Core Concepts of Communication that are Often Overlooked
- Sep 16, 2017
- 4 min read
Burden of Knowledge Transfer
It is often misunderstood that the sender (speaker, writer, etc.) is the sole entity responsible for transferring knowledge, ideas, or understanding however, the receiver (listener, reader, etc.) is also responsible. I won’t argue who has the bigger share of the burden but the fact is both parties need to put in effort to clearly understand one another.
Active Listening/Reading
Nothing else I can tell you will work if you cannot engage in active listening. When you are listening to someone who is speaking clearly and concisely and you don’t’ know what they are talking about its likely that you HEAR the person but you are likely not LISTENING. To engage in active listening (or just listening as I like to call it) you must actually do a few things (contrary to hearing). First you must give the speaker (or writer) your full attention. You must also be aware of body language and non-verbal cues that might change as the conversation goes on, also be aware of the non-verbal cues you are giving as well. Furthermore you must retain and respond, try to summarize or regurgitate what the sender said to make sure you understand their mental construct.
I mention reading with Active listening, that is because we can often passively read, believe it or not some people (self-included) are capable of reading text, with words we fully understand that are structures so that we could easily understand them, and having no clue what the writer wanted them to understand or do.
There are books and people who offer various means of combating these issues however to me it is clear there are only 2 foundational things that must be in place to actively listen and read.
Energy – If you are too tired to construct the mental image the sender is trying to build in your head then you should charge up your batteries and try again when you are well rested.
Willingness – You must be willing to contribute energy to the process of decoding their message (more on decoding/encoding later)
Simplify Mental Constructs
First: What is a Mental Construct?
Simply put, a mental construct is an idea or thought. Sometimes it’s something simple like “I owe you $5 for this cheeseburger”, more often in the ever-changing and adapting business world the mental construct is much more complicated. For example, how big of a salary would you need to work for company X? Well that probably a little more complicated, how many vacation days will you get? Are their stock options? Is the health and retirement packages satisfactory?
Senders must decide how to communicate the mental construct they have in their head. Therefore, they must keep in mind who their audience is and adapt their message. If you audience is unfamiliar, or unknown, then it is probably best to be thorough but concise. Time is actually a big factor, you have a limited amount of your receiver's attention, use it wisely.
Encoding/Decoding
Probably the most fascinating part about communicating in my eyes is the fact that we are basically using secret (sort of) decoder rings to decode the mental construct the sender wanted us to understand. Our decoder ring on this particular message is the English language. Now while this language is powerful and elegant it is also not perfect. Just the sheer fact that we have dozens of words that have the same sound (homonyms) or spelling (homographs) can led to confusion or misunderstandings. Our decoder rings can get better over time however, if we practice we can become better decoders. Picking up on non-verbal cues and body language adds more context to the mental construct. Also working to retain and respond to the sender will help build further context.
Senders must work to simplify, and provide as much context as possible. I found a supreme example of simplifying the message while I was giving a communication workshop to a Fraternity. The task during this portion of the workshop was for the team to draw a fairly complicated shape that only the leader could see. The leaders sit facing way from the team so they cannot use facial expressions and they are instructed to not use their hands or arms to ensure they were only using verbal communication. While most teams were using terms like “Ok, start 1 in away from both edges on the top left corner and move one inch left, then make a 45 degree angle for one inch…” etc. One of the team leaders immediately told his team to draw a 4x4 gird and label them 1,2,3,4 going down and A, B, C, D going side to side. This allowed him to become extremely precise with his directions. He managed to not only draw the shape, but it was also to scale!
We must learn to think this way when we communicate. “How can I send this message so it is as easy as possible for my reader to understand the mental construct I have in my head”. Sometimes that means speaking or writing in a way that is very short and direct, but often when trying to covey complex ideas it is best to be thorough and sometimes even pedantic in you encoding to ensure the receiver gets the full message, so long as they are willing to give you that much time.
Combining simplified encoding and active listening yields a powerful ability to communicate and connect with other people in the most effective ways.
-John Brandon Elam is a Cum Laude graduate of Missouri University of Science and Technology. He has recived various awards and recognition throughout his collegiate career. Currently John is in the Technology Development Program at AT&T and is the Owner of Benzaiten Services.
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