Effective communication is key to a staggering amount of our personal and professional lives and what is also staggering is how bad we typically are at it! Poorly constructed messages that are delivered ineffectively are just the start of the story as the listener also plays an important role in receiving and processing the messages. What struck me recently and then became the stimulus for this post is how often the speaker is convinced that their messages are clear and that their responsibility ends once the message has gone. A look through the literature clearly shows this is not the case and that just having proof of postage is not enough!
Communication is a complex process and the interplay of the personal and environmental factors which create that complexity also creates the chance that what is sent is not always what is received. The gaps between Encoding - Transmission - Decoding - Interpretation can cause a range of negative effects:
A popular model of communication is the 'linear communication model' and was developed by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver who were aiming to explain the challenges of effective communication and to identify the pressure points where communication can be distorted. The model highlights the movement of a message through encoding by the sender (source) through a channel (method) and then decoding by the receiver. They also highlighted how during transmission, messages are subject to noise which can affect the accuracy and cause what they termed information entropy. Information noise will be discussed in more detail later in this post.
You can read more about the model HERE
There is a range of other communication models that have been developed and become popular within the literature and in organisations. These models can broadly be catergorised as either:
Below is a deeper explanation of some of these models.
Laswell Communication Model (1948)
The Lasswell Communication Model is used to describe verbal communication and consists of five elements and five key questions that when used during analysis can provide insights into the communication between people. The model has been described as a ‘linear model of communication’, ‘uni-directional process’ or by some as an action model, because it describes a one-way process within communication. It is seen as one of the most influential communication models to emerge from the literature on effective communication and you can read more about it HERE
Osgood-Schramm Communication Model (1954)
A model that moves away from a linear view of communication and acknowledges its reciprocal nature is the model developed by Charles Egerton Osgood and Wilbur Schram. Their model highlights the bi-directional nature of messages and how once a listener has decoded and interpreted a message they can immediately choose to encode and transmit their own message. The model also suggests that:
You can read more about the model HERE
The Shannon-Weaver model introduced me to the idea of noise within communication but it felt a little limited as it seemed restricted to the channel and environment. The image below attempts to pull together some of the above models whilst also widening the role of Noise to include that added by the sender and the receiver. The idea of multiple noise sources aligns with Dean Barnlund's 1970 model of transactional communication which will be the focus of a future post.
During the exploration of these models I was fascinated by the idea of noise and how this gets 'added' to the communication and in turn can be responsible for errors in transmitted messages. The Shannon-Weaver model highlights how this noise can come from the communication channel but the Barnlund model takes this further and suggests that this noise can come from a range of different sources and stages during communication.
Intrinsic Vs Extraneous
My first thoughts in terms of categorising types of noise came from my previous reading on cognitive load (CL) and the separation of intrinsic CL (inherent in the material being taught) and Extraneous CL (Added by the teacher). Could there be a parallel with communication noise?
Intrinsic Noise - characteristics of the message itself such as subject, complexity or sensitivity that may affect how the message is encoded, decoded and then interpreted.
Extraneous Noise - External noise that is added to to the message during the various stages of communication. The communication literature highlights a range of types of noise that may fit this category:
Reducing communication noise should be a key goal for us all and especially for those for whom effective communication is pivotal to professional success.
Awareness
We can't change what we don't acknowledge and so the first step is to become aware of the types of noise that may affect our messages.
We must improve our self-awareness so that we can limit the impact that we have during the encoding process. In particular, we need to be mindful of how our psychology and physiology affect our communication as well as how our choice of physical environment and our semantic choices may add noise.
We must also improve our social awareness in order to gauge the level of noise that may be added by the receiver during decoding and interpretation. Alongside the aforementioned psychological and physiological noise that they may be experiencing, we need to be mindful that levels of interest in our message may be variable as could their understanding of the language we use.
Planning
If we are lucky enough to have time prior to our communications then we may be able to protect time for planning so as to engineer out any noise. This is particularly useful during written communication such as by letter or email but equally so for planned meetings and difficult conversations. During the planning process, we must be mindful of any evidence of biases or assumptions as well as any semantic choices that may confuse the receiver.
Monitoring
Over time we may find that our communication is regularly subject to the same types of noise. Regular reflection on the effectiveness of our communication and the presence of any noise may enable us to proactively reduce noise or deal with it as it occurs.
