Effective communication is about establishing an efficient communication link with other people to enable easy exchange of information for decision making. In your journey of life you will always require information or ideas from other people to assist you in overcoming your daily challenges. When you are armed with right information and ideas, you are also in the right position to exploit the many opportunities which regularly knock on your door. You have to be innovative and good in communication in order to attract other people to respond to the message you have sent out. Your messages to other people must therefore be clear, concise, complete, courteous, concrete and coherent in order to receive prompt attention from other people. In order to effectively communicate with other people, you have to avoid the following five barriers of communication;
Attitude
Your attitude towards people you wish to communicate with matters a lot. You may communicate in positive or negative mode to other people depending on your mindset at the time of communicating. Your attitude or mindset towards the audience therefore matters a lot. The people you are communicating to will only be attracted to you if they realise that you were not interested in them. You have, therefore, to program your mind in a positive mode to enable you to communicate to your audience with a positive attitude. A negative attitude towards people is therefore a major barrier in communication.
Fear
You have to be prepared with the right message in order to overcome the fear that other people will not listen to you. You have to avoid having the feeling of being frightened by the audience. You have to realise that you will not get what you want from people if you free yourself from fear. You have to instil a lot of confidence in yourself when you are communicating with other people and organisations. You have always to remember that enemy number one preventing you from achieving effective communication is fear.
Presentation skills
Effective communication is about sending and receiving of information in the format which will enable the listeners to respond to you in a positive way. Your presentation or process of conveying the information to the listeners must convey the intended impact to the listeners. You have therefore to decide on the effective platforms to use with various listeners. You therefore require adequate capacity and skills in order to effectively communication your message to the audience.
Honesty
You have to be frank and clear in the message to your intended audience. You have to avoid messages which give misleading information. You must not communicate with the intention of exploiting the audience for short term benefits. You must not capitalise on the ignorance of the audience by misleading them. The listeners will in the long run abandon you as soon as they realise that you were not frank in your communication to them.
Appearance
The way you appear or present yourself conveys a positive or negative message to the audience. Studies carried out by Professor Albert Mehrabian Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA College indicated that 7% of any message is conveyed through words, 38% through certain vocal elements, and 55% through nonverbal elements. Your body language must therefore be supportive or aligned to the message you wish to communicate to the audience.
Author
John Muhaise Bikalemesa
Director: Big Drum Advisory Services Limited
johnmuhaisebikalemesa@yahoo.com
