 In this video, I want to talk about effective communication and what that looks like in the workplace and helping to establish professional presence. In order to do so though, I want to take a step back and talk about what we mean by communication and specifically what happens in the process of communication which will then extrapolate into what that means for us in terms of professional presence and professional communication in the workplace. So, let's start with the basic model of communication. So years and years ago, academics came up with this model of communication. They said, what happens when we communicate? What specifically is going on when a person communicates? And they came up with this model. They call the action model where they had these five elements that they said were in play during the communication process. Starting with the sender. The sender is the person who's trying to communicate something to someone or someone's else, right, to a person or multiple people on the other end of things. So the sender has something that they want to communicate and they do so by sending a message. The message is what is being communicated. It's the content of what's being communicated. So they send this message through a channel. Channel is how this message is being communicated. This is what initial researchers came up with. This channel is important to, in terms of how we communicate, channels could include things like the telephone or email or face-to-face communication or sending smoke signals or any other way that you can communicate a message, writing it on a post-it note, whatever. The channel is the method through which that message is communicated. So the channel provides the how in communication. The message is the what. The channel is the how. All of this goes to, then, a receiver in the action model. This all goes to a receiver, someone on the other end who is receiving that information and decoding and trying to process that information that's being sent by the sender through the channel in the form of a message that all goes to the receiver, then, who tries to make sense of all that. Then, in the middle, you have all these little squiggly lines here. On both sides and all over the place, this is what we call noise. Noise is anything that interferes with the sending or receiving of that message. Now, this noise could be something from the environment, the external environment, something that could be something loud that's keeping you from hearing what the sender is saying, the message that they're sending, or the noise could be something else from the physical environment, like if it's too hot or too cold in the room, it's sometimes hard to pay attention, or it could be something physiological, having to do with your body. For example, when you're tired, overly tired, or when you're not feeling well, you're ill or you're hungry, those types of things can make it difficult to send or receive a message. And also, we have psychological noise, which is noise that comes from our minds, right? When we daydream, when someone's talking to us and we're making our grocery list or to-do list, thinking about all the other things we have to do, that's psychological noise that's keeping us from really fully paying attention to the sending or receiving of that message in the way that we ought to be, in the way that we want to be. So noise is anything at all that interferes with the sending or receiving of that message. And this was a pretty good start, pretty good start. Really though, it treats communication as a one-way process, kind of like shooting an arrow at a target, you just shoot the arrow and that's it, that's the end of it. If you want to have any kind of response or anything, you got to flip the whole model around, the receiver becomes the sender and then you send a message back and so forth. It really doesn't fully represent what happens in the communication process and they realize that. And so further research into this, further thought into this provided what we call the interaction model. So you can see we still have the same five elements as we did in the action model, sender, message, channel, receiver, noise, all still present, all still relevant in much the same way. But the interaction model adds two other important elements. One is what we call feedback. Feedback as you can see allows the receiver then to respond to the sender as part of that same process. So now instead of shooting an arrow, it's more like a ping pong game with a back and forth and a back and forth, right? So feedback is important. Feedback, remember, could be verbal, meaning the sender says something and the receiver then responds verbally and says yes or no or I don't know or let's get hamburgers or whatever they say, you know, that could be verbal feedback, could also be nonverbal feedback. Shaking your head, nodding your head, shrugging your shoulders, getting a sour look on your face. Those are all types of nonverbal feedback, you know, so, so feedback could come in the form of words. It could also come in the form of nonverbal responses. So that feedback that allows that receiver to then send a message back to the sender as part of that same process. The other important addition that we have here is what we call context. Context is the situation or the environment in which that communication is taking place because we know communication does not take place in a vacuum. It happens somewhere with someone in some way and so all of these things will factor into it. So context tells us that you're not going to have the same conversation over a candlelight dinner that you do in the produce section of a grocery store or that you would at a loud concert or, you know, a crowded bar or restaurant or something. Those are going to be different conversations about different things, hold the different volumes. And so there's a lot of factors going to context as well. And not only the location and things, but what's your relationship with this other person, you know, what does the context filters into all these other aspects of the communication model as well. So here we have some advances in the interaction model. We've added these two really important concepts of feedback and context. And yet there was still some inclination that this was not fully representative of what happens in communication. Honestly, it's a little too neat. It's a little too clean here because we know that communication is oftentimes a very messy process. So I had one further iteration here, one further model that we currently use is called the transactional model. And this is what you see here. This is the contemporary model of communication that we look at most often called the transactional model. First of all, you can see we have all the same seven elements here, really, that they've identified in the interaction model. They're still present here in the transactional model, just in slightly different forms. So first we have, instead of a sender and receiver, we have communicator A and communicator B. This is really just a recognition that both people, both sides involved in this process are both senders and receivers. It's not an either or prospect. You're not either a sender or a receiver. You are both a sender and receiver of communication at the same time. So instead of labeling them sender and receiver, we just call them communicator A and communicator B or communicator one and communicator two or whatever. Whatever you want to call or however you want to label that, it's just a recognition again that both entities, both parties, both groups or whatever, whoever's on either side of this are both senders and receivers at the same time simultaneously. They are communicators, not just a sender or a receiver. The other change here is that you can see feedback has moved slightly because now we recognize that feedback is simultaneous. It's not as neat and clean as it was before. It's not, you know, I send the message as the sender, I send the message and then the receiver sends it back like a ping pong game. Like we talked about, right? It's not a ping pong game. If it's a ping pong game, it's a ping pong game where there are a thousand balls going back and forth all at the same time in both directions. Right. So because we're receiving feedback, it's not that I send a message and then the receiver sends me feedback. I mean, that can happen, especially in asynchronous communication, like emails and texts and things like that. But for most communication, that process is happening simultaneously. It's happening at the same time. As I'm giving you my message, as I'm sending my message, I'm reading your verbal, your nonverbal expressions or you're interrupting me verbally and so forth, so that that feedback is simultaneous. It's not something we typically have to wait for. So we just moved it into the box with a message because it's happening all at the same time. It's a very free flow message feedback. It's all happening kind of mushed together there. So you see, again, we still have these same seven elements and really all communication comes back to these same seven elements. It doesn't matter how you're communicating, who you're communicating with. It really is as simple as these seven elements. And I say it's simple, but it's not simple because there's a lot of variables here and it's hard to get all seven of these things right at once, right? So, but let's take a look here. Now that we understand the process that's involved in communication in general, we understand now what's happening when we communicate. Let's take a look at how this impacts our communication at work in a couple of different ways. First, let's take a look at the verbal communication process at work and things we need to consider. Again, we're going to, we're going to stick with these same seven elements. These are, these are really the core seven elements that are involved in all, all communication. So they certainly dictate appropriate and effective communication in a verbal sense at work. So when we think about verbal communication at work, let's think about, you know, first of all, ourselves as a sender or a communicator, let's, let's place ourselves as communicator. We need to think about ourselves. What kind of perception do people have of us? What kind of perception are we putting out there in terms of presence, in terms of professional presence, right? What are we wearing? How are we conducting ourselves? What kind of language are we using? And, and so we need to think about what kind of message we are sending. We are creating as communicator. Hey, we are an important part of this process. We also need to think about communicator B. Who's on the other end of this? Who are we speaking to? How is that going to affect our use of language and our method of communication and so forth? It's going to impact, again, all of these things are interconnected, right? But how is it different if we're, if we're trying to communicate something to a colleague, someone who's on the same kind of a level as us in the organization, as opposed to a supervisor or someone in executive leadership in that organization, or a customer, a client, how is our language going to change? How are our methods of communication going to change? Am I going to need to see this person face to face or send an email or so forth, right? How is that impacted by who's on the other end of this communication and what our relationship is with them? So we think about ourselves, but we also always have to have the audience in mind, no matter what kind of communication. But yeah, how is this going to change our, our use of language and our tone and those types of things that impact verbal communication? How does this impact our message? When we think about our verbal communication, we need to consider message. Am I being clear? Am I using language that's clear, right? Am I using a tone that's going to convey the right attitude and the right, the right sense of importance about this message? Am I communicating it in the clearest possible way through that message? Am I using my message, my, you know, the opportunity that I have to send this message, am I using it to its full effect? That's important in verbal communication. Channel. I mean, how am I, how am I sending this information? Here we're talking about verbal communication. So let's stick with that and say, okay, is this a face to face conversation? Is this a, is this a phone call? Is this something that I can bring up in a meeting in front of an entire group of colleagues, or is this something that should wait for, for a more private occasion? Something that's a little more, you know, not in front of a group. Is it something that would be better held for later? So we need to think about what's the best method for me to convey this to, to this other person? That's certainly a factor. What kind of feedback am I getting from the other person? When you have verbal communication, you often have time to have access to more channels when you're, when you're trying to read feedback. If you're face to face with that person, you can read their nonverbals, hopefully you can see their nonverbals. What kind of expression are they using? How, what's their posture like? What's their tone of voice like when I'm communicating with them verbally? Even on the phone, we have access to, to things like tone of voice. We have access to things like pauses. We have access to all kinds of things through verbal communication that we don't in other types of communication, specifically written communication. So what kind of feedback am I getting? What's the noise involved here? Again, not only audible noises, although, you know, how does that impact how loudly I need to speak or things like that? But what kind of distractions are around right now? If you're in a busy office place, are there, are there lots of distractions, are there people coming up and talking to you, are there lots of commotion, lots of noise going on around you, lots of chaos, or is there a TV on in the background, or is there an important client meeting that's coming up? How does that impact what I try and say and how I try and say it when I try and say it through verbal communication? We need to consider noise as part of this equation as well. And then finally context, you know, starting with, OK, is this work appropriate? Is this a conversation for work or is this conversation for after work or outside of work? So we need to think about context in that regard. Need to think about context in terms of, you know, what's my office climate? What's the culture in my office? You know, those types of things in terms of, you know, what's the appropriate type of language? Is this a more formal office place where where language is more formal or is it is a little looser where we can joke around a little bit? We can use a little sarcasm and and inject some of that in our verbal communication or, you know, is it pretty straight laced and that's not really appreciated or or encouraged. So when you do think about context in that regard as well and just context as well in terms of our overall relationship with this person, not only in terms of our status in the organization, but just how well do I know this person and what's our established relationship been like regarding these types of interactions. So context is crucially important. All of that going into verbal communication, right? So all of these seven elements impact verbal communication, a great, great deal. We need to consider as much as possible and try and try and manage as many of these elements, as many of these different variables or factors in communication as we can. Again, it's impossible to to really control all of these things for the most part, but but we can do the best we can to really consider and manage each of these seven elements when it comes to verbal communication in the workplace. We can do the same thing then with written communication. We can go through the same process here just quickly and this will be a little faster because a lot of it's going to be the same, but with written communication, we need to consider again, who am I? What's my, you know, status in the organization? What do I want? How do I want people to perceive me? What, you know, am I seen as a humorous person? Are they going to understand when I write something that it's sarcasm? That's harder to read in written communication. Sarcasm doesn't come across a lot of times as well, unless you know that person very well. So we need to consider things like that about who am I? What do people know about me and what's my usual writing style and things like that? When we think about written communication, as far as us as the as the initial, you know, communicator in that situation. We also need to think about who we're sending it to. Of course, when again, we need to keep our audience in mind at all times. Who's our audience? Is our audience a colleague? Is it a coworker that we know well, or is it a colleague that we don't know that well? Is it, is it a supervisor? Is it an executive leader in the organization? Is it a customer or a client, a potential client? Who is this going to and how does that impact the words that I choose, the writing style that I use, all of those things and the method of communication here, which we'll get to more in a second here, but, but all of these things are impacted by, by the audience there. So the message, again, am I communicating my messages effectively as I can and as clearly as I can, using the most appropriate methods that I can. So we need to be sure that that we're, that our message is coming across loud and clear, and that we're doing so in as effective and appropriate a way as possible. We think about channels in terms of written communication. There are obviously different written channels of communication. We, there's, there's a formal memo or business proposition or business plan, those types of things. But then there's also email, which is, you know, I hate to use word less formal, but it's, it is somewhat less formal, although, again, our writing should not become overly informal via email or anything else in a professional sense. And we still need to consider that this is professional communication. And so we need to be very, very cautious about those types of things. And when we use email and text messaging and things like that, as with any document that we would put forth, we need to make sure that that it's representing us in terms of appropriate spelling using proper capitalization and grammar and syntax and all those types of things for all of that is going to reflect on us, but also understand that the channel may send a message about, you know, someone gets a text message from you. They're not going to see that as formal as they would, you know, a formal memo or business proposition, business proposal, things like that coming, those types of things coming via text tend to be taken less seriously because text is not a traditionally formal form of business communication. So we need to consider the channel and we're trying to decide what the best way is for us to communicate that message. Feedback is going to be different in written communication. It's going to be probably delayed. You're not going to be able to see the person a lot of times. For the most part, you know, you won't be able to see the reaction necessarily immediately. And so you just have to try and read into their feedback a little more in their responses, which can also be ambiguous and can be a challenge there. So feedback can be a bit more of a challenge in written communication because you don't have access to all the channels that you do with verbal communication. You don't have access to their tone of voice. You don't have access to their facial expressions and so forth. There can be noise in written communication, starting with the, you know, disruption of sending something. What if your email is down? What if the text doesn't go through or you accidentally text the wrong person? There's those kind of disruptions and interference with the sending or receiving the message. What if, you know, it's easy to disregard of an email, right? When you get an email, it's easy to just kind of leave it your inbox and move on if you're doing something else. So there may be interference in terms of not looking at that message right away because there are other things going on distracting you or it could accidentally get deleted or whatever. There's there's still the potential, a great deal of potential for noise when you're dealing with written communication, just as much as in verbal communication. And then context again, think about what's the overall relationship with this person? Is this a person that I text with? Is this a person that I email? Is this a person that needs a more formal memo? Would that be appropriate? Would it, you know, what's the most appropriate avenue of communication going back to channel based on my call, my organizational culture and climate and based on my relationship with this person? You know, what, what is the connection there? And so we need to consider all of those things as we think about written communication, which so context again, very important and written communication really is is a way that people tend to look at us in terms of perception, in terms of can you be taken seriously? If you're writing this full of grammatical errors and and if you write in a professional sense, like you do when you're texting a friend using text shorthand and things like that and using lots of emojis, you're not going to be taken seriously. So written communication, when you need to understand that people will develop perceptions of us based on that written communication and and be able to then rise to that occasion and and and write like adults basically and have, you know, raise our game a little bit in terms of written communication beyond what we would in a personal sense. As you move forward in your professional careers and think about your professional presence, bear in mind these seven elements that that really apply to, again, all aspects of communication, professional, personal, public, all aspects of communication really come back to these seven elements and certainly our verbal and written communication at work are closely tied to these things. The more we can consider and get a handle on and figure out how to manage these seven elements and understand them, then the better off we will be as we as we work to improve our communication skills in the workplace. If you have any questions about effective communication in the workplace or anything else related to professional presence, please feel free to email me and be happy to communicate with you via email. And in the mean time, think about those seven elements, come back to the seven elements again and again, and think how can I manage? How can I be more effective in in controlling and in in utilizing those seven elements to my advantage in the workplace in creating the kind of professional presence that I want?