The Process of communication

The Process of Communication

The process of communication may be broken down into eight separate parts: generating the concept, encoding the message, choosing the medium, transmitting, receiving, decoding, and providing feedback. Each of these processes must be successful for the process to be completed. I made a mistake last week when I was chatting with my friend regarding a scheduled meeting. He nearly lost it.

Generating the Concept and Encoding the Message

Although I was trying to notify my friend that a certain session was at eight in the morning, my use of words conveyed the wrong impression. I had the notion because I thought he would really want to go to the meeting. The encoding procedure wasn't that difficult; I settled on a simple speech over phone. I believe it is at this point that things went wrong. I did not think about the details and whether there was a chance of being misunderstood. I made the same mistake when developing the message. Those two steps are very critical and by not paying attention to them, I messed with the rest of the message.

Choosing the Medium and Transmitting

Selecting the medium was easy. My friend does like short messages but I prefer to make calls. I believe that transmitting messages through phone calls is more appropriate since feedback is more immediate. The problem is that one usually has to be quick because recipients might be engaged in other activities and may not have the time to engage. It was especially the case since my friend was in the process of preparing for sleep. I now realize that calling him that late at night might also have led to the miscommunication. His state of sleepiness and wanting to get to bed immediately made the medium that much less effective. In retrospect, maybe a written message would have been better. As it stood, he did not even ask for any clarification after I delivered the message.

Receiving, Decoding, and Providing Feedback

The receiver did receive the message. Receipt of the message is sometimes difficult to ascertain but with a phone, one is guaranteed immediate feedback (Guffey& Loewy, 35). For me, I heard him confirm that he understood me. However, one can say that he did not receive the message that I wanted to deliver. He did not internalize my message the way I intended him to. That would also extend to the decoding category. Decoding entails distilling the meaning of the message received (Guffey& Loewy, 49). The receiver should be able to decode the message and get a clear meaning. Failure of this part invalidates the whole process and often one has to start again. Feedback does confirm whether the right message has been delivered after all. In my case, the only feedback I got was an 'OK' before the call was terminated. It is only after I called my friend the next morning that we solved the problem.

Conclusion

In my analysis, I am at fault for the miscommunication. I should have taken more care encoding, developing, and transmitting the message. The format I chose did not make the time clear and the medium was also the incorrect one for that time of night. I also think I should have insisted on a more comprehensive feedback. A phone should enable one to seek as many clarifications as possible. Therefore, the miscommunication happened because I did not pay attention to the process. Going forward, that is an area I have to focus on if I want to get better at communication.

Work Cited

Guffey, M. and Loewy, D. Business communication: Process and product. New York, NY: Cengage. 2014.