Communication Process
Communication is the act of transferring information from one place to another. We do this in several ways. Above is a diagram of the communication process, together we will break down what this diagram is really saying.
Let's start with noise. Noise is anything that disrupts the message from fully being received by the intended recipient. Noise is also known as communication barriers. There are 6 types of communication barriers that could prevent your message from being received, they are:
So we have a sender and a receiver in the communication process and in order to ensure our message is accurately received we need to eliminate as many barriers as we can before proceeding with our message. In the diagram above we see that the sender sends a message to the receiver and that message is encoded with our meaning (not depicted well) and we hope the receiver will properly decode the message we are sending to them. Ensuring that the receiver understands our meaning in the message is our biggest hurtle in the receiver decoding our message accurately. The reason being, meaning cannot be transferred. What something means to you is not always what it means to someone else. This is one of the hardest concepts for us to consider when we communicate. *This will be discussed further in depth at a later time. SOOOO, assuming the receiver properly decodes our message they will develop a response and send a message back to the original sender, once again trying to weed through all of the noise. On the surface this appears to be a pretty simple process, but when you factor everything at play when communicating, it is really easy to see why miscommunication can occur so easily.
Let's start with noise. Noise is anything that disrupts the message from fully being received by the intended recipient. Noise is also known as communication barriers. There are 6 types of communication barriers that could prevent your message from being received, they are:
- Language (dialect, accent, jargon)
- Psychological (mood, stress, self-esteem)
- Physical (geographic location)
- Systematic (inefficient information, inefficient information systems)
- Attitudinal (motivation, disposition, attention)
- Physiological (hearing aide, background noise)
So we have a sender and a receiver in the communication process and in order to ensure our message is accurately received we need to eliminate as many barriers as we can before proceeding with our message. In the diagram above we see that the sender sends a message to the receiver and that message is encoded with our meaning (not depicted well) and we hope the receiver will properly decode the message we are sending to them. Ensuring that the receiver understands our meaning in the message is our biggest hurtle in the receiver decoding our message accurately. The reason being, meaning cannot be transferred. What something means to you is not always what it means to someone else. This is one of the hardest concepts for us to consider when we communicate. *This will be discussed further in depth at a later time. SOOOO, assuming the receiver properly decodes our message they will develop a response and send a message back to the original sender, once again trying to weed through all of the noise. On the surface this appears to be a pretty simple process, but when you factor everything at play when communicating, it is really easy to see why miscommunication can occur so easily.