What is Communication?
Communication is a process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions through signals, speech, behaviour and writing. In communication process a sender encodes a messege and then the receiver decodes the messege and then using medium or channel sends it to the receiver and other processing information, sends back feedback or reply using a medium channel.
Elements Of Communication
Sender
The creator of an idea or the message is known as a source. It is known as a sender who could be an individual or a group or an individual who might be acting on behalf of a group. The sender or source act as the transmitter of the message.
Receiver
The person who receives the message and understands it and interprets its meaning is called a Receiver. The receiver is guided by his/her background, experience, education, attitude etc. To understand the meaning of the message Therefore, receiving perception plays an important role in the successful completion of a communicative act.
Message
It is the piece of information or expression that moves from the sender to the receiver. It is basically the subject matter that sender intends to share with the receivers. This can be a greeting, an order, information, instruction and so on.
It has 3 components:
- Content
- Context
- Treatment
Content: It is simply communicating what you desire to communicate like a subject matter.
Context: It involves adopting your presentation to the situation in which the audience is.
Treatment: It is the arrangement or ordering of a content by the speaker. The treatment directly supports the content and context of the message.
Channel
It is the pathway by which the sender uses to send a message to the receiver. It can be formal or informal.
Formal channels include upward, downward, horizontal, diagonal. Formal channels connect various departments and hierarchy levels with one other.
Informal channels can be in the form of one to one spontaneous transactions or even a group discussion.
Feed Back
The most significant element of communication is feedback. If there is feedback only then a communication would be effective. In the absence of feedback the sender can’t verify that the receiver has understood his message correctly. So feedback is very important to make communication successful.