Different Channels in Effective Communications

When Radhika concluded the class by sharing with us the things to take note in effective communication – purpose, audience, context and channel, I felt the point on channel was interesting, so I shall share my thoughts on this.

Nowadays, less people engage in face-to-face communications as alternative forms such as Emailing, texting via Short Message Service (SMS) provide  much more convenient channels and are able to reach out to more people at one go. However, I feel that these convenient channels of communication may hinder effective communication, and should be used with care.

1.       Speed of communication

Effective communication is the key to successful planning and decision making. Effective communication involves a constant feedback and exchange of information. In planning, every question will lead to a reply which may generate more questions and replies. Sound decisions are made using information obtained from the process of questioning and replying. Decisions can be made faster if the communication process is spontaneous and continuous. However, with email and texting, information takes a longer time to travel especially when the recipient fails to check their mail.

When I was planning for the Freshmen Welcome Camp for Bioengineering last June, I communicated with the Bioengineering Club President by email. As all the planning only started 1 month before the actual camp, everything was in a rush. Planning was hindered by the slow email response from the President, and I felt frustrated with the lack of support provided. It resulted in a poor working relationship and developed into a vicious cycle of not wanting to communicate with each other at all. Thankfully, the camp went well in the end. On hindsight, I felt that we could have used an alternative channel at the start e.g. telephone calls which allow faster exchange of information. A better working relationship would definitely make the camp experience more enjoyable for me.

2.       Lack of emotions

Another problem of emailing and texting is their limitations in expressing emotions. I believe that effective communication stems from emotions. For example, the recipient can relate to the thankyou message more if he is able to feel the sender's sincerity. However via emails, the recipient of the message can only interpret how the sender is feeling through the contents of the text. If the recipient misinterpreted the sender's emotions to be negative, misunderstanding may arise and working relationships could be strained.

I emailed my logistics member to check on the collection of keys for the rooms we booked for the camp. She replied me in the mail “Please read your previous mail.” When I saw the mail, I interpreted that she was annoyed with me for constantly checking the details and I felt slightly offended by her reply. However, after clarifications, the message was meant in a cheeky way. If it was through voice conservation over the phone, I would not develop the unpleasant feeling as her tone would hint that she was simply joking with me. This shows that emotions are part and parcel of effective communications to show our intentions. Probably that’s why we have emoticons such as :P to show mischief, :D to indicate happiness and :( for sadness/unhappiness.

3.       Do we need rules for certain channels of commnications?

Many of us may have planned meetings before and texted message to a group of people informing them about a gathering. Here’s an example:

“Hi friends, meeting in NUS on Friday 4pm”

After one day of waiting, no one replied to indicate their attendance and you texted them individually again for confirmation. Then you receive different replies like

“I cannot come, so I never reply the message.”   and

“I got the notice, so I never reply the message.”

There is no fixed rule on what does “no reply” indicates. This would defeat the purpose of using texting as a convenient channel for communication (information dissemination) as the sender has to check with each person again for the reply. 

On the other hand, texting to big groups is very useful to disseminate information which doesnt not require replies. E.g. There is no ES2007S class on Tuesday.

I feel that having a protocol or guidelines on how to use certain communication channels is exaggerated. In a group, certain rules may be established along the way as setting rules at the start can be too intimidating. My friend once shared with me that her project leader sent an email requesting them to email in a certain format. Although it was a good initiative by the leader to create an organised system, it was not well received by the members of the team.

In all, I feel that 4 points of effective communication - Purpose, Audience, Context and Channel are interrelated. For each purpose, audience and context, we can choose different channels to get the best out of the communications. 

The channels are simply tools for us to utilize. If we can use them to our advantage, it will help us communicate effectively with others regardless of workplace environment or simply with our friends and family, and avoid unnecessary conflicts and misunderstandings.