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Background material by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. for Year 3 Semester 1 Medical PPSD session on 09th August 2008
COMMUNICATION PROCESS
The communication process consists of conceptualization of ideas, encoding and transmitting the message, decoding and interpretation of the message, and feedback.
Words have power and must be selected carefully because they determine and restricts thought.
Language must be appropriate (by intimacy, professional circles, age group, and gender), individualized, precise, believable, credible, and pleasant.
Communication style reflects basic personality. You get to know people by the way they communicate.
Barriers to effective communication are prejudgment before communication, differences between communicators (self-image, status, roles, personality, cognitive ability, physical situation, social status, culture, vocabulary, and language), distractions, emotional resistance to being on the receiving end, time constraints, poor listening, poor speech, bad timing, and unsuitable circumstances.
Other causes of communication failure are multiple meanings of words, information overlord, verbosity, value judgment, and filtering.
COMMUNICATION IN SMALL GROUPS
Face-to-face communication is usually the best form of communication because of immediate feedback.
Success of oral communication (speaking and listening) is affected by language use, voice and inflexion, speed and volume, periods of silence, active listening, body language, clear speech with an objective, repetition, conciseness, and feedback.
When urguing a case, start from a common ground, use only logical reasoning, and do not be emotional.
Silence is better than careless, wrong, offensive, or misleading talk.
What leads to confusion should not be said even if it is true.
Listening can be active (with feedback) or passive (no response). Barriers to effective listening are weak extrinsic motivation, personal constraints, environmental constraints, and poor timing of the message.