Principles of Communication

Communication is the life and blood of conducting our day-to-day transactions. You may be a subject matter expert (SME) but that’s of no use if you are not able to communicate your ideas and innovations to some one who has the power to implement them. Nowadays, most communication is done in English.

Method of Speaking
You must know your audience. Do not patronize your audience, Neither speak down nor speak up to your audience. Know the age level of the audience as well as its members’ level of educational sophistication and special interests so you can tailor your presentation accordingly. The material of your presentation should be concise.

Good presentations then follow this formula: tell the audience what you are going to tell them, tell them, at the end tell them again what you have told them.

Speak clearly. Don’t shout or whisper –judge the acoustics of the room. Don’t rush, or talk deliberately slowly. Be natural – although not conversational. Deliberately pause at key points – this has the effect of emphasizing the importance of a particular point you are making.

Visual aids significantly improve the interest of a presentation. However, they must be relevant to what you want to say. A careless design or use of a slide can simply get in the way of the presentation. What you use depends on the type of talk you are giving.

Written Communication

The first activity of writing is defining objectives. When defining your objectives, you tell what you want your communication to do. In this way, your objectives form the basis of all your work at writing. In writing, always take the Reader-Centered Approach. You need to look at three things. The final result you desire, the people who will read your communication and the specific way you want your communication to affect the people as they read your communication.

Target Your Audience
Target your audience by identifying audience type, their characteristics and level of expertise. Determine your audience’s needs by assessing their expertise and their purpose in reading the document.

Experts read technical and scientific documents for a variety of purposes: to maintain and expand their own, general expertise, To obtain specific answers to their own research and writing and to evaluate a document’s technical or scientific content.

Seven Cs of Communication

To compose a written or oral message you must apply certain communication principles. These principles are called the seven C’s of effective communication.

• Completeness
• Conciseness
• Consideration
• Concreteness
• Clarity
• Courtesy
• Correctness

The seven C’s apply to both written and oral communications. Although we deal here with these principles on a sentence level, they are applicable to all forms of communication.

Your message is complete when it contains all the facts, readers or listeners need for the reaction you desire. Communication senders need to assess their message from eyes of the receivers to be sure they have included all the relevant information. Completeness answers all the FIVE Ws. Who, What, When, Where and Why for perfect communication.

Conciseness is saying what you want to say in the fewest possible words without sacrificing the other C qualities. A concise message saves time and expense for both the sender and the receiver. It increases emphasis in the message. It shows respect for the recipient, by not cluttering them unnecessary information. To achieve conciseness, observe the following suggestions.

Conciseness saves time by avoiding unnecessary information and wordy expressions.

Consideration is another important quality. Consideration means preparing every message with the message receiver in mind. So, don’t lose your temper, don’t accuse and don’t charge them without facts. Focus on ‘you’ Instead of ‘I’ or ‘we’.

The You-Attitude for example, You will be able to shop evenings with the extended office hours is better than We-Attitude in some cases for example, I am delighted to announce that we have extended our office hours to make shopping more convenient.

Clarity makes communication understandable. The purpose of clarity is to get meaning from your head across to the reader. Clarity is achieved through a balance between precise language and familiar language. When you have the choice between a long word and a short word, choose the short familiar word. So the golden rule is that when in doubt, use the more familiar words; audience will understand them better.

Familiarity breeds clarity. Word, 'PAY' is better than 'REMUNERATION' for the sake of clarity.

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