The Three Levels of Verbal Communication

Here's my tip for today:

The Three Levels of Verbal Communication.

Before we can improve verbal communication and increase its effectiveness, we need to understand how it works and where the players fit within that communication.

First, when we communicate, there is always a sender (speaker or sender) and a receiver (listener or receiver).

Second, the communication itself contains 3 elements:

A) the Information being communicated such as issue, topic, subject, instruction, opinion etc.

B) the Means by which this information is being communicated (verbal, nonverbal, written, using telephone, face to face, letter, book, etc.)

C) the Way in which the information is being communicated (how we use our words, tone of voice, writing style, organized or disorganized manner, etc.)

Both sides have three levels of Active Responsibility to process the activities used in communication:

Level I

is where the actual exchange of communication takes place between the sender and receiver which contains the above three elements.

Level II

is where the Translating and Interpreting of that communication happens. This is done by the thought processes of each the Sender and the Receiver according to each his/her experiences, and frame

of references in their various walks of life (business, personal, moral, ethical, etc.).

This is where the major complications of communication arise (good or bad connection). If everyone thought the same, saw things the same way or reacted in the same manner, communication would be

straightforward.

Level III

is where we get and give Feedback, Understanding and Awareness:.

- Feedback.

Both sides are responsible to see that the communication has been Sent and Received as intended. This is identified by asking the right questions at the right times. "Can you please repeat the steps for closing the shop, to make sure I didn't leave anything out?" "Let me run through the requirements as I understand you've

outlined them". Both sides ask for feedback when needed.

- Understanding.

Effective communication requires a common Understanding between the parties communicating. The Sender Transmits with Understanding to the Receiver. The Receiver Interprets with Understanding from the

Sender.

- Awareness.

Finally, each side requires an Awareness of the interferenres also going on such as cultural differences, linguistics, diction, clarity of speech and expression, verbal, nonverbal parts, etc.

Tip:

All we have to remember about our communication is simply:  the "what" and the "how" :

Level I activities are the "what" elements of our communication (Information, Means, Ways of Sender and Receiver).

 And Level II & III activities are the "how" tools we use in our communication  (Feedback, Understanding and Awareness).

Have a great day.

Diane

P.S.:

Share your thoughts in the comments area of this post.

P.P.S.:

For the Kindle E-book series, please visit this link:

http://communicationverbalnonverbal.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page.html

 

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All of life is about communication

It doesn't matter what area of life, whether it is our simple individual life, family, society, local, municipal, regional, national, global – it's all about communicating with one another.

Let me begin with an example of a local situation...

I'm always amazed at how bad people are at communicating and/or at realizing how they communicate with others.

For instance, I like to help people. I give a lot of my time to volunteer activities in various organizations, etc.

One of the things that I often see is that when someone offers their services for free (volunteer) to an organization, they are often – too often – received nonchalantly (indifferently, detached, unappreciatively). And then they wonder why they have a hard time getting volunteers.

Case in point:

I joined a seniors group some time ago.  After hearing they needed some help in a particular up-coming event, I went up to the activity organizer and offered to help out. The woman brought me to the person who is supposedly in charge of that event and who would show me what I needed to do, etc.

She told me to be there at 10 am on the day of the event, the following week.  So I scheduled this time on my busy calendar and showed up on time (5 min. earlier as I usually do – another communicating issue I'll talk about next).

I looked for her and didn't see her around. I then checked with the receptionist and she told me the lady wasn't in and whe didn't expect her until 11.  So I indicating that I was asked to be there at 10 and had put that time from by business aside for them. She told me to talk to another person, pointing to the vice-president of the organization in the center of the hall.

So I proceeded toward her who was at this time totally immersed in a hot discussion with a senior member.  I waited, and waited, trying to get her attention, but she wouldn't budge. After about 10 minutes of this, I left, letting the receptionist know that I would try and come back later.

Of course, my time being money, I never go idle for long, so I proceeded to do some business while I was in that area. One thing led to another which got me into other issues and next thing I knew I was back in the office taking care of pressing matters that followed. So, I never did get back to them, but had they been there as planned, they would have had my time for a couple of hours of my business time given to them for free.

That's just one example. I have a lot more in my book "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". If you're interested in getting a copy, don't miss out on my Spring Special going on right now for 50% of the regular price!

Check it out at this link.

How do we communicate now?

Poorly.  The majority of people communicate at a very shallow surface level. And that includes those in senior management.  Studies have shown that most people communicate at 50% effectiveness -- even in a two-way communication.  I venture to say that it is often less than that.

Just think how often you are frustrated by your boss, your peers, your spouse, your children... on a daily basis.  How many times are you misunderstood?  How many times do you have to explain that you didn't mean something the way it was perceived or received by your listener?  How many times at work have you been interrupted to never have had the chance to get back to that important discussion where you wanted to clear yourself of a misunderstanding? Often, even the explanation of a misunderstanding is misunderstood or received with arguments -- sometimes angrily, sometimes silently. 

How many times have you kept silent rather than risking offending someone as you would genuinely try to find out where a misunderstanding came from, or try to explain your position.

In the national bestseller  "That's not what I meant!" by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., the author speaks of the linguistics in communication.  "Linguistics", she says, "is the academic discipline devoted to understanding how language works. Relationships are made, maintained and broken through talk".  She explains how people learn to use language, as they grow up, with different ethnic, religious or class backgrounds, in different parts of the country, even as different genders (male and female have different ways of talking or communicating).

The novelist E. M. Forster said this: "a pause in the wrong place, an intonation misunderstood, and a whole conversation went awry." 

In a telephone call to an associate, one day,  I left a message on his answering machine to call me back.  Somehow, he had been given a phone number which was a business line used for a specific on-going project, located in another part of the building; I had subsequently explained to him that he should not use this number and gave him the one he should call.
 
However on this particular day, when I called him, I was temporarily working from the first number location and left the message on the tape to call me on that number, at that particular time.  When he called me back a few moments later, he called on the other line which was in the other location.  What did that tell me? That he did not "listen" to the message on his answering machine.  (Just like many don't read their memos or emails).

This was indeed confirmed later. But, I could have "assumed" he did not listen properly.  If I hadn't found it important enough to pursue the incident in order to clarify, I might have wrongly perceived this of him.  It could have been that he was not careless at all, but that the tape on the answering machine broke (this was in the older days) or ended before the explanation about the phone number came on.  This would have disclosed my wrong assumption, which would have meant that if I don't know something, I should not assume.
 
Of course we don't always deduce and analyze our conversations in such details during our daily activities.  Who has the time?  However being aware of these possibilities, and including this awareness in our philosophical way of thinking, (thinking before receiving) will help us operate in a realm of understanding at all times -- a second nature as it were.
/dmh

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