’s minds.

Purpose of communication

People communicate with each other in order to get the messages they need, and utilize them for the further use, but what’s business communication different from general communication. It’s not just getting message for uses, but data involving in operating the tasks as well. The purpose of communication can be divided into specific purpose as follow:

  • To convey information:
  • To explain the nature and implications for the business:
  • To establish rules for dealing with different situations:
  • To stimulate action:
  • To create relationships between the members of the organization:
  • To form collective decisions and render them generally acceptable:
  • To instruct: instruction manual for operating a computer:
  • To evaluate: performance appraisal records:
  • To meet human and cultural needs:

Communication breakdown

You can never assume that the message in your mind will be perfectly transmitted to your receiver. We need to identify different patterns of communications and we need to draw conclusions about the most and the least effective patterns of communication, and report their evaluation to avoid misunderstanding. Communication breakdown happens when the recipient don’t receive the meaning of the message or interpret the message as the different meaning from what sender tries to encode. Communication breakdown can be seen from absences of decoding from the recipient.

Factors of communication breakdown:

  • Physical distraction : it happens when something bother the communication and lead recipient or sender from transferring the information. Example: when someone is talking to you and suddenly your cell phone ring.
  • Different channel/medium: Sender should choose the appropriate channel/ medium to assure that the information could be reach by the recipient. This involves adjusting the channel/ medium with recipient knowledge, occasion, habit, etc. Example: you could not send a written message to your illiterate client.
  • Lack of technical skills: lack of technical skills in writing, speaking, listening, presentation can affect communication breakdown. Languages need to be appropriately chooses to avoid ambiguousness of the meaning of the message. A clear voice in speaking and or presentation is required for sender to assure that recipient understand the message as what he believes. Example: A stutter person would not fit a position in which he should present a data or information.
  • Interest to the subject matter and sender credibility: Often people react more according to the source of information rather than to the information itself. It is a psychological matter that people would likely paying attention and listen carefully about something that interest them. Moreover, it is also being proved that people would likely forget or paying less attention to the information which doesn’t interest them. It is necessary to address the message in an exciting way so that recipient would pay enough attention. Example: In a presentation, it is very important to have an atmosphere of humor, and avoid a situation where people are bored because of much too seriousness.
  • Inadequate information: Sender should provide enough information about the message so it will not mislead the recipient or make them confusable with the information. Example: In a letter, sender wrote: “For further information, please do not be hesitate to contact us”. But, the sender didn’t provide contact number, email. Therefore, the recipient can not decode his response appropriately.
  • Lack of trust: lack of trust also affects the communication. Example: a person who is a liar, when he says something which is true, people will not believe and disregard the message.
  • Overload information: overload information will lead to misunderstanding. Therefore, it is important to address the message shortly and clearly. Example: a business letter which is too long will lead people to misunderstanding. Therefore, usually they write a conclusion or bullet point about the context of the business letter.
  • Convention of meaning: different word interpretations are especially notable in miscommunicated instructions and in reactions to denotations, connotations, and euphemisms.
  • Filtering: messages are filtered through the contents of receiver’s mind. Those contents include their experience, knowledge, biases, emotion, cultural background. Two people have different minds. Any people’s filter differ the meanings they give to comparable messages may differ. Recipient message may not be precisely the same as the one that the sender would give it.
  • Perceptions of reality: Abstracting; focusing on some details and omitting others is a process of abstracting. I  countless instances abstracting is necessary, but we should be careful about “slanted” statements. Inferring; conclusions made by reasoning from evidence or premises. Everyday most of us find it necessary to act on some inferences. We make assumptions and we draw conclusions even though we are not able to immediately verify the evidence. Some inferences are both necessary and desirable, others are risky and even dangerous.
  • Favorable and unfavorable information: the effective communicator considers the receivers, and whenever possible, emphasizes the points the receivers will regard as favorable or beneficial. Receivers often react to unfavorable information by rejecting, distorting or even avoiding it.
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Avoiding communication breakdown

  • Practice makes perfect. For stutters, they need to do some more practice. It has been proved in China, a proclaimer named TEMOS. He was a stutter and he practiced his speech with facing the sea and tried to speak louder than the roar of the sea. He succeed in this way and he became the most famous proclaimer.
  • Practical skills such as:
  • Listen patiently to what the other person has to say, even though you may believe it is wrong or irrelevant. Indicate simple acceptance ...

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