Key elements required for effective communication

Key elements required for effective communication

1) Know what you are communicating - Knowing what you are communicating is very important. When communicating, individuals or groups of individuals should correlate their thought process with the sensitivity they are communicating. Communication is not a lifelong process but involves lots of apparent motion, explanation, and feedback, and therefore, subject matter expertise is essential. If you fail to make the necessary explanations, then you may lose your credibility as a communicator.

2) Know the size and composition of the people you are contacting - it is essential to know the structure, group size (one-to-one or one-to-many or many-to-one), and cultural background of your listeners and your communication style level-up or level-down based on that. If you cannot level your communication style up or down depending on the need, you will be considered incompetent or stupid.

3) Credibility, Integrity, and Trustworthiness - Do you walk your talk? Are you a reliable and serious communicator, or are you an entertainer or publicity seeker? How honest are you in your communication? Are you a habitual liar? Are you authorized to communicate, or are you the right person to communicate on the subject or matter that you are discussing or debating about? What's been your background? All these affect your communication process and your credentials as a communicator.

4) Communication time - Delaying communication or communicating the wrong message at the right time is as good as receiving it without any communication. For example, you could have saved your relationship, or you could have maintained your high performance, or you could have brought in a very talented candidate. Still, you missed it because you misunderstood your communication. There is a right time for every communication and discussion, but unfortunately, the right time is not when you decide to do it right. Just shown in a joke between a doctor and a patient.

Doctor: I have good news and bad news to communicate with you.

Doctor: The good news is that we have been able to prolong your father's life one day, and the bad news is that I forgot to communicate this to you yesterday.

An excellent communicator knows the right time to communicate.

5) Accurate and straightforward - The complexity and longevity of the communication process kill the message's essence and effectiveness. The message needs to be simple, direct, and precise. At this point, I remembered one of my department heads. When asked to shed light on a concept or provide a summary, it would send 75–100 pages and a document of 99%, which would be irrelevant text and data.

6) Feedback - Feedback is critical as it ensures that the message is understood and accepted in such a way that there are no differences between the sender and receiver.

Some things should be avoided to ensure effective communication.

1) Assumptions - There are two more issues related to beliefs.

A) There should be no space for ambiguity in communication between the sender (s) and receiver (s). The message should be clearly stated and understood by both parties, and nothing should be left to fancy beliefs. Any kind of perception can be fatal to the execution or follow-up of a message.

B) between the boss and subordinates, between team members, between the employer (or the employer's representative), and any two people who share emotional closeness, miscommunication, or lack of communication or misrepresentation in communication. This leads to a lack of trust in relationships and gives room for gossip and rumors, distorting relationships, confidence, and credibility.

2) Common Lingo - In group communication, it is critical to communicate in a language understood by everybody else in the group to avoid any conflict of interest and ensure fairness and transparency. Setting-up a common lingo with one or two or a set of people within a group, which in a way eliminate others from the communication process and make them look embarrassing, not only shows you as disgraceful, disrespectful, scandalous, and despicable but also put questions on your credibility, honesty and communication skills. In a group situation, such things need to be avoided; these put us in an awkward and embarrassing condition.