Most of the verbal communication you do is from one individual to another. This is true whether you are in a family, social, or work setting.
One-on-one verbal communication gives the greatest opportunity for accuracy, because immediate feedback can tell you if they understood you accurately.
But effective communication involves more than precision.
The purpose of most communications is to influence the attitudes and behaviors of those we address. Since the human race is made up of billions of individuals, each with a different way of responding, no one approach is universally effective. Therefore, it is important that you learn to express yourself precisely and in a way that achieves your purpose towards the person you are addressing.
The basic process of communication
To achieve accuracy and effectiveness in communication, you must understand the basic process of communication. It has four requirements:
¨ A message must be conveyed.
¨ The message must be received.
¨ There has to be an answer.
¨ Every message must be understood.
Let’s look at these requirements one by one.
A message must be conveyed
That sounds pretty simple. You know what your thoughts are and you know how to translate them into words. But that’s where we lose the simplicity.
Each of us has his own mental dialect. It is the common language of the culture in which we grow up, modified by our own unique life experiences. Our life experiences add color and shades of meaning to different words.
When you speak, your mental dialect must be translated into the mental dialect of the listener. Then the words you speak take on a different color as they pass through the ears of the person listening to you.
Depends where you are
You can probably think of numerous opportunities for misunderstandings in your work and in your culture. If you tell your travel agent that he wants a flight to Portland, be sure to specify Maine or Oregon. Otherwise, you may end up on the wrong shore. A colleague of mine once flew to Ohio to attend a conference in Columbus. Too late, he realized that the group he was supposed to address was in Columbus, Georgia. If someone in my hometown of High Point, North Carolina asks me, “How did Carolina do in the big game last night?” I know the reference is to the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. If someone in Columbia asks the question in those precise words, I know that “Carolina” means the fighting cocks of the University of South Carolina. In most cities, if you ask a newsstand operator for the Sunday Times, they’ll hand you a New York Times. But in St. Petersburg, Florida, or Seattle, Washington, he’s likely to get the local paper.
A message should be received
The second basic requirement of the one-to-one communication process is that the message is received and understood. Effective communicators know they haven’t conveyed their meaning until they’ve made sure the other person received it exactly as they sent it. They test, with questions and observations, to make sure that the true meaning they wanted to convey has passed through the filters and has been received and understood.
there must be an answer
The goal of all communication is to get the desired response. He wants to say something correctly and for his listener to understand what he means by it. But you also want the listener to do something in response.
Every message must be understood
Once a message has been delivered, received, and responded to, it’s time to take stock of what each person has communicated. The communication cycle is complete only when you gain a clearer understanding of the person you want to communicate with. You may not always agree with the other person, and the other person may not always agree with you, but it is important that you understand each other.