In today's evolving world, one soft skill is essential to the growth and development of communication skills. This skill is easy to learn and master yet, many who wish to learn it ignore some basic steps thus, making it difficult for them to master it. There's a vast difference between communication and effective communication and people are good at communicating but are not suitable to communicate effectively.
Effective communication is the information or messages you shared with the audience(people you communicate to) that are received, understood and acted upon so that the aim or purpose of your intention is achieved. This means that your audience clearly understands what you have communicated and has acted on it with appropriate feedback that is mutually understood by all. For effective communication, the initiator(sender, speaker) needs to consider the following steps if she/he wants the outcome of her/his conversation to be effective. Thus, must consider;
Choice of Medium- the choice of the medium has a great chance to distort the message in the sense that the intended audience/receiver may not identify with the medium or can not be more abreast with how to decode information using the medium especially when it has to do with technology. For example, if a detergent company wants to advertise how effective its products are, then the appropriate medium to use is television where its products can be explained and demonstrated for the audience/viewers to see. Such advertisements may not be suitable for radio where the audience has to use imagery and symbolism to understand(decode) such messages.
Avoid jargon, Colloquialism and ambiguity- This would help your listeners to identify and understand your messages since there's clarity in whatever you say. Many mistakes are people does to load their speech with jargon and words that are not relevant to the audience more so if the intended audience is of different background from the speaker. Such messages should be complete and accurate for everyone to understand. When communicating, we should not assume that the audience understands everything we say. so efforts must be made to explain all technical terms to the basic level that everyone would understand.
Consider environmental and Semantic Noise-The noise of the environment needs to be considered when communicating. The noise could be physical, such as a moving vehicle, ceiling fan, ringing of mobile phone etc. All these could obstruct how the audience grasps messages especially when it relates to public speaking. Semantic noise would come in when it relates to written communication. This is when some statements written are interpreted differently by the audience instead of the intended meaning of the sender(speaker). For example,
A woman without her man is nothing.
A woman without her, man is nothing
A woman without her man, is nothing
All these three examples can be interpreted differently by the receiver thus, causing semantic noise. I believe with these three steps, you're on your way to becoming an effective communicator.
0.000 SRY