How to be An Effective Communicator

It is now an accepted fact that degree alone does not guarantee success. What do you think is the most important quality for someone who wants to become a business leader?If you think that it is the ability to communicate, you are on the correct track. In fact, communication skills with people at all levels, of both genders, and from a variety of cultures and backgrounds help being pace-setters. In the old-style hierarchical, authoritarian setting, communication is relatively simple. The top person tells the underlings to jump,and the underlings need only ask, “How high?”

In a modern organisation, communication requires more finesse for the following reasons:

• The leader is not a transmitter of commands but a creator of motivational environments.

• The workers are not robots responding to switches and levers, but thinking individuals pouring their ingenuity into the corporate purpose.

•The corporate ideal is not mechanical stability, but dynamic,innovative, continuous change.

The leader who cannot communicate fails to create the conditions that motivate. The organisation that cannot communicate cannot change, and the corporation that cannot change is dead.

The good news is that anyone can become an effective communicator. The door to effective communication will open to anyone who uses the following five keys: desire,understanding, mastering basic skills, practice and patience.

Let us explain each one of these.

•Desire

It is a common experience that infants have an inborn desire to communicate. And this desire enables them to pick up words quickly and to enlarge their vocabularies continuously. The same kind of desire can enable you to enlarge your stock of words and improve your skill in employing them. Demosthenes, the Greek orator, had a desire to achieve eloquence after he was hissed and booed off the platform in Athens. He cultivated the art of speech writing, then went to the shores of the Aegean Sea, where he strengthened his voice by shouting into the wind for hours at a time. To improve his diction, he practiced speaking with pebbles in his mouth. To overcome his fear, he practiced with a sword hanging over his head. To clarify his presentation, he studied the techniques of the masters. Today, more than 2,000 years later, the name Demosthenes is synonymous with oratorical eloquence. Similarly, singers, athletes, players who wish to excel practice for several hours every day.

•Understanding the Process
Reduced to basics, communication consists of sending and receiving messages. Language is the primary conveyer of thoughts and ideas. It turns abstract concepts into words that symbolise those thoughts. Those words take the form of spoken sounds or written symbols.
if the mind can immediately translate the sounds and symbols into mental pictures, communication becomes very vivid and meaningful. If I say “I want a desk for my office,” my listener has only a vague and general idea of what I want.If I say “I want a brown walnut desk,” the listener has a more vivid mental picture.The more skillful you become at conveying images, the more effective your communication will be.

• Mastering the Basic SkillsSome people think that the first requisite for good communication is an exhaustive vocabulary and it is impossible to communicate well without first absorbing a heavy dose of grammar, then memorising a dictionary of English usage. Words and grammar are important.And yes, it helps to know which words and expressions are considered standard among educated people. But slavish allegiance to the rules of grammar can actually impede communication. The most important rule of communication is:Make it clear and understandable. Use words which are within the vocabularies of the people you are trying to communicate with.

•Practice makes a person perfect. Sachin Tendulkar, H.S. Rathore, Jaspal Rana, P.T. Usha, Lata Mangeshkar, S.D. Burman, Kapil Dev achieved excellence in their respective areas because they practiced for hours every day. A master musician may practice upto eight hours every day. While most people are content to become reasonably good at what they do, only a few invest the extra effort to become superb.To become superb, you have to practice. It is not enough to know what it takes to connect with people, to influence their behaviour, to create a motivational environment for them, to help them to identify with your message. The techniques of communication have to become part of your daily activity, so that they are as natural to you as swimming is to a duck. The more you practice these techniques, the easier you will find it to connect with people, whether you are dealing with individuals one- on-one or with a group of thousands.

•Patience

To become a polished, inspirational communicator, one needs patience, apart from practice, desire, etc. You must have realised that as years passed by, your understanding of people and processes at work in your organisation improved. So acquiring skills of a communicator requires constant, careful, loving attention to the craft.

You can use these five keys to effective communication in many settings, under a variety of circumstances. You can be a virtuoso at inspiring your work force, at negotiating business deals, at marketing your products and at building a positive corporate image. All these are important communication skills. But always remember: Whatever communication task you undertake, your objective is to connect with people.

Writing Effectively

Management Guru Peter Drucker claims that more than 60% of all manage ment problems result from breakdowns in communications. A major study by the Rockefeller Foundation found that 68% of the customers who quit buying from their regular suppliers do so because employees fail to communicate effectively with those customers. Efficiency experts claim that at least 40% of Communication the average worker’s time is spent doing tasks that are either unnecessary or have to be done again Skills and because they were not done according to instructions. So, the ability to communicate with Motivation precision has a tremendous impact on the bottom line. One way to communicate precisely is to put it in writing.

You can multiply your influence by learning the techniques of forceful writing. High- powered writers learn to focus words the way a laser beam focuses light. Some pertinent guidelines for forceful writing are:

• Focus your objective. What is the purpose of the material you want to write? Writing can help you achieve the five I’s: It can inform, inquire, influence, instruct and incite.

• Focus your audience. Written materials such as reports and brochures can be valuable positioning tools. They should be written with a specific audience in mind – the audience you wish to influence to buy your products or services.

• Focus your content. Make sure that your message is the right message for the right audience. Do not let unnecessary ideas intrude on your princi pal message.Therefore, “a sentence should contain no unnecessary words and, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences”.

• Focus your clarity. Some writers think they can hide fuzzy thinking by burying it under a mass of words. To have impact, ideas must be ex pressed precisely and concisely. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address required only 275 words, and 196 of them were of one syllable.

• Focus your refinement. Perfection rarely emerges from the first draft. All self- learning materials are reviewed, revised and edited before being sent to print. Such refinements help us to bring in greater clarity.Be your own toughest editor, but do not stop there. Let others read what you have written before you submit it to your audience. You know what you meant, but you cannot know how others might interpret it until others have read it.

•Focus your results. Unless results are built in, they do not happen. Good writing always does four things:

– It creates a feeling.

– It gives an idea.

– It gives the reader a benefit.
–It produces a desired response.

Some techniques for clear writing include the following:

•Get your thinking straight.
All communication begins with thoughts. In fact, thoughts are the vehicles 56through which you communicate with yourself. Before you communicate your thoughts to the outside world, organise them. Think about the things you want to say. What is the most important point? What facts, data or arguments do you need to support this point? Organise your points in the order of importance, along with supporting points. Then decide upon an effective, attention-getting introduction.Next, present your material in the order of importance. Conclude by summarising the material or telling your readers how you want them to respond to it.

•Write exactly what you mean.
In face-to-face communication, physically or electronically, the speaker can receive immediate feedback from the listener. In written communication, the feedback is not immediate. In fact, you may receive no feedback. So you must get your point across accurately the first time, or your communication is futile.

•Get to the point.
If you are writing a letter to ask for an appointment, ask for it in the opening paragraph. If you want more information, request it. If you want someone to buy something, ask for the order.
 

•Be concise.

Do not waste words. Keep sentences and paragraphs short and simple. Always use the shortest and most familiar words. Do not endeavour when you can try. Do not finalise when you can finish. Do not utilise an instrument for manual excavation when you can dig with a shovel.To quote Winston Churchill, one of the great masters of language, “Short words are best, and the old words when short are the best of all.”

•Be real.

Each one of us has a personality, a blending of traits, thought patterns and mannerisms– which can aid us in communicating clearly. Be natural, and let the real you come through. Do not try to write like a Harvard scholar unless you really are one. Do not try to imitate street language unless it comes naturally to you.

•Use images: A picture is worth a thousand words.

Normally we form a mental picture of the event we are thinking about. A good example is the line that once divided the Communist world from the Free World. It was just another political boundary until Churchill called it the “Iron Curtain.” That gave it a powerful image that made clear its true nature.When you have an abstract idea of something you want to express, try to think of something familiar to relate to it. Make sure it is familiar to you and to your audience. One writer, explaining the working of a nuclear reactor,Communication likened the nucleus of an atom to a rack of balls on a pool table, ready to fly apart when struck by a Skills and
speeding cue ball. Instructors in problem-solving like to compare knotty problems to logjams,Motivation which can be broken by finding and releasing the key log.

Having good communication skills is not optional; it is essential to success in every field of activity today. To produce and market the products and services to support the billions of people who now inhabit the earth requires a level of communication undreamt of in previous centuries. When the quality of your product depends upon the collective efforts of dozens, hundreds or thousands of individuals, communication becomes the lifeblood of your enterprise.In fact, communication is at the heart of everything we do. It is the foundation for interaction among human beings. Communication has to do with meanings, with understandings, with feelings, with desires, with needs and with ideas. But the greatest need is for understanding – for building bridges between human beings so that we can live together, work together, get along with each other, today and tomorrow.It is easy to think of communication as a process of sending messages. But sending is only half the process. Receiving is the other half. So at the appropriate time, we have to stop sending and prepare to receive.

• Listening Pays: Listening pays off daily in the world of business. Smart salespeople have learned that you can talk your way out of a sale, but you can listen your way into one. They listen to their customers to find out what their needs are, then concentrate on filling those needs. Skilled negotiators know that no progess can be made until they have heard and understood what the otherside wants.

• Listening requires Thought and Care: Listening, like speaking and writing, requires thought and care. If you don’t concentrate on listening, you won’t learn much of what you learn. Some experts claim that professionals earn be tween 40% and 80% of their pay by listening. Yet, most of us retain only 25% of what we hear.If you can increase your retention and your comprehension, you can increase your effectiveness in the 21st century’s Age of Information.

• Listen With Your Eyes: If you listen only with your ears, you are missing outon much of the message. Good listeners keep their eyes open whil listening. Look for fellings. The face is an eloquent communication medium. Learn to read its massages. While the speaker is delivering a verbal message, the face cna be saying, “I am serious,” “Just kidding,” “It pains me to be telling you this,” or “This gives me great pleasure.”The following are some non-verbal signals to watch for:Rubbing one’s eye: When your hear “I guess you are right,” and the speaker is rubbing one eye, guess again. Rubbing one eye often is a signal that the speaker is having trouble inwardly accepting something.Tapping feet: When a statement is accompanied by foot-tapping, it usually indicates a lack of confidence in what is being said.

Rubbing fingers: When you see the thumb and forefinger rubbing together,it ofter means that the speaker is holding something back.
Staring and blinking: If you have made your best offer nad the other person stares at ceiling nad blinks repidly, your offer is under consideration.

Crooked smiles: Most genuine smiles are symmetrical. And most facial experessions are fleeting. If a smile is noticeable crooked, you are probably lokking at a fake smile.

Eyes that avoid contact: Poor eye contact can be sign of low self-esteem, but it can also indicate that the speaker is not being truthful.It would be unwise to make a decision based solely on these visible signals. But they can give you valuable tips on the kind of questions to ask and the kind of answers to be alert for.

Remember: Good Listeners Make Things Easy. People who are poor listeners will find few who are willing to come to them with useful information.

Communicating Silently
The face and eyes are eloquent message conveyers. Someone has estimated that humans are capable of 20,000 different facial expressions. How do you measure up?The most pleasant, and usually the most advantageous, is a smile. It is always more pleasant to deal with people who smile than with those who frown.The eye is “the light of the body.” The unvoiced testimony it offers is often the most eloquent. Most people interpret a firm, steady gaze as a sign of sincerity. Darting, shifty eyes are interpreted as signs of untrustworthiness. A quick wink can convey a secret message silently across a crowded room. A coquettish look can set a heart fluttering. The ability to look someone in the eye is a sign of high self-esteem. When children fib to their parents, they usually look at the floor. It is hard to have self-esteem while you are telling a lie. Steady eye contact is also a sign of assertiveness. People who consistently avoid the eyes of those to whom they speak are inviting others to treat them as doormats.

Sometimes, angry conversation leads to mutual glares in which each party tries to outstare the other. If you find your eyes locked in a stare with an angry customer, it is okay to break contact first. In fact, one theory holds that the dominant person will break contact first, since the dominant person takes the lead in all things.The next two boxes describe the different kinds of communicators.
 

Box : Unproductive Communicators
Unproductive Communicators

The Fog Maker:

Keeps people guessing about what’s expected, how well they’re doing and, what’s going to happen.

Figures the fuzzier the instructions the easier it is to find some reason to blame workers.

The Exterminator: Motto is, “Come on, make my day!”.

Tells people to do it or get fires.

The God-Player:

Uses phrases like, “Any idiot ought to know better than that!”

Whatever people do is not good enough.

The Social Often asks, “Is everybody happy?’.

director: Assumes personal responsibility for everyone’s problems.

The Do-It- Believes that, if you want something done right, you have to

Yourselfer: do it yourself.

The Carrom Shooter:Never talks directly to anyone.

Takes pot shots at one employee through another.

The Old-Timer:

The Paper

Hanger:

The Prosecutor:

Often laments, “I remember when people used to work for a living.”

At every suggestion, replies, “That’s not the way we’ve always done it.”

Doesn’t process paperwork; just shuffles papers.

Motto is: “I know it’s in here, somewhere.”

Publicly and loudly attacks anybody who errs.

Assumes everybody’s guilty until proven innocent.

The Wimp:

Afraid to confront anybody.

Hates everybody but wouldn’t dare tell them.

Box : Productive Communicators Productive Communicators

The Facilitator:

Makes it easy for people to do their jobs.

Uses key log technique to solve problems.

The Enabler:

Teaches people how and why, not just what.

Keeps interference to a minimum.

The Empowerer: Generates enthusiasm.

Helps people discover better ways.

The Guide:

Sets a good example.

Leads people to peak performance.

The Encourager: Helps people believe in themselves.

Lifts people when they feel down, but without assuming responsibility for their problems.

The Complimenter: Tries to catch people doing something right.

Gives compliments in public; criticizes only in private.

The Peacemaker: Works constructively to settle disputes.

Serves as an advocate to both management and workers.

The Communicator: Listens responsively.

Keeps constant dialogue going.

The Challenger: Shows people their potential, without highlighting their failures.

Rewards people for their progress.

The Evaluator:

Makes clear what is expected.

Inspects results.

Lets people know exactly where they stand. ‘

Avoiding Communication Barriers

Successful salespeople learn to recognise and overcome barriers to communication.There are two types of such barriers: those arising from the environment and those stemming from the listener’s resistance. We now discuss these.

A. Environmental Barriers
The environmental barriers include:

• Distractions,

• Disturbances,

• Diversions, and

• Discomfort

When you are communicating with an individual, s/he deserves your full attention.Choose a time and a place that will minimise interruptions. If you are meeting in your office during business hours, have your secretary hold telephone calls, or useyour telephone answering device for the duration of the conversation. Many executives set aside certain times of the day during which they will receive telephone calls and unscheduled visitors. The rest of the time, they reserve for creative thinking, strategic planning, decision-making and other duties of leadership.

When disturbances do occur, try not to talk over them. If the disturbance is obviously temporary, suspend the conversation until the interruption is past. If it is obviously going to be prolonged, try to reschedule the conversation for a more favourable time.Finally, pay attention to comfort, and avoid audience discomfort. Stay away from settings that are uncomfortable. Nobody can concentrate while in a state of discomfort. And if the person you need to communicate with is ill, injured or going through some emotional trauma, it is best to reschedule the conversation.Otherwise, you are going up against impossible barriers to communication.Monitoring the environment is the task of any person who wishes to communicate,whether as a company leader, a salesperson, a manager, or a letter writer. You just cannot ignore such barriers. To do so is to give up and let the competing voices have your audience. If people are distracted or interrupted, or they feel uncomfortable, they are not likely to tune you in completely, understand your message thoroughly, or respond to you positively.

B. Audience Resistance
Barriers resulting from audience resistance fall into two categories: external factors that cause people to tune you out, and internal factors that prevent them from giving you their complete attention.

External Factors

People often form first impressions on the basis of external factors. If the first impression is negative, you will not get the person’s attention. Look for characteristics of dress, speech and actions that may be turning peopleoff. If your dress is too casual, frivolous or distracting, you may be losing listeners.If your voice is strident, shrill or guttural, people may find you unpleasant to listen to. In certain areas, regional accents may turn people off. If you speak with a pronounced regional accent and are doing business in a region where that accent is not commonly heard, you may have to look for ways to overcome this barrier. You may want to work on acquiring a more generic accent. Or you may want to spend some time cultivating the person’s confidence.

People have a way of erecting defence mechanisms and emotional barriers when they feel threatened by what you are saying or by the way you are saying it. Studies have repeatedly shown that people, like other creatures, feel protective of their territories. Invade those turfs, or act in a threatening manner, and you will be sure to turn off their attention. When your task is to deliver an unpleasant message or to persuade your listener to take some unpleasant action, look for ways to neutralise the negatives and to reassure the person who feels threatened.

Keep It Simple
The most important thing you can do to make sure that you are understood is to keep your communication simple. People do not like to be led through a maze of words and mental meanderings before they reach the main point of your message.The high art of plain talk is simply saying something so that it can be understood. On this note, we end the discussion and summarise the main points.

• Effective communication in an organisation is important for its growth and success. Communication is both ways, viz., top to bottom and bottom to top. The players in the communication must learn how best to communi cate to their seniors as well as to their juniors.

• Communication is at the heart of everything we do. It is the foundation for interaction among human beings. Communication has to do with meanings, with understandings, with feelings, with desires, with needs and with ideas. Our world is filled with information.But the greatest need is for understanding – for building bridges between human beings so we can better live together, work together, get along with each other, and make this earth the best possible home for the human race.

Principles for Communicating with People

We now enunciate certain basic principles underlying communication with people.

• All people are motivated: We cannot motivate them. We can only guide them by their motivations.

• People do things for their own reasons: Show them what they want and they will move heaven and earth to get it.

• People change because of pain: When the pain of remaining the same becomes greater than the pain of changing, people change.

• The key to effective communication is identification: When something becomes personal, it creates interest. Therefore, an effort should be made to create a sense of belongingness.

• The best way to get people to pay attention to you is to pay attention to them.

• Pride is a powerful motivator.

• You cannot change people; only their behaviours.

• The worker’s perception becomes the supervisor’s reality.

• You consistently get the behaviours you consistently expect and reinforce.

• We all judge ourselves by our motives; but we judge others by their actions.

An understanding of these principles can help us improve communication in our company. In this context, an interesting concept is that of a company without boundaries.

Building a Company without Boundaries
The concept of a company without boundaries essentially means the removal of all barriers to the flow of information and ideas into and through your company. In some companies, information flows through the corporate structure, but only through narrow, carefully restricted channels.

In a typical old-style corporation, ideas and information flow up and down “chimneys of power” running from the executive offices down through several layers of management. Often information is bottled up in bureaucratic compartments and never reaches the people who could really benefit from it. There are several good reasons for modern companies to dismantle these barriers to free-flowing communication. It helps companies to be focused, flexible, fast, and friendly.

To focus the efforts of the entire workforce, your organisation should not be criss- crossed with walls that impede the flow of communication. Similarly, you cannot be flexible if you have a structure in which every division and department is a closed information loop (with no lines of inter-departmental communication). This also restricts our response to market changes and can limit institutional growth. This is particularly important in this era of globalisation privatisation and liberalisation, characterised by rapid changes. Moreover, faster the flow of information through different layers of management, greater is our responsiveness.

Finally, to be friendly, people must talk to others inside and outside the organisation. Being customer-friendly also leads to organisational growth.In the old days, everyone had to “go through channels.” In the new business environment, the channels have to be removed. The organisation must practice free flow of information and ideas.

In a company without boundaries, internal functions are shared. Engineering does not design a product and then “hand it off” to manufacturing. They work in a team culture with marketing and sales, finance and strategy, customer service experts so that everybody owns the task. How do you classify your organisation?

Do you practice team culture? You may like to list important innovations as a manager.

In many organisations, the company’s way is not the best way; yet it considers it to be the only way. When such an attitude prevails, the organisation literally shuts out a world of innovative ideas.

Let us narrate the story of General Electric (GE) to drive home the point. Since GE was receptive to ideas from beyond its corporate walls, it was able to reduce its average inventory levels by $200 million a year. This is what happened: GE found an appliance company in New Zealand using an innovative method of compressing product cycle times. It put the method through a trial run in a Canadian affiliate, then transferred it to its largest appliance complex in Louisville, Kentucky. The method, which GE dubbed “Quick Response” enabled GE to respond more quickly to customer needs.But GE did not just introduce it in Louisville and forget it. It brought people in from all 13 of its major businesses to study the method and adapt it to their own operations.

A company without boundaries does not just shop for ideas among other companies in the same business. GE dispatched people to Wal-Mart to learn about the management practices that have propelled this business to the forefront in retailing. Smaller companies can use the boundary-less concept to acquire products and expertise that they cannot afford on their own. If you are wrestling with a tough problem, look for some other company that has had the same type of problem and has solved it. If you cannot afford the R&D required to develop the technology you need,look for somebody who has already developed the technology and buy it. Since energy has become most critical for the national economy, corporate houses which have ventured into energy generation and distribution are bound to reap benefits if they follow such examples.

Divisions within a Corporation
Another boundary might be the lines that run between Divisions of a Corporation.Removing the interior walls by practicing integrated diversity helps each Division to grow. Under this concept, a diversified Company consisting of many different businesses facilitates sharing of knowledge and technology. If one Division develops a piece of technology, the company looks for multiple applications. For instance, in GE’s Medical Systems, experts from Aerospace helped with the development of ultrasound technology. Engineers from Aircraft Engines helped Power Systems to cope with expanded worldwide demand for gas turbines.

Moving personnel across Divisional lines provides fresh perspectives, not to mention hybrid vigour. In 1991, GE transferred leadership in four of its 13 major businesses,with new leaders coming from other GE businesses. These internal transfers give executives throughout the company broad-based experience. They no longer think narrowly of divisional interests; they have adeveloped sense of belongingness for the organisation other than its micro- segment.

Amongst the toughest boundaries to dismantle are the ones individual managers erect around the borders of their turf. In the old days, people were given incentives of upward mobility; a raise in salary and title. However, in such situations there is a lurking fear that each manager may carve out a little fiefdom and fiercely defend it. You must have seen in your organisation that departmental heads defend/justify the action of their workforce, even if it causes losses.

Look at your own work place. How many of your “managers” really need to manage?In a boundary-less Corporation, there is a greater need for people who coach, advise and facilitate through teamwork than for people who control and direct through authoritarian management. If you review the job titles and job descriptions in your company, you may see opportunities to reduce the number of management positions by replacing functionaries with leaders. If you do this, you will be amazed at the way the boundaries of authority can be turned into avenues of cooperation.Many of the bureaucratic boundaries erected by corporate functionaries exist because individuals feel insecure and resist change. GE sought to remove these boundaries through a programme it calls “Work-Out.” During these sessions, people are free to speak out on any topic that turns them on. Often, the complaints they raise are addressed on the spot. One union leader, given a chance to lecture at Work-Out, told the group that he used to have three clearly defined enemies: the IRS, the Russians and GE management. Now, he said, there’s only one: the IRS. The Company Without Boundaries is the company of the future. If you remove the barriers between your company and its stakeholders, you create a community of mutual interests in which everyone works toward the good of all. That is what you call a win/win situation.

Fundamentals of Communication

Most verbal communication takes place between individuals whether in a family or social/work setting. One-on-one verbal communication affords the greatest opportunity for precision, because immediate feedback can tell you whether or not you have been understood accurately. But communicating effectively involves more than just accuracy.

The basic purpose of communication is to influence the attitudes and behaviours of those whom we address. You will agree that each individual has a different way of responding and no approach is unique and universally effective. It is, therefore, important that you learn to express yourself accurately and in a way that will accomplish your purpose of communicating with people.

Requirements of Communication

You should understand the basic requirements of communication to achieve precision and effectiveness in communication, . These are as follows:

• The message must be conveyed.

• The message must be received.

• The receiver must respond.

• Each message must be understood. We now examine these requirements one by one.

• The Message Must Be Conveyed
We know our thoughts, and how to translate them into words. But in the choice of words, we lose simplicity. Every one has his/her own mental dialect. It is the common language of the culture in which we grow up, modified by our own unique life experiences. In fact, our experience adds colour and shades of meaning to different words.

When you speak, your mental dialect must relate to the mental dialect of the listener.And the words you speak must convey precise information to the person who hears you. If you have to travel from Delhi to Mumbai and you ask your travel agent to book a ticket without specifying the train and class of ticket, s/he may end up booking the lowest preference train. There are several messages you have to convey in a power utility. For example, the exact location of the break down has to be conveyed to the maintenance group, for quick response from the linesman. You may like to write down other such messages in the margin, e.g., messages to the consumers, the top management, the finance and accounts section, etc.

•The Message Must Be Received

The second basic requirement of one-on-one communication process is that the message be received and understood. Effective communicators know that they have not conveyed their meaning until they have made sure that the other person has received it exactly as they sent it. They test, with questions and observations, to make sure that the real meaning they wanted to convey has passed through the filters. It is possible that the mother tongue of your subordinate is different from your mother tongue. Therefore, to avoid confusion, you may have to use words/ language which s/he comprehends well.

•There Must Be A Response

The goal of all communication is to obtain the desired response. You want to say something correctly, and would like that the listener understands what you mean by it.You can be sure of it only when the listener does something in response.

•Each Message Must Be Understood
Once a message has been delivered, received and responded to, one must take stock of what each person has communicated. The cycle of communication is complete only when you come out with a clearer understanding of the person with whom you sought to communicate. You may not always agree with the other person but mutual understanding is important.

Developing Communication Skills

In the preceding units of this block, you have learnt that effective communication is important for the growth and success of an organisation. The communication is two way, viz., top to bottom and bottom to top. The players in the communication must learn how best to communicate to their seniors as well as to their juniors. For developing communication skills, it is important to know the following:

• Fundamentals of Communication

• Principles for Communicating with People

• Building a Boundaryless Company

• How to be an Effective Communicator

• How to Write Effectively

• What is Silent Communication

• Unproductive Games Communicators Play

• Productive Games Communicators Play

• How to Avoid Communication Barriers

• How to Communicate Like a Professional We now discuss all these aspects.

Motivates and Managerial Behaviour

As a manager, we may have asked: What motivates managers to become successful in a large organisation? Among other things, they need to make an impact to be strong and to influence the behaviour of others for the organisational good. What separates good managers from poor managers is the “need for power”. However, it should neither be dictatorial, nor power for personal goals. It is not crude power, or power used impulsively. It can be referred to as altruistic power, meaning the power to influence people for the good of the organisation for which they work. It may also be called socialized power, meaning power which is tempered by a large dose of self-
control and perspective.

When a large number of executives are grouped according to their success in a running large, complex corporation, the profile of the effective manager looks like this:The top managers of a company must possess a high concern for influencing people and commensurate authority. However, this need must be disciplined and controlled so that it is directed towards the benefit of an institution as a whole and not toward the manager’s personal benefits. Moreover, the top manager’s need for power ought to be greater than her/his need for being liked by people.

A good manager is not primarily motivated by the need for affiliation. The affiliation need refers to the desire to be liked and accepted by other people. People with strong affiliation need not necessarily do well in management positions.To maintain a high morale and productive environment, policies must be applied universally and consistently. A manager concerned with developing friendly relationships may make too many “exceptions to the rule” for certain subordinates, thereby upsetting these subordinates who do not receive special treatment. A manager motivated by the affiliation need may create poor teamwork and low morale. This, of course, would be inadvertent; as such an individual would not purposefully do anything to upset the relationships in the work group. It would occur most likely because of the failure of the manager to focus on the task to be accomplished.

The need for achievement is not extreme among effective managers. The need for achievement means a desire to do things better. Entrepreneurs, for example, are high in the need to achieve. This is understandable since people high in this need try to do things better themselves and want constant feedback on their performance to see how well they are working. While good managers may be high in the need to achieve, it is usually not greatly out of balance when compared to the power and affiliation motives.A manager with an usually high need to achieve would in all probability be characterized by the inability to delegate authority. But good managers get things done with and through other people. They are, therefore, required invariably to delegate authority. The manager must get others to do things through influence or through persuasion. By definition, then, one aspect of a manager’s job is to help others perform their jobs better, rather than trying to better perform the many short-term projects alone.

A mature, self-controlled need for power will help create a good manager who helps subordinates, feels strong and responsible, rewards them properly for good performance and sees that things are organized in such a way that subordinates feel they know what they should be doing. Above all, managers should foster among others a strong sense of team spirit, of pride in working as part of a particular team. If a manager creates and encourages this spirit, her/his subordinate(s) certainly should perform better.

The actions of managers can be measured along two dimensions – a concern for people and a concern for productive output. A strong power need combined with a weak need for affiliation does not conflict with being people-oriented or democratic toward subordinates. Power is a motive while being people-oriented is a behaviour or an action.

Effective managers, in their effort to influence subordinates and get work done, express their strong power needs in democratic, people-oriented ways. Research on power in organisations indicates that the managers who were strong in power needs were also rated strong on the people-oriented supervisory style by their own subordinates.
 

• Motivation is defined as a “process governing choices, made by persons or lower organisms, among alternatives forms of voluntary activity”. As such motivation is concerned with (1) the direction of behaviour, or what a person chooses to do when presented with a number of possible alterna tives, (2) the amplitude, or strength of the effect once the choice is made and (3) the persistence of the behaviour, or how long the person continues with it. Choices behaviour refers to decisions directed toward occupational preference, choices, organisation choices, job attendance, self- training, creativity, spontaneity and job termination.

• Almost all workers are motivated to have a high level of self-esteem in the work situation. Often when a person is not in a work situation providing high self- esteem, the person will be “fighting back” – actively or passively like a slave – with all sorts of sly country measures. People do not want to be pushed around, misunderstood, unappreciated, mistreated, controlled or laughed at. All these
things cause low self-esteem. The individual does not want to expect success to be active, to be respected to exercise self-control and to be self-starting.

• Factors within the job (intrinsic factors) are usually effective motivators and can help awaken the urge to accomplish and to be self-starting. Such factors include feelings of achievement, recognition and responsibility among others. These feelings sometimes “surprise” workers and in so doing inspire and encourage high motivation

• Jobs not providing for intrinsic motivation are low in “cultivation” or stimulation. Some form of job redesign is suggested for this type of job.

• High task performance results when (1) employees are able to use their valued abilities and skills in becoming task competent, (2) employees perceive valued and equitable rewards to be linked to task performance, and (3) employees acknowledge a differential reward system based on performance within the organisation.

• The power motive is important to effective managers. This need is not for dictatorial power or crude impulsive power but rather socialized power and the power to influence people for the sake of the organisation. While some balance of motives is usually present within most individuals a high need for power seem to be critical to a person’s ability to function as a manager.

• Motivation is a complex problem in organisation because the needs, wants, and desires of each worker differ as each individual is unique in his/ her biological and psychological makeup and in his/her learning experiences. Motivation is either internal or external, depending on where the action is initiated.

• External motivation builds on internal motivation and depends on the motivational assumptions and techniques used by the manager.

Motivating Employees in Actual Practice

We now know that motivation has something to do with our way of life and thinking. Since there is a wide spectrum of human nature, there is no single magic wand to motivate employees as their needs and priorities of satisfaction differ. What may motivate one may not necessarily motivate the other. However, the employer should find out the right way that could make workers more productive. Since an employee has a lot of untapped energy, s/he would be ready to work and contribute the most if trained properly and treated fairly. In managing an organisation, some of the important factors which could improve motivation and morale of its employees are as follows:

i) Devising a well-defined humanistic personnel policy, wherein the workforce is regarded as the valuable asset of the organisation, and sufficient care is taken to maintain and develop it, not only to attain organisational objectives but also to satisfy the normal aspirations of employees.

ii) A long-term employment policy projecting image of fairness in recruitment and selection, placement of the right person to the right job, sound and fair promotion and transfer policies, well-planned need-based training and development programmes for grooming employees for higher job or building their career in the organisation, and suitable workforce planning.

iii) Fair wages and salary administration ensuring equitable wage structure free from internal and external inequalities.

iv) Rewarding good performance adequately at the earliest and also ssuespects

v)A constructive and objective system of performance appraisal and merit rating of employees aimed at servicing and improving them and not punishing them.

vi) Prompt handling of workers’ grievances by having a short time-bound procedure well-known to employees. In handling grievances, the attitude of persons managing grievances should be cooperative and positive and not negative, and the worker should have the feeling that s/he will be properly heard and justice will be done.

vii) In handling disciplinary cases, the management should not only be fair but also seem to be fair. Disciplinary procedure should conform to the principles of natural justice. A corrective and not punitive approach in this respect may be more motivating.

viii) Participative and consultative style of management and supervision and increasing autonomy in work may create necessary conditions for motivating workers to give their best.

ix) Job enrichment and enlargement, or making the job more challenging are also essential for motivating the workers to give their best, as these will not only reduce job boredom and frustration, but also increase job satisfaction, and satisfy the esteem or ego and self-actualisation needs of employees, which are perpetual motivators.

x) Self-motivation by top management, senior and middle managers and supervisors is essential if the persons working under them are to be motivated. The dictum“before you motivate others, you must first motivate yourself” should not be lost sight of. Seniors are expected to provide their juniors effective leadership and set an example of dedication and superior skill.

Specific Actions to Motivate Others

Managerial action, in general, can take four forms:

• Provide more of the valued rewards to the person.

• Change the values of the person towards the rewards, which are available.

• Improve the person’s perception of the behaviour-reward linkage.

• Improve the reality of the behaviour-reward linkage.

The first two of these deal with actions which affect the goals which people value as outcome for their work; the latter two deal with their expectation of whether the paths available to them will lead to those rewards. Let us see how each of the three forms of influence may be used to achieve one or more of these four forms of action.

With respect to individual motivation, and in the context of the path-goal theory, managerial action which constitutes indirect influence is aimed at Motivation arranging the appropriate strategies, structures and policies to encourage and support motivated people to achieve organisational goals. This includes, for example,establishing incentive and reward system which will be valued by employees. Indirect influence also includes selecting and employing people who have necessary skills andwho value the kinds of rewards available in the organisation. Finally, indirectinfluence includes developing in oneself and others the managerial skills, particularly,the management style of pattern of behaviour in dealing with subordinates, which will have the effect of creating higher motivation.

You may recall that semi-direct influence is exercised when a manager acts to affect an individual through his or her social relationships at work. The emergent group has a strong effect on what its members value and what their expectations are with respect to the outcomes from behaviour. The group reward may serve as a highly visible symbol of the need for intra-company cooperation as well.Direct influence on the individual involves communication and the personal, face-to- face relationship. A manager who attempts to increase the level of motivation through direct influence is typically trying to do the second and third actions mentioned above with respect to that person’s value and expectations. Thus, the manager may work overtime to convince an employee to value more highly the rewards already existing and available in the organisation. This may be particularly difficult in times of major social change.

The other form of action for direct influence is to improve the employee’s perception of the linkage between behaviour and reward. This might involve, for example,personal conversations about what can result from certain levels of performance, suchas promotion, bonus, or greater responsibility.As important as what to do to motivate others is the question of how to do it. We turn now to a closer look at a manager’s behaviour required to motivate others. To do this, we discuss management style and leadership.

Management Style and Leadership
In working relationships with others, and particularly in direct influence in motivating others, a manager exhibits one or more characteristic styles of behaviour. We may define management style as the pattern of a manager’s behaviour in working relationships with others over time. This definition is relatively loose being more a concept than a precise variable. In order to be more precise, we need to set up one or more categories of behaviour characteristics where employees for one reason or another see their work only as a means of economic rewards. A second style is a supportive, people-oriented, humanistic style, which may be appropriate for employees who value social rewards. A third is a participative, mutual goal-setting style in which the manager works with subordinates who value autonomy and are rewarded by self-fulfillment.

In a way, then, we say that a manager who holds one of the three basic sets of assumptions about what motivates others should exhibit a style which is consistent with those assumptions in order to provide the appropriate means to exercise direct influence. In other words, managers need to understand what rewards subordinates value, and behave in a pattern which will fit with that understanding as one part of providing a consistent environment for the employee.The manager who believes, as a part of his or her perspective, that people are complex,is going above and beyond the three operational sets of assumptions about valued rewards. The “complex person” assumptions imply that a manager will have no fixed beliefs about what motivates people in general or what style to employ in all situations.Rather, the manager will attempt to understand the particular subordinates, the particular situation, and ideally, select a style to fit the situation. Thus, they recognize that people are complex and that a diagnosis with a goal as a path-goal theory must be performed before employing a style. The manager cannot have one particular style for all situations. Rather, the manager must be able to choose an appropriate style for a situation and then change that style, if necessary. One may call this approach a“contingent” management style, but it is important to note that it refers to the process of diagnosis and choice of managerial behaviour rather than to the pattern of behaviour itself.

Motivation and Morale

These two expressions are not synonymous or interchangeable. But the fact remains that a motivated group of workers generally has a high degree of morale. Morale is a composite attitude of various individuals employed by a company. It is generated by the group and may be considered as a by-product of the group. It is not an average of individual attitudes.Morale has been defined in a number of ways. It can be seen as “an attitude of satisfaction,with a desire to continue in, and willingness to strive for, the goals of a particular group or organisation”. It has also been defined as “the possession of feeling of being accepted by and the belonging to a group of employees through adherence to a common goal and confidence in the desirability of these goals”. Put simply, morale is a group concept,while motivation is largely an individual concept. Morale is the summation of feeling of employees as a group towards various aspects of their work job, the company, working conditions, fellow workers, supervisors and so on. If the attitude of employees towards all these aspects is more positive than negative, the morale of the group can be said to be high, otherwise it is low.Studies in India show that high morale among workers may not be an indication of high productivity. Higher morale of union members may enable them to continue to strike and fight out the issue.

Important components and determinants of morale are (a) a feeling of togetherness, (b) need for a clear goal or objective to be achieved, (c) expectation of success towards the attainment of the goal, (d) feeling of each member within the group that s/he has a meaningful task to perform for achieving the goal and that s/he also matters whatever may be the job assigned to her/him, and (e) supportive and stimulative leadership. All these determinants of morale are equivalent to that of job satisfaction which is a precursor of morale. However, the two differ as the term job satisfaction is used for individual and morale for groups.

An enlightened management should be conscious of the need for assessing the morale of its employees by opinion polls or attitude surveys from time to time. Low morale can be caused by factors beyond the control of the organisation. However, workers’ morale can be boosted up by (a) better methods of working in which workers or their representatives may have a bigger say, (b) utilization of incentive schemes with the widest possible coverage, and (c) consultative and participative style of management.

What Demotivates or Demoralises the Employees?

There are some management practices which affect the morale and motivation or willingness of employees to give their best or work in the desired manner. Some of these practices are:

a) Under assignment: If a skilled man is assigned an unskilled or routine job, it may cause frustration or job dissatisfaction and thus demotivation.

b) Over assignment: If a good worker is overloaded to the point where Skills and s/he Motivation feels that s/he being exploited, this may make her/him lose interest in work. In big organisations, it is a rather common practice to overload good workers as others cannot be trusted or depended upon.

c) Buckmastership: Superiors or leaders avoiding hard work themselves and passing on the same to their subordinates, and then finding fault with them may erode employee motivation.

d) Coercive types of control or supervision which may give a worker a feeling that s/he is not being trusted may also demotivate her/him or erode her/his interest in the work. Some control no doubt is essential but if it is too coercive resulting in frequent warnings or punishments, or withdrawal of facilities to chasten the employee, morale and motivation of the employee are bound to go down.

e) Manipulative behaviour of the management which may take the form of divide and rule policy or tactics, making promises which are not fulfilled, encouraging groupism and appealing to the patriotic sense in times of national crisis, may also have a demotivating effect. When employees perceive such behaviour, they lose interest in work.

Types of Motivation

In an industrial set-up, motivation may be intrinsic as well as extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is related to the job one is doing. When a skilled operative performs a job well, s/he derives a sense of satisfaction. This is intrinsic motivation which satisfies the creative instinct of an individual.Extrinsic motivation is external to the job or task. For example, financial incentives for doing a job well or giving higher production may motivate the workers. Other external motivators are praise from the superior for good work, recognition of good performance by the company in the form of public citation and award, admiration of fellow workers, and improved working conditions and other facilities.

Determinants of Motivation
The traditional approach that a person could be made to work by monetary rewards has been gradually giving place to a more complete pluralistic explanation which recognizes that an individual works to fulfill a variety of needs. It is recognized that the motivation is the result of the following three groups of factors:

i) Individuals: To know what can motivate employees, we must know their aims, objectives and values. Human needs are both numerous and complex, and often it is difficult to identify them. Motivation is not an easily observed phenomenon. We have to first observe individual action and behaviour at work and interpret the same in terms of the underlying motivation. Our interpretation may not necessarily reveal the individual’s true motivation, as some of the human needs may be difficult to describe and identify.

ii) Organisational Components: Organisational structure, technological system,physical facilities, which constitute internal environment of an organisation, affect motivation. Some machines are more interesting to work with than others or certain kinds of work may be boring to many persons; job-connected experience of a worker determines motivation.

iii) External or Exogenous Variables: A worker’s life outside the factory is also an important factor affecting his motivation or willingness to work inside the factory.Life at work and life outside the work are bound together. Troubles and joys of off- job life cannot be put aside when reporting for work, nor can the factory matters be dropped when returning home after work. A strong motivational role is also played by culture, customs and norms, images and attributes conferred by the society on particular jobs. An individual, for example, may find that his/her work commands a substantial degree of respect and social acceptance quite apart from holding a position in a particular organisation, and so s/he may be more willing or motivated to perform such a work.

Characteristics of Motivation

Some important characteristics of motivation which follow from the discussion of its determinants are:

i) Individuals differ in their motivation: There is no single economic drive which determines behaviour. As the desires and goals of individuals differ, so do their motivations; one may do a job because it is remunerative, another may do it because it gives a sense of achievement, or enables him/her to serve a cause which is dear to him/her.

ii) Motivation is highly situational: A person may work very well in one organisation and poorly in another in the same position or type of the job. The performance may vary with working conditions and type of supervision.

iii) Motivation change: Motivation of each individual changes from time to time even if he/she may continue to behave in the same way. For example, a temporary worker may produce more in the beginning to become permanent. After being made permanent, he/she may continue to produce more to gain promotion and so on.

iv) Motivation is expressed differently: Needs and the way in which they are translated into action may vary considerably from one individual to another.Different persons may also react differently to successful or unsuccessful fulfillment of their needs. One may feel frustrated if his/her need has not been met,but the other may be motivated by his/her failure and redouble his/her effort to get his/her need met (say, by writing and publishing additional scholarly articles or books). Again one individual with strong security need may avoid accepting responsibility for fear of failure and dismissal and the other with a similar need may seek out responsibility for fear of being fired for low performance.

v) Motivation is complex: It is difficult to explain and predict the behaviour of workers. Use of one motivational device may not produce the desired result if it brings an opposing motive into play. In a factory when a blue-green device was introduced to reduce eye strain, the output of male workers increased while that of female workers decreased. It was found that the latter disliked this change as the new type of light falling on them made them look simply ghastly in appearance.

Motivation: Evolution of the Concept

Literally, motivation means incitement or inducement to act or move. In an industrial setting, it means to make a subordinate act in a desired manner. Obviously “desired” implies the interests of the organisation, as well as the employee. It implies not only that the subordinate should act in a disciplined manner, but also that s/he should act in an efficient and productive manner. To motivate, therefore, is to persuade, stimulate,even compel (as and when fear becomes the motivator) an employee to act in a manner which may help in attaining organisational objectives. This may be a limited view. Motivation really comprises all the internal urges which are described as desires, wishes, drives, etc., which make a person strive for doing a thing. Motivation is what makes people do things.

Motivation may not be the same as incentive. In incentives we generally expect greater output with the same inputs, while motivation involves some more inputs considered necessary for changing the work, attitude and behaviour. As such, financialincentives may not motivate all, particularly those employees whose physical needs are already satisfied. To motivate means really to produce a goal-oriented behaviour,which may not be made possible by mere provision of incentives with the object of higher earnings and higher output.The importance of motivation is too obvious. Survival and growth of an undertaking depends considerably on the performance of its employees, which in turn, depends on their ability and will to work. The ability is determined by the quality of education, training and experience that one has acquired. Even if there is any deficiency in the same, it can be made good by arranging further training and developing facilities for them. The willingness to work involves change in behaviour and attitude of a person towards work, or motivating him/ her to work in a desired manner and give better performance. Motivated workforce is essential for efficient working, optimum productivity, and attaining organisational objectives. The motivation in personnel management follows planning and organising. Any managerial decision becomes meaningful, if it can be converted into an effective action through motivation of subordinates. In fact, every aspect of personnel function is pervasively endowed with motivational attributes. Therefore, a successful personnel manager incorporates the principles and concept of motivation into her/his own philosophy of management. By applying them s/he can influence others in attaining a better or positive motivation.

Yow now know that motivating people is difficult. But it is very challenging for changing human behaviour. The study of motivation began to attract attention in the early part of the 19 th century. However, with the development of theories of learning, it came to occupy a central position. The application of psychology in education and industry led us to realise that motivation as a process is highly significant in achieving excellence. However, in spite of the relevance and popularity of motivation, its applicability was not well understood till 1953 when McClelland extended its applicability in industry, education and a wide range of areas and contexts. He identified achievement motive and developed a general theory of motivation and method of measuring the same. According to him, motivation consists of the learned anticipation of a goal as arousing positive or negative emotional reaction. His ideas highlighted an ever increasing significance of the entrepreneurial roles in society vis-à-vis organisation, especially so in economic development.

Another concept of motivation is in the form of five human needs placed in hierarchical order: Psychological, safety/security, social, self-esteem and self-actualization. This concept is based on assumption of internal motivation – the needs, wants and desires,which exist within an individual and influence him/her by determining his/her thoughts.These, in turn, determine the ultimate behaviour in a particular situation.The underlying assumption here is that individual motivation depends on urgency and potency of the needs. As the lower order needs are satisfied, the higher order needs take precedence over them.

Another way of looking at motivation is in terms of the internal dynamics of an individual vis-a-vis the power of contextual factors like money, work conditions, etc.An entirely different hypothesis of motivation is based on the nature of man, i.e., being lazy, idle and indolent or creative, open-minded and energetic. An idler is averse to any effort and would like to avoid any kind of responsibility.

Idlers prefer being directed and avoid being independent decision makers.They only work under direct control and threat of punishment. For a creative person,the work is as pleasant and natural as play. Responsibility is a welcome concept and such people seek self-regulatory behaviour.Motivation is also influenced by an organisation, and its style of management. Management styles can be depicted to be in a continuum. This concept is based on the effectiveness of management in ensuring participation of subordinates in decision making and action orientation. This theory of motivation is action oriented and projects the organisation as a task oriented, highly structured and authoritarian establishment on one hand and completely democractic, people oriented and emphasizing a participative management style on the other extreme. These are interspersed with two intermediate stages system where definitive relations between superior and subordinates have varying trust and confidence.

In the late nineteen sixties and thereafter, the concept of motivation expanded its horizon and in that process lost some of its sharp focus on human needs but in no way lost the significance for organisations and their members. The emphasis shifted from the study of motivational notions to such fields as job enrichment, quality of work life, meaning of work, organisational climate and to a very broad spectrum of organisational culture. There has been a paradigm shift in understanding the relevance and contribution of motivation vis-à-vis organisations. The enmeshing of individual identity with his/her motivation is being given a wider but well defined boundaries of social/organisational context. This may have caused some haziness in understanding and application of the concept. A psychologist likes to put a premium on the individual, whereas an organisational strategist would like to focus on the collectiveness. And the debate continues. Since each organisation is unique in its boundaries and contextual parameters, so is an individual. The concept of motivation and its complexities helps us understand and create a unique relationship between the two.

Some Common Assumptions about Motivation
i) It is commonly said that it is the subordinates or non-supervisory staff in an organisation who need to be motivated. The fact, however, is that every one in an organisation needs to be motivated; first the supervisory and managerial staff needit so that they will be able to motivate their subordinates.

ii) Motivation and higher productivity go together. This may be true by and large, but individual motivation at the workplace or group motivation as in the case of trade unions may not have such a correlation with productivity.

iii) All motivational techniques are designed and applied by the personnel, and managers and other line executives, who directly control and take work from those under them. In fact, the latter are more concerned as it is theirprimary function to see the persons under them work most efficiently. As they are in closer touch with their workers, they can understand their 34problems better and also know their needs. If necessary, they can take the advice of the personnel or industrial psychologist or any other consultant.

iv)Standard theories of motivation developed by psychologists will also apply to the industrial situation with varying degrees of dependability.

Developing Communication Skills

We all know that motivation drives a person to achieve beyond normal. As such, it is a state that originates within an individual though organisational structure, culture and environment can also make individuals think: What motivates people? How can I motivate others? By asking about the source of motivation, one is looking for an understanding or explanation of what is known psychologically about the tendency of people to expand their energies. By asking how to motivate others, a manager is assuming (a) that s/he can affect the behaviour of others, and (b) that his/her effect can override the other’s behaviour.

Motivation as a factor influencing human behaviour became an area of increasing importance after the Second World War to fulfill the imperative need of increased production. Motivation, concerned with all important human inputs, assumes crucial importance when a system is confronted with challenges of development or a crisis situation.

What is motivation? Who is responsible for motivation: individual or management?The answers to these questions are not simple. While some see motivation as being contained within an individual, others view it as arising from sources outside the individual. As such, these views cannot be considered independent of each other especially in the organisational context. Motivation in an organisation encompasses forces both within and external to the individual member. Let us now learn how the concept of motivation evolved.

Communicating Effectively

In order to make your inter-personal communication more effective, you should keep in mind the following points:

Use direct, simple language and avoid words which can have ambiguous meanings.

Use face-to-face communication: Face-to-face communication allows more accurate feedback to be achieved through two-way communication. Generally speaking,people express themselves more freely while talking rather than through writing.Face-to-face communication permits a manager to use and understand the non-verbal signs also.

Use feedback: Feedback enables us to judge whether or not the ideas have been received in the manner as they were originally intended. Most often it is assumed that communication has taken place once a note has been circulated or put on the notice board. You must devise ways to separate fact from distortion.

Listen with understanding: The biggest block to communication is said to be the inability to listen to the other person intelligently, understandingly and skillfully. We tend to confuse listening with hearing. Real communication takes place when the listener truly understands the position and intent of the speaker. In order to be a successful manager, you must develop your listening ability.

You must try to understand the factual and emotional content of the message without making any attempt at criticizing, approving or disapproving it until after you havefully heard and understood the remarks. The empathetic listening, vastly improves the understanding of both the parties, bringing in its wake improved inter-personal relationship in the organisation.

Create constructive environment for the expression of ideas: If you can create a climate in which people acquire confidence that what they say will be listened to with sympathy and considered constructively, you can be sure of a successful and creative communication. This is, however, possible only in an environment of trust which has to be generated by the management through its policies and actions.

Be careful about your non-verbal communication: Because you hold a status higher than your subordinates, your gestures are observed and ‘felt’ by your subordinates. Your body language, therefore, must be supportive of your communication through words. One of the powerful means of communication are your actions which speak louder than words. If you expect your communication to be effective, ensure that your actions are consistent with your words.

Develop and use organisational structures which minimize the chances of filtering the communication: Decentralisation of authority and broadening of span of control can be attempted to reduce the levels in the organisation and minimize the authority filters.

The American Management Association has developed a set of ten suggestions for improving communication, referred to as “The Ten Commandments of Good Communication” (Box).

Box : The Ten Commandments of Good Communication

Clarify before attempting to communicate;

Examine the purpose of communication;

Understand the physical and human environment when communicating;

While planning communication, consult others to obtain their support, as well as the facts;

Consider the content and the overtones of the message;

Whenever possible, communicate something that helps, or is valued by the receiver;

Communication, to be effective, requires following up;

Communicate messages that are of short-run and long-run importance;

Actions must be congruent with communication; and Be a good listener.

We hope that you would be able to put into practice the ideas given here and improve you ability to communicate with your co-workers, superiors and subordinates. On this note, we would like to end this unit and present its summary.

Barriers To Effective Communication

One of the biggest dangers in communication is to assume that communication has taken place. Most of us indeed make a great effort in formulating ideas, and finding appropriate words for communicating them to others. In an organisation, considerable money and energy are spent to develop a system of communication. And yet, if you assess the effectiveness of communication in terms of the desired response, you will be surprised at the results. You may logically ask: What causes failure of communication? How can we make communication more effective to bring about a desired change?

The failure in communication is caused by barriers between the sender and the receiver. To make communication effective, it must be ensured that these barriers areremoved/overcome. Now-a-days media has become very powerful only because it has devised ways to reach the target audience. The barriers either prevent the communication from reaching the receiver or distort it in such a manner that it ends up either as non-communication or as miscommunication. Since a manager has to use communication as a means of getting work done through his/her subordinates, s/he must ensure that the barriers are minimized.The barriers that interfere with the understanding of the communication are of three kinds: semantic, psychological and organisational. We now discuss these one by one.

Semantic Barriers

Most difficulties in communication arise because the same word or symbol signifies different things to different individuals. You may recall how Shiny Abraham was disqualified and lost her gold medal, despite coming first by a very wide margin in the 800 m race, at the Asian Games at Seoul (1986). She had crossed the track at the place where she should not have done. According to her, she mistook the symbol, i.e., the colour of the flag. In our country, the red flag indicates danger but in South Korea, white flag is used for the same purpose. Words, action or a feeling, can have several meanings. For example, abstract words like merit, effectiveness or responsibility, can be interpreted differently by different persons. Difficulty in understanding may arise even in the case of words which have different contextual meanings in different regions/countries. To give you an example, a problem arose in interpreting the meaning of the word ‘steps’. In a training programme of health workers relating to family health in Jamaica, this question was asked: “What are some of the steps that a mother should take to make sure that her baby keeps healthy?” There was no response to this question because the trainees were accustomed to only one meaning of the word ‘steps’ based on their experience; they just could not make any sense of the question.Communication Semantic difficulty also arises because of unfamiliarity with words, for example, a word of Skills and a foreign language or a technical word.

Motivation
An effective communication is one which uses words appropriate to the environment and mental framework of the receiver. This ensures that communication is grasped properly and implemented effectively. Read the following story to understand this point:A proposal for raising the salaries of the faculty members of an agricultural college was under discussion. The farmers’ block was totally against giving the raise to the college teachers – they could not see why they should pay those college teachers $5000 a year just for talking 12 to 15 hours a week. Faculty representatives made no headway in their negotiations until one of them who had some farming experience, got an inspiration.

“Gentlemen”, he told the members of the administrative body, “a college teacher is like a little bull. It is not the amount of time he spends. It is the importance of what he does!”The faculty members got the raise.Semantic barrier can also be created if body language is inconsistent with the verbal communication. A manager who praises the honesty and sincerity of his/her subordinate in a sarcastic tone creates doubts in the minds of the subordinate as to the course of action s/he should adopt in a given situation in future. The same kind of barrier is created by a divergence between the verbal language and the action language of the superiors. When action and language are used jointly, the actions often have more powerful influence on other’s actions than words. A management may, for example, profess its belief in being guided solely by the merit of employees while making promotions. But if employees observe that, in actual practice, promotions are made on considerations other than merit, the management’s professed policy is bound to be affected by a semantic barrier.

Psychological Barriers

Psychological barriers are the prime barriers in inter-personal communication. The meaning that is ascribed to a message depends upon the emotional or psychological status of both the parties concerned. As such, the psychological barriers may be set up either by the receiver or the sender of the message.You have already seen that the effectiveness of any communication depends upon the perception of the right meaning of the message by the receiver.However, the perception of meaning is influenced by the mental frame of the receiver at the time the message is received. Emotions which dominate our mood at the time, e.g., anger, anxiety, fear, happiness, etc., will affect our interpretation of the message. The phrases ‘viewing with coloured glasses’ or‘seeing with jaundiced eyes’ explain vividly how our inner feelings may vitiate our perception of the message or the situation. Post experience of the receiver in such situations would also lead to the same effect. The same thing may happen when different individuals interpret the same event or situation. Let us consider the case of a supervisor watching a group of employees resting and To the supervisor, who believes that employees are basically lazy, the situation communicates that Aspects gossiping on the lawns. How will this situation be perceived? they are playing truant with their work, and, therefore, should be given more work to do and disciplined.

To the supervisor who believes that his/her workers are self-motivated and sincere, the situation communicates that they are re-charging their batteries through recreation and enjoyment.You will, therefore, see that a particular kind of situation, event, happening or words and symbols are capable of being interpreted differently by different people depending on their psychological states. A receiver who is suspicious or hostile, either as a consequence of his/her feeling of insecurity or because of his/her past experience with the sender of the communication, is more likely to start ‘reading between the lines’ and ascribe a distorted meaning to the message.o the receiver’s mind a communication gets tied up with the personality of the source.

One common phenomenon with all communications is the effect of filtering.This effect is produced when the communication passes through a large number of persons. Each individual through whom the information is passed interprets facts differently, judges from her/his own point of view what is important or relevant, and passes it on with her/his own interpretations, with the result that the original communication gets altered in the process. The process of filtering involves a biased choice of what is communicated, on the part of either the sender or the receiver. Thus filtering refers to the process of ‘selective telling’ or ‘selective listening’. For example, a subordinate may tell the boss what s/he (the boss) wants to hear. Similarly, though several factors affecting productivity in the organisation may have been identified by the staff,yet the manager may hear and respond only to those factors that fit in the process of communication leading to a distortion in communication.

Organisations are particularly prone to the filtering effect. In large organisations, filtering takes place at multiple levels. In order to save the time of the busy executive and to save him/her from information overload, it is common in organisations for subordinates to prepare notes or abstracts of the communication before passing it on to the superior. The higher an information has to travel, the higher is the degree of abstraction, with the possibility that significant pieces of information may be entirely missed or their significance diluted or distorted. The larger the number of filtering points in an organisation, the greater are the chances of distortion.

Organisational Barriers
Organisations provide a formal framework through which communication is designed to flow. The structuring of the flow itself tends to act as a barrier against free flow of communication between persons and levels in the organisation. Rules may prescribe how communications are to move from one level to another in upward or downward directions. Not only is there a possibility of delay in the communication reaching its destination, but also there is every possibility of communication getting distorted through the process of filtering as described earlier. It has been found that when information is channelled through different levels of the organisation, it alters as people interpreted facts differently. In an organisational setting, this can be a very big problem since senior level executives have to depend on the information and interpretations of their subordinates. A critical information that has lost its criticality because of the actions of the intervening levels may jeopardize the position of the manager as well as the organisation itself.

The superior-subordinate relationship itself develops a gap between the two. People are more comfortable in communicating with persons of equal status as their own. Communication with persons of higher or lower status is likely to be formal and reticent rather than informal and free. You may have seen that the parking space, bathrooms, refreshment rooms, cabins with stylized furniture, carpets, for the CEO are earmarked. Such symbols accentuate the gap between different hierarchical levels and tend to widen the communication gap.

Perhaps, you may have read that among the several characteristics of Japanese style of management is the removal of status symbols. For example, under the Japanese system there are no separate cabins for managers; the uniforms for workers and managers are the same; they eat the same food in the same cafeteria. All these are intended to reduce the gap between the workers and the managers and bring about a better understanding of the problems of the organisation which is the chief objective of organisational communication. In India, Infosys has some of these practices.

Channels of Communication.

An organisation provides a number of channels for the flow of information, that is an organisation has a network of communication channels. These channels can be either intentionally designed, or they may develop of their own accord. When a channel is intentionally created/prescribed for the flow of communication in the Organisation, we call it a formal channel. The communication passing through a formal channel is formal communication. On the other hand, channels, outside the formal channels, are referred to as informal channels. The communication through informal channels is informal communication.

Formal Communication

An organisational chart shows the direction of formal communication flow. It identifies the various transmitters and receivers, and the channels through which they must communicate. The authority relationships indicate the direction of communication flow in an organisation. A formal communication takes place between a superior and subordinate in the form of instructions and directions. Such a flow takes place in the downward direction.

Another formal communication takes place from the subordinate to the superior when reporting on performance. Since the subordinate initiates communication to the superior, the flow is upward. We call this upward communication. The upward communication can take the form of progress reports, budget reports, profit and loss statements, requests for grants, etc.

Formal communication can also take place between one division of an organisation and another. This can be lateral or diagonal. For example there can be formal communication between the technical and accounts divisions of your utility. Formal communication may pass across organisational levels and can help in coordination and quality control. For example, communication between maintenance and financial units helps the utility to serve its customers better and earn better image.

Finally, formal communication may also arise between the organisation and outside parties, e.g., suppliers, customers, Government, etc. This may happen when the management is required to provide information on certain aspects of the working of the organisation. Communication of this kind is usually one-way.

Networks in Formal Communication

You have seen how the formal organisational structure prescribes the channels through which communication flows take place. These channels are designed to keep the flow of information in an orderly manner and to protect the higher level managers from an overload of unnecessary information. However, the way in which these channels are designed and work can affect the speed and accuracy of information as well as the task performance and satisfaction of members of the group. As such, managers have to think of how best to design the organisational structure and the communication network which meets the requirements of the situation.Some research in the design of communication networks has been carried out which indicates their relative merits for use in different situations. Although these networks can assume many forms, the most frequently discussed are the wheel, chain, ‘Y’ and circle, shown in Fig.

Formal Networks

These forms can well be looked at as an organisational structure made up of five members.The ‘circle’ network represents a three-level hierarchy in which there is communication between superiors and subordinates, with cross communication at the operative level. Communication The ‘chain’ can represent a five-level hierarchy, in which communication can take place only Skills and upward and downward, and across organisational lines.

Motivation
The ‘wheel’ or ‘star’ represents an administrator and four subordinates with whom s/he interacts. There is no interaction amongst the subordinates.In the ‘Y’ network two subordinates report to the superior. It may be regarded as a four-level hierarchy.

The effectiveness of a communication pattern is determined by network centrality. The‘Y’ and ‘wheel’ networks are highly centralized, with the superior occupying the central position. The ‘circle’ and ‘chain’ networks are decentralized with no member being able to influence all other members.

The centralized networks perform faster and more accurately for simple tasks. For complex tasks, the decentralized networks are comparatively quicker and more accurate.

The centrality of networks also influences the emergence of a leader and the satisfaction of group members. In centralized groups, whether the tasks are simple or complex, one person who occupied the central position by virtue of the control of information emerges as the leader. In decentralized networks no one position could emerge as the leadership position.

These factors have certain implications (given below) for the design of organisational structure and the communication network:

• An organisation with mostly routine, simple tasks is likely to work more efficiently with a formal centralized network of communication, while more complicated tasks would require decentralized networks.

• The problem-solving objectives of speed and flexibility cannot be achieved by the same pattern of communication. Rather, speed in problem-solving can be achieved at the expense of flexibility, and vice-versa. As such, the communication pattern should be designed with reference to the objective that is regarded as more important.

• The pattern that leads to the highest average morale and greatest flexibility in adapting to changed conditions is the one in which there are a large number of active participants in decision-making process.

• Access to information is an important source of power in organisations.

So far we have discussed patterns for formal communication in an organisation. We shall now discuss informal communication and its channels.

Informal Communication
Communication that takes place without following the formal lines of communication is said to be informal communication. This channel is not created by management and is usually not under the control of management.An informal system of communication is generally referred to as the ‘grapevine’ because it spreads throughout the organisation with its branchesgoing out in all directions in utter disregard of the levels of authority and linking member of the organisation in any direction.

The informal communication normally works where there is communication gap between employees and the management. It has been observed that problems relating to work and unfavourable reactions to various organisational practices are transmitted through informal communication. Since the channels are flexible and establish contacts at personal levels among members of organisation at different hierarchical levels, the grapevine spreads information faster than the formal system of communication. About 10 to 40 percent of employees receive information (or misinformation) about the organisation through informal channels of communication.The grapevine transmits information from one person to a group of persons more rapidly in a cluster chain arrangement. The cluster chain is made up of individuals who act as information sources. Each individual passes the information to several others, some of whom repeat the message to others. Some of those who receive the message may not pass on the information to others but the information may lead to a change in their thinking on the subject and may sometimes affect their behaviour as well. Fig illustrates the cluster chain network of informal communication.

Cluster Chain Network of Informal Communication

Though it has been found that informal communication carries accurate information about three-fourths of the time, there are strong possibilities of its communications being highly distorted. This happens because of the process of ‘filtering’ whereby each member of the chain passes on only that part of communication which s/he regards important. The receiver is left to fill in the gaps and complete the story according to his/her own imagination. This may at times cause serious problems in the organisation.Since the grapevine is a fast channel of communication with tremendous capacity to carry information both helpful and harmful, as a manager, you are expected utilize the positive aspects and minimize the negative aspects. In order to do this, you can identify the members of the organisation who usually seek and spread information. It is possible that different individuals are active at different times but usually it will be found that some individuals tend to be more active carriers of information than others. After identifying such individuals, you can use them as sounding boards. If it is discovered that misleading rumours are circulating, it may be desirable to release the official information to clarify the situation. At times, management may even find the informal communication channel more useful in transmitting information than the formal channel. A common method of using informal communication is by ‘planned leaks’, or strategically planned ‘just between you and me’ remarks, which would obviously reach all parts of the organisation far quicker than any kind of communication through formal channels.

Problems in Communication
Communication may not always be effective. The main criterion to find out whether a communication is effective or not is the fulfillment of its purpose. In Fig, the various purposes of communication in the four directions have been stated. If the purpose is not fulfilled properly, the problem should be looked into. There may be several sources of problems in communication.
 

Rumours: A rumour is usually a belief which is passed as an item of information from one person to the other without verification of evidence. Remours spread like wildfire in periods of stress or unrest. Two conditions for the spread of rumours are: importance of the topic to people, and lack of availability of correct information about it. The third factor is the critical sense of people. We know that if people have the capacity for decision-making after reflection and on the basis of some information, rumours don’t spread.