Two way communication
Written by AdministratorWednesday, 02 May 2007 People communicate to share knowledge and information. Communication will be effective if the message can be interpreted with the same meaning by the receiver. This is what we call two way communications. The first person is sending the message where the second person as the receiver is giving feedback confirming that the information has been received.
Building an effective two way communication is not easy, by understanding communication problems and strategy of two way communication, we could try to improve our communication skill.
COMMUNICATION PROBLEM
Roger Neugebauer in his article ”Communication: A two-way Street” stated some problems might be faced in a company.
a. Protectiveness.
Leader might not share some information with his/her team member (sometimes) in order to avoid hurting their feelings. Other reason could be team leader thinks the information are undisclosed that can not be shared to all employees within the company. In the contrary, the team member often holds specific information from their leader to protect themselves from getting punished or fired. This protectiveness may result in communication problems between leader and team member.
b. Defensiveness.
Defensiveness is when someone rejects information sent to them. This situation might happen when the receiver has negative perception or emotion to the sender simply due to their harsh words or different way of sharing the information.
c. Tendency to evaluate.
Another communication problem could occur due to lack of evaluating the real meaning of the information. Without understanding the real meaning of received information, it is difficult to give appropriate response.
d. Narrow perspectives.
Narrow perspectives can be occurred when a person never have a chance to hear other people thoughts, to see other people’s work or too busy with his/her own works. In this case, a person is blocked with his/her own way of thinking. Without trying to think and understand other people’s thoughts/perspective, it will be difficult for him/her to communicate with others which may create a conflict.
e. Mismatched expectations.
Peter Drucker said that sometimes people will purge unexpected information and only want to hear the expected information. When the information is not as what they expect, people will not have a desire to listen it.
f. Insufficient time
Insufficient time for sharing the whole information will cause incomplete information passed on to other people or what we call miss communication.
BUILDING TWO WAY COMMUNICATION
Besides understanding various problems that cause difficulty in building two way communications, a strategy to improve the way we communicate to other people need to be applied, especially in the corporation where communication is extremely important.
a. Active Listening
In two way communication, we have the first party as a sender, and the second party as a receiver. Each party must listen actively when the other is communicating. By carefully listen to other people, we will have a tendency to evaluate the information, avoid defensiveness and narrow perspective, more over, it could trigger open communication which avoids protectiveness.
b. Same Perception.
Two way communications often failed because of different perception about a particular issue from both parties (sender and receiver). To avoid different perception during communication, it will be best to start with sharing a background of the idea that being discussed and not jump directly to the main idea/issue.
c. Private Communication.
A lot of people couldn’t speak their mind because they are afraid to share their thoughts in front of many people, although they have great ideas. Private communication will help people to start sharing their great ideas to others.
In the corporation environment, leader can facilitate his/her team member to communicate privately in private session where he/she can speak their thoughts freely without afraid of other people’s comments or interruptions.
There are many ways to build an effective two way communication, understanding some causes of communication problems and adapting communication strategies are just a tools to help us improve our communication skill. The most important is willingness to continuously improve our self in how we communicate with other.
Source: sinarharapan.co.id