The Importance Of Powerful Communication

POWERFUL COMMUNICATION

Communication is a transaction between two or more people which involves a sender, a message, a channel and a recipient. Every element of the communication transaction has an effect on what is being communicated and the flow of communication; the sender’s tone, the wording of the message, the selection of the channel and the recipient's understanding.

This leads me to say that communication is much more than a transaction that involves a sender, message, channel and recipient. There are so many non-tangible elements of communication and this is what is called the psychology of communication. The psychology of communication is beyond a transaction, it is the exchange of meaning.

Meaning is affected by much more than the

As much as what you are saying is important, how you are saying it is more important than you could possible imagine, facial expressions, body gestures, eye contact and of course differences like gender, age and culture play a role in how the message is understood.

The key to the exchange of meaning is listening. As the old line goes; you have two ears and one mouth so the intent is for you to listen twice as much as you speak – this line still prevails, but what type of listening are we talking about and how do you ensure you listen.

LISTENING

It is ironic that the most important element of communication is listening and not speaking. Listening enables you to understand, once you understand then you will be able to talk not just respond. Listening requires that you think about what the speaker is saying, what, how and why.

There 3 types of listening (IPEC);

Subjective Listening: where the listener relates whatever is being said to them – so listening here is about the listener not the speaker. So the speaker is like where I fit in here.

Objective Listening: it is totally about the speaker without any subjective relation to the listener. This type of listening is very effective but does not get to the heart of the