Communication is the process under which people or animals share information through the exchange of messages and thoughts. For people to attain effective communication they require various principal components: the sender is the main component of communication i.e. the source of a message or information (Taub & Schilling, 1986). The other component is the receiver. This is the person to whom the information is aimed. He or she is the person who needs the information presented by the sender. The third component is the message. This is the information that is transferred either from the mouth or the mind of a sender to the receiver. The last component is the medium through which the information passes through. It might be through the mouth or through a letter in writing. These are the basic principles of communication under which without one of them, communication is totally impossible. The assessment of effective communication requires strict adherence to its constituent; otherwise, sending or receiving information may never occur.
There are two forms of communication that is verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication occurs whereby the involved parties including the sender and the receiver use a word to convey their messages. Non verbal communication is the communication where no word is used. It can also be referred to as oral communication (Taub & Schilling, 1986). The methods used in non-verbal communication mainly comprise of gestures, facial expression, body language and also eye contact.
Effective communication is the type of communication where both the senders and recipients understand the emotions of each other and improves the relationship between the parties and result in problem solving, decision making and team work (Guffey & Loewy, 2010). In organizations or workplaces, effective communication skills must be put in place since unusually high decision making skills and team work is involved. Some organizations take the responsibility of teaching or training their employee’s skills of communication. The reason for this is to make sure any communication habit adopted in organizations is in line with the goals and objectives of the organization. This is mainly the work of top level managers and is sometimes delegated to the human resource officers in the companies.
Elements of effective communication
For an effective communication to be realized in an organization, there are some principles that must be followed when communicating (Bovée & Thill, 2000). The first element or principle is flexibility. This means that everyone in the organization should have the ability to understand person and be able to change his or her style of communication. The objective of this is to help and look for alternative ways of communication to suit the person whom he or she is interacting with. This element is well explained when looking at the type of communication between different levels of employees. The style that a clerk can use to communicate to the general manager is not the same style that can be used by the finance manager to communicate to the same general manager. Employees have to adopt a style of communication which they can change depending on whom they are communicating with. The style that a manager uses to address the clerks or field employees should be used when addressing the chief executive officer of the company.
The second principle in effective communication is objectivity (Bovée & Thill, 2000). An employee in every organization should be objective about people’s characteristics and culture. They should be judging other employees according to their work performance but not to their individual characteristics and weaknesses. This principle mainly applies to managers who most of the times address employees on their physical characteristics. Any word from the managers should be based on what the worker or employee has achieved in the organization and what he or she has not achieved.
Sensitivity is another element of effective communication (Guffey & Loewy, 010). One should try to be courteous enough and be sensitive to the other peoples’ cultures in his or her ways of communication. In everything that a person is talking, he or she should be considerate to peoples’ customs. In some cultures, there are some forms of communication that are not supposed to be addressed to men. Understanding of this aspect will guide the person in charge of communication on what he or she can say to some specific people and what he cannot say.
The other most prominent element of appropriate and effective communication is listening. Good listening skills help to keenly understand the other employees. After listening, a person will be able to learn what concerns are disturbing a certain employee which in turn gives the person the words to communicate to the person with the problem. Even the top managers should have the best listening skills so that they can be able to listen to the lowest level of employees. This will help the managers to come up with a solution to the problems presented to them by the employees. For one to be a persuasive speaker he or she should first be a excellent listener.
Self awareness is the other element. It simply means someone being able to understand himself and know his strengths and weaknesses (Rayudu, 2010). Personal misconceptions might interfere with someone’s way of communication. Different people have different weaknesses, for example, there are some people who are exceptionally hot-tempered. A person should keep away from addressing employees either his juniors or seniors. If they do not know how to take care of their tempers and start to communicate to people when angry, they tend to say irritating and may end up annoying the recipients of the information.
Banks and financial institutions are the place where these communication skills are best outlined and implemented. In commercial banks, there are different levels of managers who are the subordinated by small level employees including the clerks, the tellers and the secretaries. The commonly used form of communication is written communication whereby the branch manager receives a mail from head office, which is intended to be communicated to the staff including the bank cleaners. The branch manager writes an email to the operations manager who in turn forwards it to the teller clerks. The work of the teller clerk is to make sure that the information reaches even the cleaners. The teller clerks write a notice and pins to the notice board for the cleaner to read. Through this process, the information is passed to all the staff of the bank without direct contact of the branch manager to the junior staff. This communication is particularly effective since it is extremely fast as compared to other forms of communication (Rayudu, 2010). Forwarding the email from the manager to the operations manager then to the teller clerks is a process that takes twenty to thirty minutes to complete. It is highly effective because it can be sent the same day and all the staff members get the information the same day.
The effectiveness of the information is also seen in the fact that it does not encourage people to meet and get information from one person. The advantage of this is that it prevents issues like language barriers and personal differences like attitude of the managers to the employees. This makes everyone to receive the information in a respectful attitude and implement it.
References
Bovée, C. L., & Thill, J. V. (2000). Business communication today (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Rayudu, C. S. (2010). Communication (Rev. ed.). Mumbai [India: Himalaya Pub. House.
Taub, H., & Schilling, D. (1986). Principles of communication systems (2 ed.). New York: Mc Graw-Hill.
Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2010). Essentials of business communication (8th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western/Cengage Learning.
