Planning for a Better Communication

Scientific evidence shows that communication changed the world. Communication affected religions. Communication caused success or betrayal for political leaders over the course of history. Communication is embedded in all the six core human needs, especially in need for love and connection, growth, and contribution. Even when people want to buy some food they have to communicate.

Everyone has a specific purpose to communicate. People transfer some information to each other through communications. These communications may have a high or a low impact on the others. When people fully understand a topic and the communication raises their emotions, obviously the communication has made a high impact on these individuals. This higher impact helps the communicator to better achieve what the communicator wants from the purpose of communication. Subsequently, people would obey what is requested, and what is requested is the purpose of communication.

Try to know the audience. Audience analysis helps one chose how to write for a specific group of audiences. Audience analysis helps one deliver a presentation in an appropriate manner. Audience analysis consists of assessing the audience to make sure the information provided to them is at the appropriate level. It involves identifying the audience and adapting a speech to their interests, level of understanding, attitudes, and beliefs.

Following the audience analysis, try to chose appropriate channels of communication relevant to the purpose. These channels may be including face-to-face communications channels, broadcast media communications channels (TV, and radio), mobile communications channels (SMS, and direct calls), electronic communications channels (email, facebook, and twitter), and written communications channels (letters, and proposals). Face-to-face communication methods come from nomadic civilizations and the Old World era, meanwhile television and internet are just getting considered as the innovations of the 20th century.

After you chose the appropriate communication channel, then you shall chose a suitable communication structure for each of the channels.

Try to master a few or all of the writing structures, and then write appropriately regarding with the purpose. These writing structures would be including chronological (discussing things in order), cause and effect (explaining a cause and its results), problem and solution (presenting a problem and offering a solution), compare and contrast (discussing similarities and differences), categorical or classification-division (sorting information into topics and categories), etc.

Never forget the issue that anxiety affects people’s communication performance, and they must try to come over the anxiety to make better communications. Having control over anxiety depends on many internal and external factors, such as the individual’s own abilities, and the environment.

Use the 5W&H technique to organize a speech for a specific group of audience. The 5W&H technique consists of five Ws and an H questions. You may use these questions in regard with organizing a speech, or try to answer these questions in the lead paragraph of the writing.

These questions are including:

Who is involved? Who is affected? Who will benefit? Who will be harmed?

What happened? What is your topic narrowed down in a simple phrase/sentence? What does your topic involve? What is your topic similar to / different from? What might be affected/changed by your topic?

When does/did/will/should the speech take place? Does when the speech takes place affect the topic?

Where does/did/will/should the speech take place? Does it matter where the speech takes place? Or if you are trying to answer this question in the lead paragraph, then where does the event or the story that we are writing about took place?

Why do certain things happen? Why is this topic matter?

How did the speech happen? How does this topic function? How did this topic come to be? How those are involved affected? Or if you are trying to answer this question in the lead paragraph, then for example how did the story happen?

It is not always applicable for the communicator to consider each of the five Ws and an H questions, in a paragraph.

Here it is a simple example of answering these questions in the first paragraph:

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (who) of West Virginia (where) somehow but better than others depicted the real zombie story behind March for Our Lives (what), and the bring kids back home slogan (what).

The communicator shall employ plain English. Communication is not about sounding smart. Communication is about getting a message across to the audience and eliciting action. Warren Buffett the world’s wealthiest business magnet, and George Orwell the famous author of Animal Farm and 1984, both advocate writing as simple as possible and with clarity. George Orwell emphasis on this issue on “Politics and the English Language”, and Warren Buffett has dedicated a preface about this for a handbook called “A Plain English Handbook”.

Try to stimulate the emotions of the audience, but write objectively. Being objective would be understood and abstracted as not being influenced by personal feelings. Producing an emotional appeal requires an understanding of your audience and what may strike their emotions the most. An effective way to create emotional appeal is to use words that have a lot of pathos associated with them.

Deliver the speech with confidence.

And try to start and end memorably.

Important factors for a better communication are including: The volume, expression and eye contact, enunciation, tone, speed, breath, controlling your environment, and managerial presence.

And finally, active listening makes the communication more effective. Active listening requires that the listener fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said. Pay attention, show that you’re listening, provide feedback, defer judgment, and respond appropriately. By active listening the communication between people would be improved since people would get more information. People would better understand what the others are saying, and also people would give a better response in an effective manner. Use the SOLER technique for active listening: “Squarely” face the audience (by doing this it shows you are involved), maintain “open posture” (this means not crossing arms and legs, and therefore it makes people feel engaged and welcome), “lean” toward the speaker (it shows you’re involved and listening to what they have to say), keep “eye contact” (your gaze shows that you’re listening and not distracted), and “relax” (it’s important to stay calm and avoid fidgeting when a person is talking to you to show you are focused).

What do you think? .