One of the most fundamental elements that we human beings have is the word: being able to express to the vox populi what we think without fear of being censored or with the possibility of influencing others to carry out good deeds, for example, gratifies, and a lot of.
But of course, according to what is being studied in prehistory, we do not know from when the human being could have started to communicate -something that is different from writing or speaking- since we find cave paintings of thousands of years that do not indicate more than the Human beings were able to communicate through signals, as well as sounds in the case of doing it with the mouth.
This means that human beings are social beings who need communication for many things in everyday life: imagine that we did not communicate -or did not understand each other- among ourselves today. Things as simple as stopping on a red would not be understood.
In this article we will try to explain the concept of communication, what is necessary to establish communication, as well as the steps to carry out a conversation well and the possible causes that prevent it from being good and some tips to improve the way you express yourself.
What do you need?
There is no doubt that we cannot directly talk about good communication if we do not know what this word means, which is not necessarily synonymous with a conversation.
We have taken three sources of information to begin this analysis of the term. At first, we have consulted the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, where communication is defined as follows: “it refers to the conscious action of chewing information between two or more participating people in order to transmit or receive meanings through a shared system of signs and semantic norms”.
Likewise, we have gone to consult the dictionary where communication is defined in various ways, among which is the following: ” Transmission of signals by means of a common code to the sender and the receiver”. In the Oxford dictionary, communication is defined in this way in the same way as in the RAE, so we are not going to leave the definition here.
That is, when we talk about communication, we are not necessarily talking about speaking or writing, but we can also be talking about making signs, painting, producing music, etc. The important thing is that a message is communicated, even if it is not spoken, a very clear case is that of the traffic light, we all know what red and green are, products of a social constructor, that is, of the communication between us that has generated those codes to understand us.
Once knowing the basic concept that you need to understand communication, we are going to know the elements that make up a communication, so that it is carried out efficiently and correctly.
The following elements must exist:
- Sender: is the person who sends the message. It can be painted or spoken, remember that communication includes all the ways of transmitting ideas -gestures, signs, writing, speech-.
- Receiver: it can be one or several that receive a message from a single sender, they are the ones in charge of processing the message that is sent to them and interpret it in their own way, each one -although the idea is to understand what the sender means -.
- Message: it is what the sender sends and the receiver receives, it can be interpreted, but it depends on the receiver. The noise and context in which it is found will greatly influence it.
- Channel: it is where the sender’s message travels, in the case of an oral conversation, the channel through which it travels would be the air.
- Context: it is the environment that surrounds the whole scene, to call it that, if you are at home, in a pub/bar, etc.
- But there can also be noise: noise is all that interference that can be caused by many factors. For example: The sender can cause noise in the message if he speaks with a vocabulary that is not suitable for the receivers: you cannot speak to children with a university language, for example.
Likewise, the receivers can also generate noise thanks to being distracted or talking to each other, a common case is a classroom.
But be careful: a message can also include noise, how? Simple, if we don’t know how to explain ourselves, that is, “we go back and forth” we will cause a noise in the message, because more than a message, we would be sending a disordered idea.
The channel can also cause noise: it’s simple, maybe, if we are talking on a call -by phone- the signal has interference, which will produce noise not only literally, but also in the communication process.
And of course, the context is one of the parts that contains the most noise, just think about talking at a fair, a party or even on occasions, in any bar that you end up leaving because you wanted to talk to the person who accompanied you.
In other words, although noise is not present in all communication, it may be, but it may not influence enough to prevent the message from getting through. How many times have you failed to understand a friend at a party with loud music? ? More than once for sure, in the end it is achieved.
What are the steps to follow to establish a successful communication?
In this section, we will give you a series of tips to prevent you from falling into certain very common mistakes that people make when they are going to establish a communication -whether oral or written- and that greatly harm the message you transmit because as you well know… in communication, the important thing is also to know how to say it, even if your content is not the best.
There is no doubt that communication begins before you begin to express yourself, that is, you should know that there is no better improvisation than the one that is rehearsed. In other words, you can never stop to talk about something in particular and spin it at the moment -let’s see, you can- but if you don’t have an extremely good ability to speak, you won’t be able to do it assertively.
Without further ado, let’s see step by step how to achieve effective communication:
- As we have already anticipated before, it is essential that you prepare very well before you start speaking. There is something elementary that nobody almost ever takes into consideration and it is more important than the content in sé: for an assertive communication it is essential to study the public to which it is addressed and the environment where the aforementioned topic will be discussed. You will never express yourself in the same way if you talk to a child as if you talk to an adult who has already passed a series of stages in life that have given them certain knowledge that you will decide whether to activate or not.
- Likewise, it is not the same to speak in a classroom than in a conference or in a bar: we could say that there are levels of ways of speaking and trust with the public to which one speaks, although we should not ventilate the personal -in a exaggerated of course- when expressing ourselves publicly.
- Once you have prepared the vocabulary that you will use, you can start writing the text that you want to present or read. In the event that it is a book, you would have to target a specific audience or, if you want to do it for all audiences, adapt your language to it.
- It is important that in addition to there being coherence in the communication, you take into account what is called the chronémics, which is the time that you will use to present the idea (or ideas) that you want to communicate to your public, this is essential since the public, if you talk to it too long, you will lose it. In addition, there are places where you have a certain time and this is a kind of evaluation that is made to you.
- Remember: much better that you manage to convey an idea perfectly using less time and words.
- Try to avoid noise in communication: you yourself can be the one causing the noise, make sure that everything around you cannot be a source of it before the presentation and you will see that it will work.
- In the case of an oral presentation, remember to use a voice loud enough so that everyone can hear you, but moderate enough so that it doesn’t sound like you’re yelling at your audience.
- Do not forget that in a conversation it is important that you look at the public: calm down, in the tips we will give you a tip that is ideal for those who are embarrassed. Also, if it is a written presentation, please read it many times before handing it in to try not to talk too much and say things to the point and coherently.
- As you can see, carrying out assertive communication is not necessarily complicated, but rather you must be as objective as possible and not complicate your life, sometimes we try to be more complex and it is worse. In the simple is the great many times.
As we discussed above, in this section we have proposed the ideal communication, but this cannot always be achieved for various reasons. Hence, in the next section we will talk about some tips for better communication.
Tips
How to make your communication even more assertive?
The first piece of advice that we can give you is to cancel all previous noises that may affect communication: for example, in a classroom, a projector on -that you don’t use- a blackboard that is written or, if you made some slides, make them complement effectively what you are communicating.
Try not to move too much in the case of an oral presentation: you will be showing nervousness, just as you can never turn your back on the audience you are speaking to, for two reasons, you show disinterest in your own speech and your tone of voice will decrease considerably, for what you will lose the attention of more than one.
Are you “afraid” to speak in public ? Well look, the best advice we can give you is to look over the heads of the audience and don’t focus on a single point throughout the presentation, look over and move, but not too much, rather you should let your hands move and your body goes according to your speech.
In a written text: it is necessary that the communication be even more precise so that the reader does not get lost reading the text, avoid using ambiguous concepts or that could confuse the reader and, please, do not think too much about a single idea.
In short, we hope that this article has been of benefit to you and helps to improve your communication in general… Let’s talk!