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Learn about Investing & Business related terms

Effective Communication

November 7, 2018 by Anjali J 44 Comments

Definition: Effective communication is a process of exchanging ideas, thoughts, knowledge and information such that the purpose or intention is fulfilled in the best possible manner. In simple words, it is nothing but the presentation of views by the sender in a way best understood by the receiver.

We can say that it generally involves;

Sender: The person who initiates the process of communication by sending a message;

Receiver: The one to whom the message is to be delivered.

Content: Effective Communication

  1. Characteristics
  2. Skills
  3. Significance
  4. Barriers

Characteristics of Effective Communication

Just delivering a message is not enough; it must meet the purpose of the sender. Keeping this in mind, let us discuss the elements which make communication effective:Characteristics of Effective Communication

  • Clear Message: The message which the sender wants to convey must be simple, easy to understand and systematically framed to retain its meaningfulness.
  • Correct Message: The information communicated must not be vague or false in any sense; it must be free from errors and grammatical mistakes.
  • Complete Message: Communication is the base for decision making. If the information is incomplete, it may lead to wrong decisions.
  • Precise Message: The message sent must be short and concise to facilitate straightforward interpretation and take the desired steps.
  • Reliability: The sender must be sure from his end that whatever he is conveying is right by his knowledge. Even the receiver must have trust on the sender and can rely on the message sent.
  • Consideration of the Recipient: The medium of communication and other physical settings must be planned, keeping in mind the attitude, language, knowledge, education level and position of the receiver.
  • Sender’s Courtesy: The message so drafted must reflect the sender’s courtesy, humbleness and respect towards the receiver.

Effective Communication Skills

Conveying a message effectively is an art as well as a skill developed after continuous practice and experience. The predetermined set of skills required for an influential communication process are as follows:Effective Communication Skills

  • Observance: A person must possess sharp observing skills to gain more and more knowledge and information.
  • Clarity and Brevity: The message must be drafted in simple words, and it should be clear and precise to create the desired impact over the receiver.
  • Listening and Understanding: The most crucial skill in a person is he must be a good, alert and patient listener. He must be able to understand and interpret the message well.
  • Emotional Intelligence: A person must be emotionally aware and the ability to influence others from within.
  • Self-Efficacy: Also, he/she must have faith in himself and his capabilities to achieve the objectives of communication.
  • Self-Confidence: Being one of the essential communication skills, confidence enhances the worthiness of the message being delivered.
  • Respectfulness: Delivering a message with courtesy and respecting the values, believes, opinions and ideas of the receiver is the essence of effective communication.
  • Non-Verbal Communication: To connect with the receiver in a better way, the sender must involve the non-verbal means communication too. These include gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, postures, etc.
  • Selection of the Right Medium: Choice of the correct medium for communication is also a skill. It is necessary to select an appropriate medium according to the situation, priority of the message, the receiver’s point of view, etc.
  • Providing Feedback: Effective communication is always a two-way process. A person must take as well as give feedback to bring forward the other person’s perspective too.

Significance of Effective Communication in Business

You must be wondering, what is the role of effective communication in business? To answer this question, let us understand the following importance of effective business communication:Significance of Effective Communication in Business

Employee Management: Effective communication ensures self-discipline and efficient management since the employees are heard by the top management, and there is open communication in the organisation.

Team Building: People in the organisation work as a team to accomplish common goals, thus effective communication boosts the morale of the whole team.

Growth of the Organization: It ensures better decision making, intensifies public relations and enhances problem-solving ability. All this leads to corporate growth and development.

Build Strong Relationships: Interactions often simplify things; they positively motivate the employees to perform better and maintain long-term relations with others in the organisation.

Ascertain Transparency and Develops Trust: Effective communication is considered to be a base for building trust and assures sharing of complete information.

Facilitates Creativity and Innovation: It creates an environment where employees are free to share their ideas by exploring their creative and innovative side.

Reduces Misunderstanding: Effective communication eliminates the possibility of confusion and misunderstanding by conveying the message clearly and appropriately.

Organisational Growth: By maintaining cordial relations between the employees and the management, it enhances the functioning and leads to the achievement of corporate goals and objectives.

Barriers to Effective Communication

There are certain obstacles which sometimes hinder the process of communication, making it less useful for the sender as well as the receiver. These barriers are categorised under three groups. Let us understand these in detail below:Barriers to Effective Communication

Barriers Involving Words

Words play an essential role in the process of communication. Any disturbance or distraction in the way a message is presented may lead to miscommunication. Following are the different types of communication barriers related to words:

  • Language: It is a medium of communication. If the sender is making excessive use of technical terms, it will become difficult for the receiver to understand the message clearly.
  • Ambiguity and Overuse of Abstractions: Even if the message is presented in a non-realistic or vague context involving a lot of notions, the receiver won’t be able to connect with the idea properly.
  • Disorganised Message: When the words are not organised systematically to form a powerful message, it loses its efficiency and meaning.
  • Information Overload: The effectiveness of communication reduces when a person keeps on speaking for an extended period. Thus, leading to the receiver’s exhaustion, who won’t be able to keep track of everything that is conveyed.

Barriers Involving People’s Background

People belong to different backgrounds, i.e., culture, education level, gender, etc. These attributes majorly affect the efficiency of the communication process. It involves the following related obstacles:

  • Attitudinal Differences: At times, people are resistant to understand or change their mind when they have set their views about a particular topic. Their attitude obstructs meeting the purpose of the communication.
  • Demographic Differences: The difference in age, generation, gender, status, tradition, etc., creates a lack of understanding among people and thus, hinders the process of communication.
  • Lack of Common Experience or Perspective: The experiences of a person develops their perspective of seeing things in a particular way. This perspective varies from person to person. Therefore, it becomes difficult for a receiver to relate with the sender’s experience or views as he might have never gone through it himself.
  • Jumping to Conclusions: Some people lack the patience of listening to others and often jump to conclusions between the communication, thus neglecting the motive of the message.

Physical Barriers

These barriers can be experienced directly but challenging to overcome. These include:

  • Physical Distance: When people communicate over long distances, they miss out the non-verbal aspect of communication, since the gestures and expressions of the receiver cannot be interpreted.
  • Noise: The environment or the communication system sometimes involve unwanted noise which interrupts the process of communication making it inefficient.
  • Physiological Barriers: One of the most common barriers to effective communication is the physical disability of the people involved. Some of these are hearing impairment, poor eyesight, stammering, etc.

Thus, we can say that the significant purpose of communication is to pass on the information to the receiver in such a manner that it does not lose its significance. At the same time, the message must be received in its purest form.

Related Terms:

  1. Types of Business Communication
  2. Employee Empowerment
  3. Job Enlargement Vs Job Enrichment
  4. Marketing Information System
  5. Corporate Culture

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ljusnan dal says

    December 13, 2019 at 12:14 pm

    Good and relevant.

    Reply
  2. Anilkishore says

    December 15, 2019 at 6:44 pm

    Relevant information about effective communication

    Reply
  3. Anjali says

    December 22, 2019 at 4:10 pm

    It’s very useful

    Reply
  4. joseph KWAWU says

    December 23, 2019 at 4:27 pm

    It is very useful, it helped me understand the relevance of communication.

    Reply
  5. Talal says

    March 25, 2020 at 8:22 pm

    Very good article it helps in building a better communication skill. Thank you !!

    Reply
  6. Emad Qutran says

    April 2, 2020 at 9:13 pm

    It is very helpful .

    Reply
  7. adoch martha says

    July 9, 2020 at 1:52 pm

    effective communication is very relevant .

    Reply
  8. VeD says

    September 2, 2020 at 5:23 pm

    Thanks you or sharing this infomation.
    This is helping me a lot.

    Reply
  9. Jaya says

    November 19, 2020 at 3:16 am

    Beautiful article

    Reply
  10. Debbie says

    November 20, 2020 at 8:48 am

    Interesting & useful information

    Reply
  11. Emmaculate says

    November 30, 2020 at 6:45 am

    I love the content coz it’s well detailed and understandable…

    Reply
  12. Lamidi toheeb says

    December 10, 2020 at 3:28 pm

    I really love this ✌️

    Reply
  13. buhle says

    December 11, 2020 at 7:01 am

    useful information

    Reply
  14. THapelo says

    January 19, 2021 at 7:27 pm

    Very insughtful

    Reply
  15. MARIA says

    February 4, 2021 at 2:48 pm

    very informative

    Reply
  16. Ronald says

    February 7, 2021 at 12:35 am

    Powerful 💪

    Reply
  17. maureen says

    February 7, 2021 at 3:27 pm

    vital information

    Reply
  18. Mable Baguma says

    September 5, 2021 at 10:16 pm

    Very useful content on effective communication. Applicable in All relationship s.

    Reply
  19. Chinonye Jane Claret Osuagwu says

    September 11, 2021 at 4:35 pm

    Very true and helpful

    Reply
  20. Jemarie Baltazar says

    September 16, 2021 at 12:12 pm

    It’s very useful and relevant

    Reply
  21. Khangwelo says

    September 29, 2021 at 11:19 pm

    Very Informative piece

    Reply
  22. Dolly says

    October 11, 2021 at 6:32 am

    This was so helpful in my assignment 😊

    Reply
  23. Susan says

    October 29, 2021 at 9:56 am

    It is a very elaborate article

    Reply
  24. Naomi Sakwa says

    November 22, 2021 at 1:09 pm

    Very helpful

    Reply
  25. alli odunola says

    November 28, 2021 at 7:53 pm

    very insightful

    Reply
  26. Omperkash Sajnani says

    December 2, 2021 at 5:32 pm

    It is simple to understand. I love and enjoyed it well.

    Reply
  27. Shazeda khatun says

    January 3, 2022 at 6:25 pm

    Most important and relevant information

    Reply
  28. meba says

    January 5, 2022 at 6:43 am

    simple and effective to understand

    Reply
  29. Shikwi Dibetla says

    January 6, 2022 at 7:32 am

    Learnt that communication is key is all aspects of life

    Reply
  30. Nifemi Seun says

    January 22, 2022 at 5:06 pm

    this is a masterpiece on communication

    Reply
  31. Alice says

    January 29, 2022 at 9:23 am

    Thank you 💞

    Reply
  32. Afije Joseph says

    March 9, 2022 at 8:25 am

    It’s really useful

    Reply
  33. Sylvester says

    March 14, 2022 at 12:37 pm

    Simple and easy to understand. It really helped me understand effective communication

    Reply
  34. Zemenu Tadesse says

    March 21, 2022 at 6:31 pm

    great

    Reply
  35. KACHUNGWA STELLA BIRUNGI says

    March 25, 2022 at 4:19 pm

    I LIKE THE INFORMATION HERE, SO ARTICULATE AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND

    Reply
  36. Soni says

    April 21, 2022 at 5:02 pm

    Thxs

    Reply
  37. Abeid says

    May 1, 2022 at 4:49 pm

    It’s very good can help people to deliver good information depending on who is receiver of that message

    Reply
  38. TINDI EDWIN MARUTI says

    May 22, 2022 at 6:34 am

    I have really understood what effective communication really means in real life

    Reply
  39. Jane Esterhuizen says

    July 26, 2022 at 12:13 pm

    Useful tips.

    Reply
  40. Patson Machila says

    July 30, 2022 at 10:35 pm

    Very deep and the explanation leaves no questions in the mind of the reader. A very very good presentation!

    Reply
  41. Ebiere Kingsley says

    October 12, 2022 at 12:51 pm

    very helpful

    Reply
  42. Catherine Canoy says

    October 21, 2022 at 12:55 pm

    Helpful and easy to comprehend

    Reply
  43. Alice says

    February 15, 2023 at 7:30 pm

    Its very insightful

    Reply
  44. Nonto says

    February 18, 2023 at 9:51 am

    This piece is so mind blowing and amazingly rich in knowledge.
    Great work – You just realize there is a lot you still need to learn in life and in the workplace

    Reply

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