Back to basics = How to improve communication, (1 of 2)

Within any form of communication there is always a sender and a receiver, at least there is an intended receiver. In the diagram A is the sender, B is the receiver.

 

 

 

A and B have different personal realities, their ‘MAPs’. They each have their own world formed by their experiences, their perceptions, their ideas, etc. They will perceive, experience, and interpret things differently. The same event will always be perceived a little different by each of two people as they have lived different lives.

 

The participants must have some kind of concept of each other's location and of a possible channel of communication existing between them. They must agree sufficiently on these to agree that communication is taking place and this creates the area we have called the shared space, a space where a generalisation takes form.

 

 “Something” will be transmitted across a distance in the shared space. We can regard it as an object, a particle, or as a wave, or flow. It might be sound vibrations, rays of light, words, pieces of paper, cannon balls, body language, telepathy, it could be anything!.

 

Between humans there will be several layers of the message being sent. There will often be a verbal portion, something that is being expressed in language, spoken or written, as well as a non-verbal portion, covering everything else, most notably body language. Sometimes the verbal and non-verbal messages don't agree with each other – someone may be smiling whilst giving bad news for example.

 

Based on what the receiver perceives, and based on their interpretation of the verbal and non-verbal input, they will form a concept in their reality of what the meaning of the message is. Although it will mean something to the receiver, it might or might not be what was intended by the sender. In successful communication the perceived message will approximate the intended message to the sender's satisfaction. However, the sender will only know that, if they receive a message back, that confirms this.

 

One can never take for granted that the receiver has the same reality as the sender. One can never take for granted that the receiver will interpret the message the same way as the sender intended it. 

 

Communication is not an absolute finite thing. Particularly, communication with language is always vague and misleading to some extent, how many times have you said something that has been misconstrued.

 

If A says a word, for example "star", they have a certain meaning attached to it in their reality. They have had certain experiences with the subject matter, have made conclusions about it, and have certain perceptual filters concerning it. The meaning of the word is the results of all of these things that are associated with in their reality. However, because words also have nice, finite dictionary definitions it might appear as if the word is something very precise.  What travels across the communication channel is NOT all the associations that A made about the word, and NOT the intentions they had with using it. What crosses the distance are the symbols that A is generating.

 

When B hears the word or sentence they will interpret it based on their experiences, perceptions, and opinions. They might supplement the verbal information with non-verbal information such as body language but in one way or another they arrive at what they believe it means.

 

To have effective communication one needs to take all the factors into consideration. The different realities, the space the communication takes place in, verbal as well as non-verbal messages, the intended meaning versus the perceived meaning.

 

To be continued……