How the Communication Process Works TEACHER: Well, we're going to talk about how the communication process works here. The communication process is extremely vital in terms of increasing your effectiveness in communicating. And what we find is if you have an understanding of the different stages of the process and the different parties involved, you will help increase the extent to which you communicate more effectively. Now, the communication process starts with, in this case, the sender. The sender is the person that is going to be transmitting a particular message. And usually if we're going to communicate something, we have to decide what it is that we're going to communicate. But not only what, we also have to determine how we're going to communicate that, the means through which we're going to actually communicate the message. This includes everything from face to face or verbal communication. This includes email or text and a variety of other mediums. Written communication obviously would fall into this category. And so the sender, what they do, is they're in charge of what's called encoding a particular message. And encoding is not only determining what it is that you're going to say but how it is that you're going to communicate, including that nonverbal communication piece. Things like body language and the tone of our voice, the pace of our voice, whether or not we make eye contact all factors in to how we send a particular message. Now, the goal here, for the sender at least it should be, is to communicate something as accurately as possible. And what that means is you have to take into account the knowledge and the education and the background of the receiver of that message. Because if you communicate in a way that cannot be understood, then you're really just wasting your time. It's not very effective. The intent here is to be understood. And so obviously, we have the message here, and that is what is encoded. That message get sent, of course, to the receiver. Depending upon what medium we chose to communicate with, that will transmit a number of different ways. But the receiver, what they're in charge of is decoding that message. And what decoding means is they're trying to understand. They're interpreting that particular message. And so they're listening to what is being said, and they're trying to assess what that is and gauge it for understanding. Now, the problem, and what you've probably picked up on, is that a lot of times people can hear the same message and take two completely different things. And that's because there is a lot of noise that gets involved in the communication process. Not only do you have to be aware of the understanding of the receiver, but you also have to take into account physical noise, like surroundings. Are there people involved? If you're communicating in a noisy restaurant, there's a physical limitation there where the actual noise in the restaurant is going to inhibit the receiver understanding your message. So that would obviously be in a physical sense. But you also have to take into account the person's mental state. Are they preoccupied? You can probably think of a time when you were involved in a conversation and you're communicating with somebody but not really. You're kind of going through the motions. You have your mind somewhere else. You're thinking about something. You're preoccupied. And although you're physically present, mentally you are absent. And that, obviously, is an obstacle or barrier to effective communication. In addition, you also have issues with education. If you're communicating with someone who is of higher education or less, you do have to take that into account, because if you're sending the message, you do want to make sure that the person can understand it. If you're going to communicate to a group of elementary school students, it's probably going to look different than if you communicate to a group of college students, because you have to take into account the knowledge and educational level of the audience. And so from a receiver standpoint, if you're interpreting a message, then that could also be a deterrent to effective communication. You've probably been involved in a high school setting or in a college classroom and a professor or instructor is lecturing on a particular set of material, and you're sitting there not understanding a word they are saying. And maybe, just maybe, that's because the person communicating isn't doing so with the actual audience in mind. Something to keep into consideration. Now, the other part here is we're going to move on is feedback. And feedback takes both verbal and nonverbal communication. Now, when I say verbal, obviously we're talking auditory, things that you're actually saying. Nonverbal communication is body language, posture, eye contact, those different types of things, things that you're not actually saying but communicating via your body language. And what we know about communication is about 70% of the message is communicated or interpreted via body language, meaning that if you say something to me but your body language says something else, I am more inclined to go off of what your body says if there is an inconsistency between the two. But this feedback piece is very important, because for feedback, what happens is the sender is looking for some feedback to see whether or not the receiver actually understood the material. So let me give you an example. When I lecture in the classroom, one of the things I look for when I'm communicating, I don't have my back, obviously, turned to the classroom, because I'm looking for feedback. If I am discussing a particular concept and I see that eyes are starting to glaze over and people are yawning and checking their phones and doing other things, I know that maybe what I'm saying isn't getting the point across and maybe I should go at it from a different angle. That's an example of feedback. So feedback allows the sender to ensure whether or not their message is being understood, kind of checking clarification, so to speak. Now, in addition to being nonverbal, it can also be verbal. Obviously in this case, the receiver can transmit a particular message to the sender indicating whether or not they understand. Maybe asking clarifying questions if something is a little confusing could be a really good example. So those are all different ways that the sender or the receiver, I'm sorry, can actually transmit feedback to the sender. So just to recap here real quick, this process, obviously, we're looking at is very simplistic, involves two parties, the sender and the receiver. Obviously, a lot of times when we're communicating out in the real world, there are many different parties involved. And so that just further complicates things, because you have more physical circumstances to take into account, you have more mental states to take into account, more educational backgrounds to take into account, of course, and that just further complicates the communication process. But looking at it very simplistically, we know there's a sender and a receiver. There's a message. The sender encodes the message, provides meaning to it. The receiver then decodes, trying to understand that particular message. We know that there are issues involved with that. And then in turn, the receiver will send feedback to the sender where they can confirm whether or not they've understood that particular message. And that is how the communication process works.