How communication is supposed to work

You are going to give some important information to someone; perhaps an instruction or constructive criticism. You, the source, just open your mouth, articulate your message and it transmits to the receptive listener, right? Communication complete!, you think.

Pictured above is the dreamscape of perfect, unhindered message transmission. Isn’t it wonderful? It is also rare.

You tell somebody to do something and they don’t. There can be a lot of reasons for this lack of response and one of them may be that the message never really ‘got through’ to the intended listener. Messages can be corrupted by ‘noise’. And here’s a picture of that:

You will note that there is now an unhappy face in the illustration. There will be two such faces if the sender finds out that his perfectly articulated message was not even received because of intervening noise.

• There is the obvious noise constituted by loud sounds that make it difficult to actually receive a message clearly. Remember your last cocktail party?
• There is the noise of emotional upset. When passions are inflamed, and resentments churned, the incoming signal can be mutilated in the very act of reception.
• Then there is the silent ‘noise’ of the distraction of electronic devices that robs people of attention. Perhaps it is the competing signals such as you experience in a Powerpoint presentation when you are presented with simultaneous visual and auditory information. Can you ever be a complete listener when your smartphone signals have a priori importance?

I think we all assume that, because we said it, it was heard. This is a dangerous assumption. Be mindful of possible noise, eliminate it, address it or compensate for it. But do something.

To learn more about how to become articulate, well spoken and clear in the way you speak, contact Dr. Carol Fleming at [email protected] or telephone number 415.391-9179