Communication is an inseparable aspect of daily life and we cannot live without communicating with anyone. Communication can take place in both ways; either in-person communication or communication through various social media platforms. However, effective communication is something that you need to know for various business purposes. As we communicate with innumerable people daily, we do not know what is the percentage of communication and how well it reaches the desired audience.
Effective communication means where we know what we are trying to communicate and the audience is getting exactly what we are trying to say. This communication is a very important aspect of both our professional and personal lives. It involves developing certain skills with the help of which we can exchange information with more clarity, understanding, and empathy. To know all about what is effective communication and how it can improve your career, do go for Project Management course as it will be a plus point in your career ahead.
What is Effective Communication?
Effective communication definition is the process of exchanging or transmitting ideas, information, thoughts, knowledge, data, opinion, or messages from the sender through a selected method or channel to the receiver with a purpose that can be understood with clarity. The process of effective communication makes both the sandal and receiver satisfied. It is a cyclic process that starts with the sender and also ends with the sender as the sender receives a response or feedback from the receiver.
Communication can occur in multiple forms and the information can be communicated from one person to another in various ways. The different forms of communication can be stated as follows:
- Verbal communication
- Non-verbal communication
- Written communication
- Visual communication
These forms of communication can take place in person, over the phone, or through various digital platforms. While the effectiveness of your communication can vary, it affects your professional area in various ways. The more effective your communication will be, the more you will be good at your work and personal aspects.
Although it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of your communication, you can feel or see its impact on your work. According to the reports from a survey conducted in the USA and UK where almost 1 lakh employees lost $62.4 million on average in a year as a result of poor communication. On the contrary, the companies which involve effective communication got almost 50 Percent higher total returns and made the stakeholders content.
Effective communication examples can be stated as active listening, giving and taking feedback, empathy, and respectfulness, responding to messages, having volume and clarity in messages, understanding non-verbal data, building friendliness and confidence, adapting your communication style to the audience, and so on.
Why is Effective Communication Important in Business?
The tricky part about effective communication is whether what we are trying to say is exactly understood by the receiver or not. You must communicate effectively because of the following reasons:
Effective Communication in General Life
- It brings people together and helps build and maintain relationships.
- It encourages the development of building trust with each other.
- It helps to transform a group of people or a team into an effective unit.
- It gets your message across and helps to establish an understanding with your listeners.
- It encourages people to become more innovative so that they can be productive.
- It helps to increase accountability in a person so that it can increase the workflow of a particular process or unit.
Effective Communication in Workplace
Effective communication in the workplace can help you in the following manner:
- It can help you to build an efficient team and manage the team members and other employees if required.
- It can enhance your innovation and creativity and you can reap its fruits as multiple benefits.
- It can help you to grow your company at a fast pace as good communication will help you to get better results.
- You can retain more and more sincere employees in your company with the help of effective communication.
- It will help you to build strong relationships among employees and get more opportunities for your company.
- It increases the engagement of employees in their work and also establishes responsibility toward their team.
- Another important benefit of effective communication is that it increases customer satisfaction.
- It helps to easily make decisions and carry out discussions that are goal oriented.
Effective Communication in Personal Life
Effective communication in your personal life can improve your relations with people in the following manner:
- It can improve your mental health and social relations with people around you.
- It can help you to be more emotionally stable as you can better communicate with people.
- It can improve your existing connections with your peers and can develop a deep bond.
- It can help build new relations that are based on trust and transparency.
- It can also enhance problem-solving skills that can help you resolve conflicts with people around you.
Significance of Effective Communication in Business
Communication plays a fundamental role in various aspects of a business. Thus, you must have proper internal communication as well as effective communication outside your organization. The following reasons will let you know what makes communication effective and why should it be a focus in your business:
1. Employee Management
Managers are ought to be good communicators and they are supposed to inform their team members and employees of what is expected from them. With effective communication, the management of employees becomes easy as the managers also give constructive feedback on their performance to build pattern relations and also improve organizational work. With good communication skills, a manager also gets to know what are the personal goals of an employee that he may wish to work towards.
2. Team Building
A more cohesive and effective team will stand with the encouragement of effective communication in an organization. It will boost the morale of the employees and team members. Employees will be happy to perform their roles with the idea that they are more clearly informed about the organizational vision. Good communication practices directly influence the importance of team building in a workplace. Effective communication also includes the aspect of phrasing the employees about their achievements and making them understand that they are working towards a common goal.
3. Growth of Organization
Poor communication or lack of communication can lead to the downfall of an organization. This is a true and bitter statement to make. without proper internal and external communication, companies will face a lot of struggles to survive. Effective communication also results in removing unnecessary delays in implementing policies and increases the productivity of an organization leading to the growth of the same.
4. Build Strong Relationship
Good relationships are built and maintained with the help of encouraging positive interactions with the other employees and team members and that can only happen if you have the skills of effective communication. Communication is the key to the process of positive encounters. Without effective communication, it will be impossible to construct and foster positive and productive relationships.
5. Ascertain Transparency and Develop Trust
Companies remain more transparent with constant internal and external communication. This is very important when you are trying to build trust in your product, services, and brand. It is also applicable for building the trust of the employees in the higher management and vice Versa. Transparency and trust are very integral parts of an organizational process, especially when dealing with tough decision-making.
6. Facilitates Creativity and Innovation
Creativity and innovation can only take place when employees feel free to communicate their new and innovative ideas to higher management. With the help of effective communication, you can make your employees comfortable so that they can feel free to speak their new ideas and integrate cooperation. Without effective communication, employees will not be able to fully communicate their innovative or creative ideas, as a result, will not be implemented for the betterment of the company.
7. Reduces Misunderstanding
A major drawback of poor or lack of communication is that it creates a lot of misunderstanding between the employer and the employees. If the employee lacks the relevant communication skills then it becomes very difficult for the employer to understand what the employee is trying to say which leads to unnecessary misunderstandings. So with effective communication, misunderstandings can be duly reduced.
8. Organizational Growth
With proper communication, organizations tend to grow as it removes all the discrepancies that are related to information, data, and messages. Effective communication makes the organizational process faster and more appropriate so that it can deliver the desired results and can aim toward organizational growth. As a result, it increases the profit and productivity of the company and also builds goodwill among the customers.
Effective Communication Skills
Communicating with a person is a skill as well as an art that comes with experience and constant practice. However, some predetermined skills are known as the key to effective communication, which are enumerated as follows:
1. Observance
You must possess sharp observational skills for performing effective communication. As a professional, it is expected from you that you observe what is happening in and around your organization so that you can gain more information and knowledge and convey messages to your team members.
2. Clarity and Brave
You should draft the message in understandable and simple words. drafting a simple message will let your employees have clarity about what you are trying to communicate. The receiver should get the desired message and understand it and that is why it should be clear and precise.
3. Listening and Understanding
A key aspect of good and effective communication is that the receiver must be a good listener so that he can properly understand what the sender is trying to say or communicate. The receiver should be alert in catching the message of the sender and interpret the message properly.
4. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional awareness and intelligence are some major requirements for effective communication. you must have the ability to emotionally influence others so that they work towards the organizational goal from within and not only for the sake of their own interest.
5. Self Efficacy
To achieve the goal of effective communication it is important that as a manager who has responsibility for his team members, you must have faith in yourself that you can achieve the communication goals. Self-efficacy will lead you to better understand the goals of the organization so that you can achieve them.
6. Self Confidence
When you are trying to communicate a message to another person do not forget to be confident enough in what you are trying to communicate. Self-confidence will let you have a clear vision of the purpose of your communication so that the receiver can also interpret your message clearly.
7. Respectful
To enhance the essence of effective communication it is important that while delivering a message you must respect the ideas, values, beliefs, and conceptions of the receiver. You should maintain courtesy so that the receiver may interpret your message as you want it to.
8. Selection of the Right Medium
There are multiple mediums available so that you can communicate your message. You should be mindful of choosing the correct medium for your message. You can select the right medium depending on the nature of your message, the priority of the situation, the choices of the receiver, and so on.
9. Providing Feedback
To successfully have effective communication it must be a two-way process. So to understand the perspective of the other person, the sender, and the receiver must give feedback to one another depending on what they think or want to say about the message.
To understand the process of effective communication in detail, take PMP certification course which will help you communicate effectively both as the sender and the receiver.
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7 C's of Effective Communication
The 7 C's of effective communication has been developed to ensure that you become a good communicator and communicate with your peers most effectively and efficiently. it will help you to better engage your audience and increase your productivity at work. The 7 C's of effective communication are enumerated as follows:
1. Clear
When you are trying to build effective communication you must ensure that your communication is clear and the receiver does not have to assume things to interpret your message. Clear communication helps to save time and effort from both ends. Do not try to gather too much information in one single communication. This will lead to disruption in the understanding of the receiver. Make the communication clear and to the point.
2. Correct
Always make sure that your communication is correct. As a professional, you may have to write a lot of emails in a single day which often causes typing mistakes. Make sure that you get rid of these mistakes and that there is no disturbance in your communication. Apply spell check and proofread your message before communicating it to the receiver. Do not spell the name of the receiver incorrectly and ensure that the technical terms that you are using are understandable to the receiver.
3. Complete
Complete communication involves all the information and details that the receiver should know before responding or taking action based on the communication. You can also approach the 'call to action' option in your email if you want the receiver to take some extensive action based on your communication. An incomplete message wastes a lot of time and effort of the team members and creates misunderstanding. So make sure that your communication is complete.
4. Concise
Good communication involves your message being prim and proper. stick to the point of what you are trying to communicate and do not beat around the bush. Very often people tend to say five sentences in a place where they could have communicated the message in just two sentences. This can cause a lack of efficiency in the organization which can negatively impact productivity too. Your communication should be crisp and accurate to make it effective.
5. Concrete
Before making a statement or trying to communicate with the other person you should be sure about the idea that you are trying to communicate. You should have faith in what you want to convey to the listeners. A concrete idea will lead to a better statement so that your audience can understand your message. Concreteness is a very important aspect of communication especially when it is related to advertising, sales, and marketing. You should grab the attention of the audience with your concrete communication rather than boring them.
6. Coherent
You cannot be an effective communicator if you become illogical while communicating. Your communication needs to have a logical flow in order to make it effective. your statements and messages should be interconnected to the previous exchange of messages so that you can stick to the main topic and not divert the attention of the receiver. This will help the receiver to keep a track of what the topic is and what it is that you want to convey.
7. Courteous
Being a professional in the corporate world, being courteous is one of the first important qualities that you should have in yourself. Courteousness is a necessity to maintain a healthy working relationship so that you can have a positive exchange of thoughts and messages with your colleagues. Work partners are not necessarily friends so being courteous is one of the many important things that one should implement. Arguments, insults, and fights among colleagues will result in bad morale and will eventually lower the productivity of the organization.
Process of Effective Communication
The process of communication is a long one that involves certain elements. Without the major elements of effective communication, the process cannot be a success. A well-defined project definition is a key element of effective communication that ensures all stakeholders are on the same page and can work together towards project success. The following are the elements of the process of effective communication:
1. Sender
The sender lays down the foundation of effective communication. The message is based on the idea and expression of the sender. Thus, the sender is the initiator of the communication. The sender is the one who encodes the idea that he wants to communicate in a message that can be understood by the receiver.
2. Message
The message is the idea, thought, speech, symbol, sign, gesture, etc, that is to be communicated to the receiver by the sender. The mode in which the message will be encoded is decided by the sender based on the nature and type of information. it can be both verbal and nonverbal in nature.
3. Encoding
Encoding is the process in which the target idea is transformed into a medium so that it can be communicated to the receiver. encoding is a very important step in the process of communication that if went wrong, can disrupt the whole process of communication.
4. Channel
The channel is the mode or medium through which the message flows or is transmitted to the receiver. The channel is the mode through which the sender and receiver are connected and the message flows through it. The choice of a proper channel is paramount considering the advantages and disadvantages of each channel.
5. Receiver
The receiver is the person for whom the message was intended. The receiver should be an active listener so that he can well interpret the meaning of the message. The receiver needs to correctly comprehend the message based on his knowledge, experience, and skills.
6. Decoding
Decoding is done by the receiver who interprets the underlying meaning of the message. The receiver comprehends the message and tries to understand it most effectively.
7. Feedback
Feedback is the end aspect of communication. Feedback is the response of the receiver that he sends to the sender in connection with the message. Feedback makes sure that the communication is effective and that the messages are properly interpreted and understood by the receiver.
Conclusion
As a professional in the corporate world, you need to constantly update yourself to build better communication skills. Apart from professional life, effective communication can also empower your personal life. Now you know 'effective communication meaning' and to upskill yourself you can register for the best PRINCE2 training, and it will help you to gain a lot of knowledge regarding what is project management and effective communication.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is good for effective communication?
Effective communication is based on a lot of factors but the major things that make your communication effective are:
- Become an active and good listener
- Follow the 7 C's of effective communication
- Practice public speaking
- Focus on non-verbal communication
- Send and receive constructive feedback
2. What is effective communication skill?
The major effective communication skills are:
- Observance
- Clarity and Brave
- Listening and Understanding
- Emotional Intelligence
- Self Efficacy
- Self Confidence
- Respectful
- Selection of the right medium
- Providing feedback
3. What are the barriers to communication?
Here are the most common barriers that can negatively impact effective communication:
- Interpersonal Barriers
- Language Barriers
- Cultural Barriers
- Gender Barriers
- Perceptual Barriers
- Emotional Barriers
- Physical Barriers
4. Examples of effective communication?
Here are some examples of effective communication:
- Active listening
- Adapting your communication style to the listeners
- Friendliness
- Giving and receiving constructive feedback
- Confidence
- Volume and clarity
- Empathy and respect
- Understanding non-verbal messages
- Responsiveness
