Communication Process Paper

Communication Process Paper

The importance in being able to effectively communicate with others is essential in our everyday lives. Although everyone participates in some process of communication, not everyone knows how to communicate well. Communication is a process involving the encoding and decoding of messages being sent and received by a source and receiver, respectively. Messages are sent through various channels, such as face-to-face interaction, electronic mail, or telephone. Depending upon the channel used to communicate a message, it may allow for the communication to be transactional or unilateral. All of this occurs within a certain context, and it may also include noise factors, such as cultural differences or physical distractions, that may disrupt the effectiveness of the message being communicated. The more knowledgeable one is of the multiple factors involved in the communication process, the better the chances of effective and efficient communication.

In Organizational Behavior, John Schermerhorn et al believes that "it is useful to think of communication as a process of sending and receiving messages with attached meanings" (190). Mission Hospital is where I work, vast amounts of messages are sent and received daily, and depending on its availability, certain channels will be utilized. Due to the high volume of different messages, there is always the chance that some messages will be successful while others are not.

An example of an unsuccessful message, where the source of the message was unable to effectively communicate the tasks that were to be completed, involved a voicemail that my manager left for the supervisor to relay to the staff. My supervisor left due to a family emergency, she will be out the rest of the week, and my manager is now on vacation. It is now a week later and the message was not passed on. This is why effective communication is so important. In this certain situation, the manager had called and left a message listing about 30 tasks that needed to be completed and she did so by leaving a message on the voicemail. We, my co-workers and I, were required to transcribe her encoded directions before performing the tasks. However, some of the directions were unclear and we were unable to decode them. There were times when the reception on the phone she called from was filled with static, preventing us to clearly decode her message. There were also times when she asked us to fax out information regarding a property listing, yet she did not specify which details were to be included and which details were to be excluded.

Since (my boss) message was through the voicemail, we were unable to ask for clarification or give her feedback. We tried calling her on her cell phone, but it was off. Nevertheless, we proceeded to perform the tasks only to find out later that some were not done to her liking. Some of her intended messages were perceived incorrectly by us. In one instance when she asked us to fax out some information to a client, we misinterpreted the name "Thompson" with "Johnson." Thus, Thompson did not receive the time sensitive information he needed and instead we incorrectly faxed out unnecessary information to Johnson. To this