The four building blocks: Message

- What gets transmitted between a sender and a receiver, hopefully with positive intent, as Brenda mentioned, is the message. The message in a conversation is more than the words that we speak or write. It's the nonverbal signals we deliver and the tone of voice we use. If you give your best effort in a presentation, and I approach you at the end saying, good job today, the words in my message will be completely overridden by my unenthusiastic delivery. As the sender, when you contemplate your message, keep in mind not only how you word or you write something, but also the channel that you use to send it. A channel may be a text, an email, a phone call, a face-to-face conversation, a memo, an interoffice chat, or a voice message. If I know I have to get my boss' attention, I may send a quick text and ask if it's appropriate to call her for a conversation. Because of the amount of emails she receives daily, I know that if we have to make a swift decision, this channel is more productive for both of us. Now, speaking of email, I was frightened, but not surprised to see the Radicati Group's findings. In 2015, the technology market research firm published a report stating that the number of emails sent and received around the world topped 205 billion per day. This number will increase steadily by 3% per year. This means that by 2019, we will send and receive 246 billion emails worldwide daily. I mentioned all kinds of channels earlier, but this report tells me that email tends to be the preferred mode of transportation in the workplace worldwide. Whatever channel you utilize, you may also need to consider the message's organizational pattern. Is your message meant to inform? In that case, you will focus on the need for your receiver to understand. This is done by designing your message in a simple, concise way that's tailored for your receiver. But does your message aim to persuade? If that is your intent, you will need to use the same concise audience focus strategy as you would to inform, but to persuade someone, you must also craft an argument with your main claims, evidence and reasoning for your idea. If you intend to persuade, you may approach your message by presenting the problem followed by the solution. If the audience has two choices, you may organize your message by comparing and contrasting the two. Regardless of the nature of your organizational pattern, you message is more effective when you bundle primary and secondary information. Don't just give the information, follow it up with some kind of supporting evidence or example that can make it memorable, or at least understandable. For example, if I'm announcing a promotion that our company plans to begin in the upcoming month, I should tell our staff why we're making this decision or what yield of return we saw last time we tried something similar. If you consider the message going from the sender to the receiver in a cyclical pattern, then the check for message effectiveness is receiving the listeners' feedback. As the sender, allow time for your receiver to absorb the information and either ask questions or get clarification. If you skip this critical phase of checking for understanding, you will run the risk of miscommunication and the perception that you don't value the receiver's involvement in the whole communication process. The product of your communication loop is your message. Be thoughtful with how you strategize, deliver and evaluate it and you will be an effective communicator with every interaction.