COMMUNICATION

Communication Games

For people who wish to improve their communication skill, including delivering message or receiving message. Regardless of what business you are in - a large corporation, a small company, or even a home-based business - effective communication skills are essential for success.

Communication game helps you to understand effective communication, and then show you how to communicate your message in the best possible way. After completing this section, you should have a better understanding of how to communicate effectively - to individuals and groups, via spoken communications, written communications, and even electronic communications.

Why Communications Skills Are So Important:

The purpose of communication is to get your message across to others clearly and unambiguously. Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be fraught with error, with messages often misinterpreted by the recipient. When this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort and missed opportunity.

In fact, communication is only successful when both the sender and the receiver understand the same information as a result of the communication. By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you send do not necessarily reflect your own, causing a communications breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and professionally.

In a recent survey of recruiters from companies with more than 50,000 employees, communication skills were cited as the single more important decisive factor in choosing managers. The survey, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Business School, points out that communication skills, including written and oral presentations, as well as an ability to work with others, are the main factor contributing to job success. In spite of the increasing importance placed on communication skills, many individuals continue to struggle, unable to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively – whether in verbal or written format. This inability makes it nearly impossible for them to compete effectively in the workplace, and stands in the way of career progression.

Getting your message across is paramount to progressing. To do this, you must understand what your message is, what audience you are sending it to, and how it will be perceived. You must also weigh-in the circumstances surrounding your communications, such as situational and cultural context.

Second page same as teambuilding

Communications Skills - The Importance of Removing Barriers:

Problems with communication can pop-up at every stage of the communication process (which consists of sender, message, channel, receiver, feedback and context - see the diagram below) and have the potential to create misunderstanding and confusion.

The goal of an effective communicator is to get the point across without

• misunderstanding
• confusion

And at the same time lessen the frequency of these problems at each stage of this process with

• clear
• concise
• accurate
• well-planned communications

The process is as below:

Sender...

• To establish yourself as an effective communicator, you must first establish credibility. In business, this involves displaying knowledge of the subject, the audience and the context in which the message is delivered.
• Know your audience (individuals or groups to which you are delivering your message). Failure to understand who you are communicating with will result in delivering messages that are misunderstood.

Message...

• Next, consider the message itself. Written, oral and nonverbal communications are affected by the sender’s:
• tone
• method of organization
• validity of the argument
• what is communicated
• what is left out and
• individual style of communicating.
• Messages also have intellectual and emotional components, with intellect allowing us the ability to reason and emotion allowing us to present motivational appeals, ultimately changing minds and actions.

Channel...

• Messages are conveyed through channels, with verbal including:
• face-to-face meetings
• telephone
• videoconferencing
• And written including
• letters
• emails
• memos
• reports
• Different channels have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, it's not particularly effective to give a long list of directions verbally, while you'll quickly cause problems if you criticize someone strongly by email.

Receiver...

Your message is delivered to individual members of your audience. No doubt, you have in mind the actions or reactions you hope your message will get from this audience. Keep in mind, though, that each of these individuals enters into the communication process with ideas and feelings that will undoubtedly influence their understanding of your message, and their response. To be a successful communicator, you should consider these before delivering your message, and act appropriately.

Feedback...

Your audience will provide you with feedback, verbal and nonverbal reactions to your communicated message. Pay close attention to this feedback as it is crucial to ensuring the audience understood your message.

Context...

The situation in which your message is delivered is the context. This may include the surrounding environment or broader culture (i.e. corporate culture, international cultures, etc.).