I once took a public speaking class where the teacher did two things that will always that I will always remember. The first was to play the movie Cast Away all the way till the part where Wilson the volleyball is lost to the sea. Then she immediately stooped the movie and had has discuss what was our initial thoughts. The part to me that stood out immediate was the lack of communication until Tom Hanks accidentally brings Wilson to life. She asked me why I brought this up, and I immediately responded with ” Tom Hanks hast spoken more than 5 words since the plane crashed. I could not imagine hearing any voices for that long.” In that same class, we then listened to the rock classic ” Communication Breakdown” by Led Zeppelin. After the song, we discussed in depth about how a communication breakdown occurs. I had never truly listened to the lyrics of that song and it was amazing to me to listen and interpret them.
Communication is defined as interpersonal acts that exchange meaning and information.[1] But as I learned in discussing that Led Zeppelin song, communication, while simple, has quite a bit of things to go through to be understood correctly. For proper communication, the originator of the message is called the sender, and the process of creating the message is known as encoding. The receiver is the person to whom the message is transmitted, and the process of understanding the message is known as decoding. In between those two people is the method of transmission of the message, which is referred to as the channel.[2] So, in layman’s terms, the sender creates a message, sends it out and the receiver then must listen and interpret the message. Easy enough right? Not quite.
The message must be decoded correctly, or the meaning of the message can get lost. How can that be you say? Well, what if the message was decoded and interpreted incorrectly by the receiver? This happens quite often and easily, especially with all the various ways to communicate these days. Take an email for instance. Have you responded to an email in all CAPS on accident? I sure have, and when I do that paired along with a short response, it sure comes off as I am irritated. I probably just fat fingered the caps lock and was so busy I did not even notice until a response came back, and I saw it. The receiver of that message must interpret my response, which came across as “yelling” and figure out how to respond back accordingly, in hopes of not potentially causing me to get more upset. Text messages are notorious for this lack of detectable emotion for the most part. There exist many barriers to communication and these may occur at any stage in the communication process. Barriers may lead to your message becoming distorted and you therefore risk wasting both time and/or money by causing confusion and misunderstanding. Effective communication involves overcoming these barriers and conveying a clear and concise message.[3] To communicate effectively, you have to understand how the message can be interpreted on the receivers end, and to avoid confusion, you have to be clear and concise in your initial message.
Last week at work someone was asking me where we stood on an item I was tasked with. I could not find the email for the life of me that everyone kept referencing to me. I looked and looked and finally I asked for someone to resend it to me and apologized. Come to find out the original sender had confused two firms we were in communication with about platform availability, and they had replied the email chain for firm A but was discussing firm B. When I asked why we had sent an email from firm A to firm B, that person replied they had no idea and that we should be talking to firm B. This is a perfect example of communication breakdown. From the title of the email, I decoded the message as being about Firm A and I was supposed to be focused on firm B. How was I to know this? I could not know, hence the breakdown in communication. I bet I wasted like 30 minutes looking for an email that was incorrectly tagged. This is not the first time it will happen and will not be the last time. I have learned over the years in corporate America that clear and concise communication is as important as understanding your role. I am a notorious one word or one sentence response person. This gets me in trouble at times, as the receivers of my message take my shortness as being irritated or difficult. I have been called to explain the shortness of my emails, and I just laugh and tell folks I was in a meeting or call and felt an immediate response was needed and kept it short. I once was called out for not actually typing into my reply Hi and the person’s name, I was responding to. All my responses from that point on have included the persons name and at last a sentence or two. I was not being clear and concise in my responses, and the intent of the message was lost on my receiver, because of egocentrism we think that the difference is easy to perceive. As we are writing an e-mail, we write it with our own perspective. We know what we mean, after all. And we use that frame of reference to make assumptions about how other people are going to interpret us, which is a bias that can lead to miscommunication.[4]
Clear and concise communication is quite important to me, as I am a very analytical person with a heavy splash of emotion. When I get a communication that is not clear to me, I start to over analyze what might in fact be an amazingly simple request. My wife must remind at times when I over communicate something to my son to remember that he is 12, and I lost him after 30 seconds into my message. Knowing your audience is also a big key in clear communication. Explaining something to my 12-year-old the same I explain things to professionals at work will never allow him to decode the message correctly. The irony in this that my 12-year-old and work have a lot on common these days in that neither listens to me. Which makes me wonder, is something with them or is my message not getting thru?
[1] Schneider, F. W. (2012). Applied social psychology: understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Pub.
[2] Schneider, F. W. (2012). Applied social psychology: understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Pub.
[3] Communication Barriers. http://phicare.com/competencies/communicationbarriers.php.
[4] canvas learning management system. Penn State Canvas Login. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697169.
Sammy M Ibrahim says
Absolutely! I always make sure to add a name, no matter what. I also elaborate after answering their question. I’ve come to realize that that because we cannot interpret the tone of an email, if a suggestion was posted to me I cannot just reply with a yes, no or maybe. As our module covered in lesson 4,we will then need to try to reduce our own biases when creating our message and also try to reduce those biases in those we are working with. I take my time, and then craft a response that covers everything covered. This has accomplished two things for me.
1. This approach has led to less emails from my colleagues when we are discussing an issue or idea. By trying to eliminate any noise in my response and by being precise in my response I have found that people are actually thanking me for clear and concise responses.
2. This approach has slowed me down, allowing any emotion that dissipate before I start to respond. My emails have become more professional in my opinion. This also has allowed me to take in the information I received, process it better. I have found that sometimes, in that review of information process I can see that the solution or idea being proposed might need some additional thought.
This approach has also has been helpful in meetings. I have taken a step back, listened to everything being said, all responses to those topics and compare them to my thoughts. This led me to make my point in a well versed response that has gotten some great feedback.
Before we went fully remote, I was in a rush to respond to emails. Now, being home since all meetings are virtual, it has allowed me time to interpret what is being said better. If we ever back to the office, I will no longer rush to respond to an email. I will get to my meeting, and either respond if time allows or I will wait till I get to my desk before firing a response back. That extra 30 minutes or so to respond to an email really does make a difference. I hope this helps!!
References
canvas learning management system. Penn State Canvas Login. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697169
cmw6631 says
Your public speaking class sounds much more interesting than the one that I took! Kudos to the professor for incorporating relatable examples.
As you mentioned, communication is something people view as an easy task, because we do it every day, but it doesn’t take much for a misunderstanding to create a bad situation. “People tend to selectively perceive information, and judge its relevance and importance in the context of their own perceptual preferences” (Moran et al., 2014, p.38). Yes, I’ve been there too, rushing to a meeting and responding with a quick reply so the sender isn’t waiting on my response. Can you suggest any techniques that you’ve adapted to ensure effective communication at work?
References
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Global leaders and intercultural communications. In Managing cultural differences (9th ed., pp. 34-70). Routledge.