There are 7 important points which can make your ordinary communication a very effective communication. In this chapter, I will describe and illustrate all of these 7 Cs of communication.
Completeness means that whatever you communicate should be complete and there should be no missing facts in your speech. It is often seen that people assume some facts to be known by the audience or listeners. This is not the right approach because if you started to assume this then, you will not be able to give the whole details of the core objective. The whole idea will become confused and you will be facing troubles in making other understand.
You should provide very detailed information to your listeners and in fact you should try to provide some additional information to make your points clearer. While preparing your presentation or report, you should make sure that you are answering all possible questions which your topic can have.
In this way, audience will be more understanding about your topic and they will ask you more logical questions. It often happens that after you finish your presentation in office then, someone says, “What are you actually trying to say.” This is probably worst comment that you can get after a tiring presentation but you should think over again that why someone said that. There will be some flaws in your presentation or some confusing factors which have urged that person to say so. To avoid such embarrassing situations, you should try to make your presentation clearer and complete without ignoring any fact and mentioning even very minor details.
Completeness brings the desired response from the receiver or listener or your audience. You need to include everything which you think is related to your topic of discussion and try to describe both positive and negative approaches.
Conciseness is another important aspect of effective communication and especially when you talk about business communication then, you should know that your message should be very concise because this will make it more proper, to the point and time saving to understand. Time is very important in modern day life and no one has the time to listen to you for full hour while you can deliver the same meaning and discussion in 30 minutes.
Besides, if you add unnecessary pause, repeat information and use other similar tactics to prolong the duration then, your audience will get bore and they will prefer to either leave the discussion or they will stop taking interest.
You should only include very relevant facts about your topic and avoid using unnecessary information to be added for example if you are making a presentation for the annual budget of your organization then, you should keep thing to the point and void giving irrelevant examples for cutting down the budget or increasing it.
Your aim is to present report of your annual budget and this does not mean that you should add suggestions because that is associated to someone else. If you tried to over express yourself then, it may happen that you will confuse your audience with wordy expressions and there will be lots of discussion, which people will never understand due to broken language. So make your information concise and save time for yourself as well as for your audience.
Consideration is one of the most important things in effective communication because it will make sure that you understand the receiver in a better way. When you say consider then, this means, you have to think twice about certain things and make sure that you are always conveying your message in a positive tone. Even if there are some negative points in your discussion then, you should try to overcome those by emphasizing on positive points.
In proper and effective consideration, it is important to understand that the more you explain benefits, more interesting your discussion will become. So you should try to explain each and every benefit of your discussion which will make people more attentive and they will be more interested in integrating those benefits in their lives. Try to focus more on “you” instead of ‘I” or “We”. This also sends a very pleasant impression that you actually care more about others instead of yourself.
There is a saying that thinks before you speak and this saying completes the part of consideration. You should properly analyze everything before presenting it to others. Analyze everything from receiver’s point of view because that will allow you to think about those questions which are often neglected by following just one approach. You should never use negative expressions like I hate instead replace them with I prefer.
Similarly there are so many replacement which you can make and avoid all the negativity from your discussion. If you have to say confident then, you can say unstoppable, fortunate can be replaced with blessed because these words also have a positive meaning but the replacement are even greater.
Concreteness means that you should be very specific and accurate about the facts and figures which you represent in your discussion. The fact should be very clear and being accurate is even more important because people often give value of words and especially figures which you represent. Verb choice should also be very vivid and defined and wording should be such that it should create a very positive image of your overall topic. If you start to sound little vague, obscure and general about the facts then, things will start to get confusing and people will start to think negatively. Emphasis on one thing will be lost and as a result the effectiveness of communication will not be present.
If you are presenting some solid and true facts and figures then, it will automatically boost your confidence. You should try to gather figures from different surveys and internet can be a very good place to do this research. No matter what kind of topic you have but you will find things related to that topic and in all formats.
You can give people’s opinion about your topic and then see how your audience responds. But you should remember one thing that all the facts and figures should be specific and related to your core topic and they should not be irrelevant.
Clarity is often mistaken by people and they think that making the fact more clear is clarity but clarity is more about making your speech and exact message better. You need to choose your words more precisely and use simpler language to convey your message. Simpler you language will be, easier it will be for the audience to decode your message easily and they will get hold of your idea very clearly. Best way to bring clarity is to use simpler words and make simple and easy to understand paragraphs. Do not try to be too formal with the choice of words and try to remain casual in approach.
If you tried to be too formal in your approach and used too heavy language then, it is a known fact that not everyone can understand the heavy and complex language. Especially these days’ people are really weak in their language and formal language has been reserved only for news and newspaper columns.
Normal people understand just normal and simple language and it is best way to convey your message in its exact and raw form. As it is mentioned in the heading that clarity makes your message more comprehensive and this is true because if you use fewer words then, it will be easier for the receiver to receive and decode the message and he will get precise meaning of message very easily.
On the other hand, if you made the whole message confuse by adding unnecessary and heavy words in it then, ultimately, you will be able to convey half of the message while the other half will be lost in those heavy words. So make your message as clear as possible and try to use fewer and simpler words in it so that everyone can understand it.
Courtesy means that you should some respect to the receiver. Especially when it comes to business communication then, you message should start with a respectful word and should end on a respectful clause as well. This is just a way of giving value to the feeling of the receiver. Your choice of words can depict the courtesy and you should be very thoughtful in choosing words. Always think about the caliber of the audience and if you are giving presentations to your boss then, it add even more responsibility. Always use nondiscriminatory expressions because these expressions will convince the other person that you always value their thoughts.
If you are being appreciative, thoughtful, and respectful and using polite words and gestures then, the receiver will feel good about your discussion and will start to take interest in your discussion even more. You can take a simple example that if some mail comes to you which is starting from simple hi, hello then, you will not value it a lot but if same email comes with saying hi our respectful and valued customer then, you will definitely try to look into it. These are some things which show professionalism of people.
To be correct, you should be aware and awareness means that you should target right audience. You should know the social, educational and religious background of the reader or audience and then, use your language according to that background. If you start to address labor in the same way as you address a CEO then, things will start to get confusing for that person.
This does not mean that you should not respect labors as you give to CEO but this means there should be a different level of respect for both of these persons and you should follow certain protocols, use right language, avoid punctuation errors, use precise and accurate information. All of these features will make your communication more correct and more effective.
If you start to make your language ambiguous and improper or you have too many punctuation and grammar mistakes then, people will not value your message and in the end, it will be added as ineffective communication. But you can change this very easily by adding some true facts and figures and keeping your grammar simple and correct.
Now these are all the 7 Cs of communication and if you can learn to control all seven of them, then, you will have a very effective communication method. In short you can say that if your message is concise, complete, considered, correct, clear, courteous and concrete then, it is said to be an effective message.
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