Communication is an important tool that plays a defining role in developing an understanding with everyone around us, on an everyday basis. Whether it is a simple task of writing an email or giving a presentation, communication adds on to the productivity and progress. Therefore it is important that when a message is delivered there is no miscommunication between the sender and the receiver. To avoid misunderstanding one has to make sure that the message is clear and simple.
Though we have access to the best of medium, yet many times we fail to deliver an error free, perfect message during verbal and written communication. As per a recent survey recruiters admitted that communication skills play an important role when choosing managers. It plays an important role in being successful in today’s world.
One of the most common reasons that leads to miscommunication or misinterpretation of a message is the use of complicated sentence structure. A message is easy to understand when the sentences are short and crisp. Use of unnecessary fillers like kind of, sort of, maybe, etc bring in vagueness to the message.
5 Killer Skills to Make Your Message Clear
When communicating via a written medium, make sure to read and re-read before finalizing the copy/email/text. Once you are done with the proofreading, see if there are other interpretations to the message and whether you would like to eliminate them or not. Here are few more points one should follow for effective communication.
1. Make the complicated simple. Make the simple simpler.
Always try to simplify your message. Bring down your sentences to the simplest degree to avoid ambiguity in your messages. If the words and sentences are simple the probability of understanding the message is higher. There is no point in highfalutin sentences, if the receiver doesn’t decodes the message correctly.
2. Start as a good listener.
Listening is another important aspect of being a good communicator. You cannot deliver a perfect message until you are a good listener. Without listening you will not know what are you being asked for.
3. No jargons. They hinder understanding.
Make sure you do not include vocabulary that can be difficult for the receiver to understand. Using jargons and technical terms can create misunderstanding if the decoder is not familiar with those words.
4. Make it concise and precise.
Brevity is the soul of wit as well as communication. Whether you are delivering a speech or writing an application or forwarding a formal text, always keep it to-the-point. Avoid unnecessary words, phrases and sentences.
5. Check your spelling.
Never underestimate the effectiveness of spell-check. What you write, says a lot about and spelling error is something you would not want to begin with. It never leads to a good impression if your email or letter has spelling errors.
7 C’s to Ensure You’re Nailing the Killer Skills
Moving ahead, there are 7 C’s that are essential if you want to avoid misunderstanding in communication. There are applicable to both written as well as verbal communication.
Clarity
Clarity makes the message understandable. The message should be focused to one point and should not be catering to multiple things at once. The kinds of words you use and the type of sentence structure you form decides if the message is clear or not. Use words that are most familiar, instead of “Domicile” use “Home”
Conciseness
Concise means short and brief. A concise message is the one which communicates with minimum words and is not redundant in nature. The advantage with conciseness is that it pays attention to what is important and eliminate everything that’s unnecessary. It saves the time of the sender as well as the receiver. Eg- instead of using “in due course” use the word “soon”.
Concreteness
Concreteness stands for strength and if you want to deliver a strong message you have to provide it with a solid foundation. Concreteness is important if you do not want your message to sound vague. You can do that by supporting your message with facts and figures. This makes you message more meaningful and effective.
Correctness
Like we have already talked about, in order to avoid misunderstandings, a message should be free from grammatical and spelling errors. Along with that, one also has to make sure that the fact and stats mentioned in the message are accurate and should be misleading to the receiver. Correctness of language plays a key role in avoiding misunderstanding in communication.
Coherence
Misunderstanding occurs when there is no consistency to the message that is being delivered. The receiver should be able to easily understand the message and that happens when the message remains focused and does not go off-topic. Bad Example: Being an excellent Doctor, I am sure you can help us. Good Example: As you are an excellent Doctor, I am sure you can help us.
Completeness
It is important that the ongoing communication should be complete. Incomplete messages can easily be misunderstood. White communicating, always make sure you provide all the relevant information to the receiver. Completeness not only make the communication strong but also enhances it. All you have to do is, answer the Who, What, Where, When, What and How of the situation.
Courtesy
The element of courtesy bring in positive to the message. If the receiver knows that the sender is being polite and courteous he would always try and understand the message with a positive mindset.
Take Care of Your Ideas And Their Delivery
When you successfully send your message across, you cover your ideas effectively. Taking care of minor things can help you in delivering a message without any misunderstanding.
To achieve effective communication, all you have to do is making sure there are no communication barriers hampering the effectiveness of the message. Along with this, it is important to understand your target audience. After all, communication, being a dynamic phenomenon cannot be restricted to fixed format and rules.
