Before you start a communication – plan it!

The amount of time and effort spent to plan the communication, should be relative to the importance and complexity of the communication

If we know which barriers exist, they can be eliminated, if you plan your approach

Every communication is different and you should make sure the amount of time and effort spent to plan to interaction is relative to the importance and complexity

Qs: Do you understand what I mean by this? Can someone give us an example?

Example:

My preparation for this training course, was significantly longer than the prep for a one hour meeting with my boss on the presentation I mentioned in my example

The choices you make, from the content of the message to the medium used, will impact the success of your communications.

You need to consider the following for all communications:

MESSAGE

What should your message contain?

Should your message be broad or detailed?

MEDIUM

What is the best way to send the message?

Is one medium quicker than another?

Will one medium offer better opportunity for feedback or carry more detail?

How complex and sensitive is the message?

The choices you make from the message, to how you communicate the message will impact your success. These are known as the message and the medium.

Message: the information being communicated

-What should it contain?

-Should it be broad or detailed?

Medium: how you communicate the message – i.e. meeting, phone call, email, letter

-What is the best way?

-Is one quicker than another?

-Will one provide better feedback?

-Need to think about how sensitive and complex the message is

• CODE

Will your audience understand the words?

Will the words mean the same thing to the audience that they mean to you?

Do the words have multiple meanings?

• FEEDBACK

How will you know if you’ve communicated successfully?

Will the response be delayed?

• NOISE

How many other senders and messages are out there?

What other message traffic are you competing with?

Will others try to deflect or distort your communication attempts?

• EFFECT

What are the goals or outcomes you’re hoping for?

How will you know whether you’ve achieved them?

Other than the message and medium, there are 4 other considerations

Code: again the theme of different interpretations comes up

-Will your audience understand the words?

-Will the words mean the same thing?

-Do words have multiple meanings? Sometimes best to avoid these

Feedback:

-One effective tool is play back, as we saw in one of our first slides.  Receiver repeats back to sender what they think they heard. As sender you can encourage the receiver to play back to you what they heard or you can summarise at the end to try to tease out any misunderstanding.

Noise:

-Who else is sending messages and how many?

-Is someone else trying to deflect or change your message?

Effect:

-What are you hoping to achieve?

-How will you know its been achieved?