We all lead busy lives trying to pack everything into each day, it isn’t wonder that sometimes we fail to communicate with others the best way we can. Often this is because we didn’t hear or receive the information the way it was intended, or we didn’t impart the information as we intended to do. This can cause misunderstandings and friction within teams, between colleagues and even affect relationships with families and friends.
It’s all about the send and receive, or transmission and reception. As we rely on so many means of communication nowadays, we have choices and often we make a choice on what means of communication is best only because of ease and speed rather than quality and value.
In our busy days, if we took time out to determine how, when, where and what way to communicate with others, we could avoid a lot of grief and problems and have a better outcome for all concerned.
When we communicate with others, no matter what medium we use, the aim is to fully understand what each other said, what was meant and for what reason. It’s therefore important we pause and reflect to make good choices on choosing which medium to use as well as deciding what we want to say to ensure there is a win-win result for all parties concerned.
We know it’s the sender’s responsibility to ensure their message is received correctly and understood properly. We must consider the receiver will have distilled the message they received due to a number of other factors and influences, environments, beliefs, moods, upbringing and many others.
If in our ‘transmission’ of our message or communication, we consider how and to whom we want to convey our communication to as well as choosing in which way we might want to communicate to ensure a great result.
This in turn will help the ‘reception’ of the message as well as the likely reaction or response reducing any treatment that may be required if the message isn’t conveyed properly.
If we consider how we’ve communicated our messages in the past, how effective they were, reflect on the timing of our messages and how we conveyed them, as well as any problems we may have encountered as a consequence of ‘bad’ communication, we can learn a great deal from these, and save ourselves a great deal of time and grief in future communication!
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