Communications Model

Have you ever walked into a room and talked to someone, only to walk away and not certain if you got your point across? Communication is more than just the words that are said between two people: It is an intricate dance of verbal and non-verbal communication between the sender and receiver in the environment in which it is taking place. Few people understand the true mechanics of communication, even though it is likely the most important thing that we do on a daily basis.

1. In normal circumstances, less than 35 percent of communication is verbal. We’ve all heard this before: What you say is not as important as how you say it. In many languages, what a person says isn’t necessarily what they mean. Take the hundreds of expressions in the English language alone that have an entirely different meaning than that which they say—or idioms.
“Fit as a fiddle,” for instance. Are you referring to a violin-like instrument that is well-tuned, or does it just mean that you’re as healthy as you could possibly be?

2. Vocal communication can comprise more than a third of the meaning of the message. In the movie “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” Ben Stein plays the character of the monotone teacher renowned for his famous “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller” line. Or, take Gary Busey who is known to put too much tone into normal interactions. When I was in the call center business the common catch-phrase was “tone and demeanor:” Anyone that was routinely on the phones knew that tone and demeanor, regardless of what was said, could make or break the call. Voice quality, pitch, and inflection are all factors in proper tone and demeanor.

3. Nonverbal communication is where most of the message lies.

This one makes for a deeper discussion: The importance of non-verbal cues in communication is imperative to communications. First, however, the “basic model for communications:”

Source à Encoding à Message à Medium àDecoding à Receiver

As the source of something you want to get across to another person you craft a message by taking ideas and concepts and fitting it into language that is appropriate for the situation in which you find yourself.

The message then passes through whatever medium—from simple, short sentences to PowerPoint presentations—you choose. The medium also includes your non-verbal and vocal components of this model.

At the receiver’s end, they translate the message you have delivered to them through the medium which you have. The most important things to remember about this end of the communication spectrum, so to speak, is that the receiver receives the message through “noise” that can be found in the environment and the decoding process of the receiver passing it through their “filters” of personal biases.

Keep in mind that any communication exchange is an extremely complex thing: People speak about 75 to 100 words each minute and short-term, sensory memory of the other person can take in about 7 bits of information (give or take 2) before needing to commit it to long-term memory all the while there is the background noise of your situation and the receiver is likely listening with the intent to respond rather than solidly take in the information.