Why Poor Communicator Fails and Good Communicator Succeeds?

Can anyone be successful without himself, his product(s) and/or service(s) being highly appreciated or valued by others? Can he, his product(s) and/or service(s) be valued - not to mention valued highly - if he cannot communicate well? If your customers or the people around you simply cannot grasp what you are promoting, talking or writing about or acting, singing and so on, what chance is there for success in business and/or in personal life?

Very often, people do not communicate well not because they are born poor communicators. Most often than not, they simply fail or make no efforts to understand what are involved in any communication process and at which parts of the process, communication can go wrong.

Therefore, whether with our targeted customers or the people around us in our lives, to be good in communication and do well, we need to know that there nine (9) fundamental elements involved in any communication process, namely:
* the two (2) parties in communication - the sender and the receiver of message;
* the two (2) major communication tools - the chosen message and the transmitting media;
* the four (4) main communication functions - encoding, decoding, response, and feedback;
* and lastly, the ' background noise' - the random and competing messages in our surrounding that may interfere with our intended communication.

Sender must always know:
* to whom he/she wants to communicate or "what audiences" to reach; and,
* what responses to get in return.

The messages encoded/sent must be capable of being decoded/received accurately by our target audience. The media chosen to transmit the encoded messages must be capable of reaching our target audience and there must be feedback channel to monitor responses or to verify accurate reception of the messages.

The feedback channel is important because the target audience may sometimes not decode the messages as intended by the sender for three (3) possible reasons:

1. Selective attention: The receiver - being bombarded by too many commercial messages or happenings in any day - might have tuned himself or herself to receive only catchy, short and clear messages such as those with bold headlines rather than informative wordy essays.

2. Selective distortion: Receivers tend to hear what fits their belief systems - Often adding things to the message that is not there ("amplification"); or, do not hear what is there ("levelling"). Sender's message must therefore be simple, clear, interesting, and repetitive.

3. Selective retention: Receivers are likely to have high recall of messages sent by senders whom they have positive initial attitude and to whose messages they have rehearsed support arguments.

Therefore, very obviously, effective communication are influenced by:

* The credibility of the sender in the eyes of the receiver;

* The compatibility of messages with the receiver's existing beliefs, opinions, dispositions;
* Whether it is on receiver's 'open positions' - unfamiliar, lightly felt issues that do not go against the core of the receiver's value system or beliefs;

* Standing / status of the sender - expertise, power, objectivity, likeability, status of the sender;

* The social context of the receiver - peer influence, family influence and the likes.

The more that we know about where communication can go wrong in the communication process, the better it is for us, our products and services.

By:
GT TANHALIM, Douglas