Communication Process in Organisations - Coursework Example

Communication holds prime importance in business and daily matters as it helps to understand what the other person has to do. It is important that the communication process is complete and clear as it will decides the manner in which the listener will act on it. It is important that people listen to the message which is communicated as it has a bearing on the outcome. Communication is a process “where a message is passed on from the speaker to the respondents and the respondents react by constructing meaning out of the message communicated, responds to the speaker and does some non verbal gestures so that the speaker understand that the message has been properly communicated”. (Emmert, 1994) This entire process helps to enhance the way in which communication took place and helps the receiver to retrieve the message completely. Listening thus forms a very important part for any communication process to take place. “It helps to communicate the idea from the sender to the receiver and gets completed it the results are as desired”. (William & Stella, 1991) The importance of communicating clearly can be achieved by “active listening and understanding what the other person communicates and respond to him”. (Emmert, 1994) This will help to build “trust, respect, reduces tension and creates conducive environment”. (Nicholas, 2003) This helps to understand the message clearly and enables to interpret the message clearly. It will also make the listener understand what is expected of them and the areas they need to work on individually. A study was conducted to find out the ways in which communication can be improved. The findings reveal that “people who are skilled and posses a good reading skills are usually seen to be a good communicator as both of them depend on the same language processing skills”. (Berger, 2008) This highlights that concentration and interpretation becomes important and learned individuals are better placed to do so. Communication process thereby gets influenced by many factors which tend to be either positive or negative. Organisations need to ensure that that the factors be positive as they will help in communication process. One factor which affects communication is the medium through which communication takes place. This thereby affects the manner. For example, when a face to face communication takes place then both the speaker and the listener is able to communicate in a better way and solve all the queries at that time. This thereby provides a positive effect and affects communication thereby taking it to higher levels. A study on the same direction points out that “communication gets effected by the medium and in higher status person the process is better because that person has access to different medium of communication”. (Anne & Bochner, 1977) Thus the medium acts as a vital component and effects both in the positive and negative way. A factor which has made the communication effective is internet. It has enabled the communication process to be fast. Executives and companies can communicate with the needy online via the web which enables face to communication and all the queries related to it can be solved there. Another factor affecting the communication process in a positive manner is “the ability of the speaker and the listener to listen to each other i.e. when the speaker communicates the listener listens and vice versa”. (Allen, 2001) This helps to ensure that the person is able to solve the problems and ensure that the purpose with which communication was taking place is achieved. Communication gets affected by the culture. It creates a positive influence if the “mix of similar or different culture integrates in such a manner that the organisation is use their culture to their advantage”. (Garner, 2006) It is seen that similar cultures find it easy to integrate and thereby creating a much positive impact when compared to different culture. It is also seen that communication gets affected in a positive manner “when different culture integrates and all the culture are able to absorb the cross cultural differences to integrate into one”. (Rank, 2010) This helps as to makes organisation to function across boundaries and helps them to make the communication process act in a positive manner as the differences between the culture gets absorbed. Perception has a big role to play in the communication process. The listener based on “perception and his understanding tries to understand the message and guiding his perception helps to improve the communication process”. (Maguire, 2002) Understanding the perception clearly thereby helps to guide the communication process. Non verbal communication is a major factor affecting the communication. Ability to “understanding the non verbal factors help to understand the communication process as it helps to helps to understand gestures and body movements”. (Maguire, 2002) The effectiveness of communication process thereby gets enhanced and ability to understand the non verbal communication helps to understand communication better. The surrounding environment has a big role to shape the communication process. This can add to the positive as well as negative side of communication. Organisation ensuring a proper environment by having “proper facilities like ventilation, facility to hear and others add to the communication process”. (Nelson, 2010) This ensures that the comfort level increases which will help to improve the process of communication. Thus, various factors effects communication and it are important that these factors are moulded in a manner which provides maximum advantage. This can shape the manner in which a task is performed and help business units achieve better results which adds to their growth. Factors also affect the communication process in a negative manner. Medium also affects the communication process in a negative manner. Suppose a communication takes place over the telephone then it could lead towards the points where the listener is not able to understand the entire part thereby creating confusion and making the process ineffective. Medium affects the communication process and whether in a positive or negative way depends upon the medium. Internet also has effected communication in a negative manner as certain vital information gets leaked during the process. This makes it a risky medium and increases the risk. A study highlights that “internet usage in the field of communication has increased the risk of confidentiality, privacy, information accuracy and credibility”. (Bernhardt, Lariscy, Parrott, Silk & Felter, 2002) Thus this is having a negative impact especially in health care communication as vital details of the patients are stolen or leaked. The barriers effect communication in a negative way. If an organisation has a lot of hierarchy then “the barriers act against the communication process as it lead towards false information and also some information being missed”. (Garner, 2006) This thereby makes the communication process unclear and creates a negative impact. Having an environment which is more comfortable also affects the communication pattern as it makes the communicator and the listener relax thereby consuming more time and space thereby delaying the process. The advantages that accrues from the factors that affect communication process are as follow The advantage from the usage of medium and internet is that communication is faster and helps to ensure that the correct message passes. Since, it gives an opportunity to watch the facial expression so it helps the sender to understand whether the listener was able to decode the message thereby helping in communication. Proper listening ability helps to ensure that the message gets clearly understood. This thereby helps to ensure that the results from the process is positive and will also help to ensure that queries are solve thereby resulting in positive communication. Similar culture helps to ensure that communication is clear thereby adding to the communication process and creating a positive influence as it becomes easy to understand the surroundings and work culture. Integration of culture helps to remove the difference between the cultures thereby improving the communication process as it enables to remove the differences and ensure that the purpose of communication is achieved. Non verbal communication adds to an advantage as it helps to understand and gauge some extra points from the communication process. This helps to understand the process better and a better understanding based on it can be drawn. Ensuring a proper environment helps both the listener and the speaker to be comfortable and feel at home which thereby makes it easy to understand the communication process and helps in better understanding. The disadvantages that accrues from the positive and negative factors that effect the communication process are as follows Different medium creates confusion and sometimes also lead the communication process to such a direction that it becomes difficult to gauge the effectiveness of the communication process. Using internet increases chances of misuse by leakage of information which creates a loop hole in the communication process. This renders some useful information to be passed to the competitors thereby creating a negative influence of communication. The physical and hierarchical barriers act as a process to delay the process and also lead towards a point where vital information is missed thereby affecting the process and making the communication process loose relevance. The communication process becomes ineffective as improving the environment to a large extent makes over reliance on those factors which makes some valuable information to be concealed. The communication process will be effective and yield the desired results if the following ways and mechanism are used. It will make the process clear and will help to communicate in the most effective manner. An effective communicator differentiates himself from a poor communicator as he has certain qualities which guide him through the process. An effective listener “builds a background of the information that the speaker will communicate beforehand”. (Nichols, 2003) This helps him to understand the message clearly and enables him to interpret the message clearly. This helps the speaker as he is able to achieve the objective. Effective communication thus ensures that it “has a specific interest and purpose for communicating and tries to attempt to understand what the speakers communicate”. (Nichols, 2003) This interest helps the listener to reduce distractions. It enables him to concentrate more on the message. This makes it easy for him to understand. An effective communication process distinguishes from a poor one by “tuning and attending all communication process which will improve his understanding”. (Nichols, 2003) Where as, a poor communication process will be incomplete at times. He might be present at the venue and communicating but his mind is wandering somewhere else. He is unable to understand the message and acting on it gives wrong results. A great part of effective communication is that “an effective communicator apart from concentrating on the message tries to make connection with the speaker by making inferences, shaking his head, having eye contacts and giving non verbal gestures”. (Palmatier, 2004) This also provides confidence to the speaker as a result he is able to communicate better. Effective communication also ensures team work. A research conducted also shows that “group work helps to improve interpersonal and team work skills”. (Hick & Andrew, 1995) This will help to understand the real problem in hand also demarcate the areas that need to be worked upon. This will make understanding clear and will provide the framework to work upon. Another good part of an effective communication is that “he understands when close and cursory listening is required and adjusts accordingly at the same time takes notes of the speaker by adding certain things of his own so that his understanding becomes easy”. (Palmatier, 2004) This makes him to come back to the message in the future and if anything is missed inferences can be made by looking at it. An effective communication process will ensure that “no judgement is made till the speaker completes his message as there might be some vital thing which could affect the judgement”. (Palmatier, 2004) Thus they have patience and are ready to wait the extra moment before arriving at conclusions. This helps as it makes the listener to understand the message completely and then drawing results becomes better making the communication process effective. An effective communication process makes it a point to see “the non verbal message communicated from the speaker as when the speaker smiles or frowns, his change in pitch of tone, his eyes movement and hands movement and areas where is body language suggest to put stress”. (Joans, 2010) This will make the listener realize the important areas which needs to be considered. This also makes it interesting for the listener as speaking to a speaker in the same voice without modulation can be monotonous. This helps to create an interest and makes it easy for the listener to understand the message. This will thereby make the communication process complete. An effective communication process ensures that “the communicator doesn’t have ego and concentrates as it can be a barrier and avoid the listener to grasp all the useful information”. (Staufer, 2008) It is important that the listener is open to new ideas and this will be reflected on the output as a result of the communication process. Another factor which helps is “the atmosphere where the message is communicated”. (Joans, 2010) A good environment facilitates the listener to concentrate and enables him to understand the message clearly. This thereby makes the communication process more effective and will ensure better results. Thus, an effective communication process needs to have a focus and come up with the required changes. He needs to be effective and give regular feedback. It is important that the communication process is complete and clear as it will decides the manner in which the listener will act on it. It is important that people listen to the message which is communicated as it has a bearing on the outcome. Communication forms a very vital ingredient for any organisation and organisations should ensure that they are able to mould the resources and efforts in such a manner that it increases the effectiveness of communication and makes it a tool which will help to achieve growth. Thus, effective communication becomes a vital part for any business units. Business should use process and techniques which will help to improve the effectiveness of the communication process and help business units to grow. Organisations which are able to mould their process well are seen to shape the growth and it enables them to shape their resources which will help in growth and achieve the effectiveness of the communication process. References Anne & Bochner, “Beyond integration: factor effecting the communication of interpersonal evaluations”, Communication Quarterly, Volume 25, Issue 2, page 11-17, 1977 Allen M, “Positive influence by effective listening”, Innovative Leader, Volume 10, Number 2, page 515, 2001 Berger N, “Why Can’t John read? Perhaps he is not a good communicator”, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Volume 11, Number 10, page 633-638, 2008 Bernhardt J, Lariscy R, Parrott R, Silk K & Felter E, “Perceived barriers to internet based health care communication on human genetic”, Journal of Health Communication, Volume 7, Issue 4, page 325-340, 2002 Emmert, “A definition of listening”, The Listening Post, Volume 51, Issue 6, 1994 Garner E, “Seven barriers to great communication”, Manage Trade Learn, 2006 Hicks R & Andrew J, “developing teamwork skills inside and outside the classroom”, Social science monograph, Volume 1, Smartsearch, 1995 Joans, 2010, “Active Listening Skills”, retrieved on September 10, 2010 from http://www.joansvoboda.com/listening_skills.htm Maguire T, “Barrier to communication: how things go wrong”, Continuing professional development, 2002 Nicholas R, “Factors in listening comprehensions”, Speech Monograms, Volume 15, Issue 3, page 435-441, 2003 Nelson L, “Factors effecting effective communication”, The New York Times Company, 2010 Palmatier R, “A note taking system of learning”, Journal of Reading, Volume 17, issue 1, page 43-48, 2004 Rank J, “Cross Cultural Interpersonal Communication”, Encyclopaedia of Business Communication, 2nd edition, 2010 Staufer G, “The language experienced approach t the teaching of reading”, revised edition New York, Harper & Row, 2008 William B & Stella T, “Culture & Interpersonal Communication”, Canadian Journal of Communication, Volume 16, Number 1, page 35-38, 1991 Read More