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Resources

Successful Communications

Resources

Successful Communications

This page was last updated on June 23, 2017

The ability to communicate successfully is important for a rewarding personal and business life.

In business this can include:

In Britain’s economy today, many people’s job is to advise on a subject they know and understand. Einstein said “If you can’t explain it simply, then you don’t understand it well enough”. But a challenge for creative problem solvers who do understand their subject well enough is to be able to convey meaning – whether to a colleague or to a customer – so the recipient understands as well and has the clarity to decide what to do.

The meaning must pass through the adviser’s background and be formed by their ability, and also pass through the environment and the different background and ability of the recipient. Just providing a technical analysis doesn’t maximise the adviser’s value.

A model for successful communication

Using the model below as a guide we identified and unpicked the elements in each stage.

  1. You, the sender (Your background and attidues)
  2. Your ability to shape and send messages of your meanings
  3. The quality of the message (Substance, acceptability, form)
  4. The characteristics of the medium (Does it facilitate or deter the message?)
  5. The environment (External elements which help or block the message)
  6. The receiver's ability to receive
  7. The receiver's background and attitudes

Determinants of successful communications

1 & 7 Sender and receiver background

2 & 6 Sender and receiver abilities (Skills in message sending)

3 Quality of the message, is it?

4 Characteristics of the medium

5 The environment (Factors which represent noise or distraction)

Watch Daniel Simons' classic video below.  It illustrates the way we filter what we pay attention to. Instead of logging every detail in our surroundings, we extract a few key features and rely on memory, or imagination, to fill in the rest.

 

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