Page 377 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

Model Question Papers | 365

others look better or worse than they are. You don’t allow personal preferences to influence
your perception or the perception of others, and you act in good faith. On the surface, such
ethical practices appear fairly easy to recognize. But deciding what is ethical can be quite
complex. Recognizing ethical choices, making ethical choices is one of the pertinent aspects
of committing to ethical communication.

Adopting an audience-centred approach to communication

The third guideline contributing to effective communication is adopting an audience-centred
approach, or keeping your audience in mind at all times during the process of communica-
tion. Because you care about your audience, you take every step possible to get your message
across in a way that is meaningful to your audience. In fact, empathizing with and being
sensitive to your audience’s feelings is the best way to overcome such communication barriers
as differences in perception and emotional interference. If you are aware of others’ feelings,
you’ll be able to choose neutral words, understand their views, and perhaps empathize with
their position by trying to view the situation through their eyes.

Creating and processing your messages effectively and efficiently

Creating an effective message is difficult if you are unfamiliar with your audience or if
you don’t know how your message will be used. For example, if you are writing a report
and you don’t know the purpose of the report, it is hard to know what to say. What is the
content, what aspects are to be covered, what are issues to be viewed with caution, how
long should the report be, should it provide conclusions and recommendations or simply
facts and figures, are the dimensions to be taken care of ? Unless you know why the report
is needed, you can’t really answer those questions intelligently, so you are forced to create
a very general document, one that covers a little bit of everything.
Likewise, you need to know something about the biases, education, age, status, and style
of your receiver in order to create an effective message. If you are addressing strangers, try
to find out more about them; if that’s impossible, try to project yourself into their position
by using your common sense and imagination. Whatever the tactic, the point is to write and
speak from your audience’s point of view.
The best way to create messages carefully is to adapt your message to your audience so that
you can help them understand and accept it. If you are writing for a specialist in your field, for
example, you can use technical terms that might be unfamiliar to a layperson. On the other
hand, if you are communicating to someone who might not share your understanding of a
topic or someone who might not have your wealth of experience, you can minimize language
barriers by using specific and accurate words–once your audience will understand. Decisions
about the content, organization, style, and tone of your message all depend, at least to some
extent, on the relationship between you and your audience. If you don’t know your audience,
you will be forced to make these decisions in the dark, and at least part of your message may
miss the mark.

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