Achieving Effective Communication

For a person in the commercial world, it is very important to know how to communicate effectively. The businessman must know how to communicate without a loss of time with his customers, dealers, government officials, other businessmen. Managers and supervisors must be able to communicate their orders and instructions in a clear manner to their subordinates.

The basic principles of effective communication are given below:

1. Communicate for a Purpose:
You must be very clear in your own mind as to the purpose of your communication. Whether you are trying to sell a product or persuading your boss to follow some line of action, you first have to define the objective to yourself. This will help you in keeping all contradictory and irrelevant material or information out of your message.

2. Compose Your Message with Care:
Encoding and decoding should be done by using symbols and signs that are familiar to the sender and receiver of the message. A specialist should not use technical terms while talking to ordinary people.

3. Compose Your Message to Attract Attention:
To attract the attention of the receiver of your message, written or oral, you may resort to a) intensity (be forceful, loud, clear, as the occasion demands: you can create intensity by speaking very quietly when everyone is silent); (b) change of movement (avoid monotony in both writing and speaking); (c) repetition (this is especially effective in oral communication); (d) systematic arrangement (order, neatness; even the type-spacing of your letter will impress the reader).

4. Remove all Barriers to Effective Communication:
There are several barriers to effective communication like faulty expression, faulty listening, status blocks, organizational blocks, etc which need to be improved.

5. Study the Receiver of Your Message:
Attempt to get as much information about the individual or group that is to receive your message. Accordingly encode your message in language, pictures, or signs so that it may be readily understood. Also, keep in mind the background or experience of the recipient and transmit your message with the help of images which are likely to be familiar to him or her.

6. Select Your Medium with Care:
Whether the message is conveyed orally, in writing, or with the help of instruments like the typewriter or telephone, see to it that the message goes across clearly and quickly while writing to an uneducated customer, do not use difficult or technical words.

7. Provide for Feedback:
Since feedback improves communication makes it easy for the recipient of your message to respond. If you are writing a sales letter, advertising a kitchen-set, encourage the would-be customer to write or phone to you or visit your showroom.

8. Act promptly on Receiving Response:
If you get feedback, do not ignore it. Especially if there is some misunderstanding or doubt about the original message, clarify immediately.