- By Dwaipayan, 01 June 2021 | 5 MIN READ
Successful leaders use communication as an essential competency to build trusting relationships, align team members around a vision, take the lead for necessary change, and drive action. Communication entails verbal, non-verbal, and spontaneous insightful delivery and receiving of messages. In favor of that, the communication process typically involves five critical steps.
Source: the transmitter of the message who is communicating
Encoding: the way a sender builds a message into an easily understood format that can be sent and received. This step necessitates the sender to know their audience and convey their message clearly and to the point to support understanding.
Channel: how you deliver your message (i.e., verbally through a meeting, phone calls, video conferencing, written, emails, memos text, and social media).
Decoding: It is how the receiver actively attends to a message to ensure accurate transmission and interpretation.
Receiver: Receives the message and brings their understanding, experience, feelings, and histories that impact how a message is received.
Any gaps, errors in these stages can lead to a critical breakdown in the communication cycle. It can destroy relationships, hurt trust, and contribute to adverse impacts on business outcomes. In medicine, law enforcement, education, and almost every profession, communication failures lead to lasting negative impacts.
The best leaders exercise these five steps in a way that leaves their teams feeling heard, recognized, and valued. Leaders have a responsibility to ensure to accomplish the communication goals.
Effective communication is tricky for a variety of reasons. Could be our absence of knowledge around cultural differences, as well as human factors such as stress, anxiety, angst, and communication skills, all play a role in the impending breakdown of communication.
There are several things to keep in mind to avoid communication breakdown.
Avoid words that are negative in nature
Avoid words that create a negative emotional reaction no matter what the intent behind the word. We undoubtedly do not need to eliminate all these words, but carefully deeming your purpose, tone, and the desired reaction can leave others frustrated.
“Why did you do that?” “Why didn’t you just do this?” “Why wouldn’t you just . . .?”
Using a “why” cause people to become defensive, guarded, and feel they need to justify their actions. While at times this is the most appropriate word to bring forth, be cautious about when and how you use it and pay attention to the reaction in others.
This word is problematic when we use it in the context of people. For example, “David is just our assistant,” “You need to just figure it out,”
The word diminishes the role, effort, and value of others. Leaders who carelessly use this language risk diminishing confidence and value amongst their team members.
The word “but” is equally disappointing “You did a great job, but” “Sorry I'm late, but” or “I wanted to help, but.” When we offer a compliment, and immediately use a but, the listener only hears the criticism that follows.
Better if we replace the word with instead. This simple switch will elevate how people feel about your comments and feedback. Try it.
Be Cautious when using Idioms
While idioms seem helpful to make a point, there is also a significant risk associated. Idioms differ as per the context ethic, cultural, racial, or religious idioms are not appropriate to use today.
The words that we have discussed matter especially in a leadership role where our teams regularly react and listen closely to what we share. Time to pay attention to the reactions you receive when speaking and just delete the words and phrases from your “memory dictionary” that are spurring a negative response.
Login to leave a comment.
By Shalini K, 13 November 2021
Sales are one of the top paying jobs, yet many sales people struggle to make it to the top. Success of a company depends on sales. In the increasing c...
By Dwaipayan, 17 October 2021
Obesity is rising, report trends of this health condition in both developed and developing countries have doubled since the 1980s. The situation among...
By Dwaipayan, 08 October 2021
A marketer needs to be on top of trends and adjust to the ever-changing marketing landscape. One thing that has remained consistent over years is mark...
By Dwaipayan, 26 September 2021
Marketers of today are all looking for inventive ways to draw consumers. In a fast-paced and ever-evolving digital marketing landscape, it’s bec...
Every week, access the best reads insights, tips & tricks. Know what's latest in the market. We put together a great round-up of content, including Technology, Management, Meditation, Leadership, and inspiring human achievement stories. Never miss a good read again!
Young or old, knowledge stays unlimited! Lifelong learning (LLL) is the continuing, voluntary, and self-motivated quest for knowledge for either personal or pro...
R&D challenges in India are deeper: As per all India survey on higher education, 2017-18 by MHRD, only 3.6% colleges run Ph.D. programme and 36.7% coll...
Seminar / Event Date: Feb 05, 2021 - Feb 06, 2021