COMMUNICATION, LISTENING & FACE-TO-FACE

COMMUNICATION is the exchange of ideas. It doesn't matter whether you are a politician trying to sway the floating voter, a wife reminding her husband it's his turn to walk the dog, or a teacher trying to inject some last-minute cramming.
Every act of communication contains a message aimed at an audience. The only worthwhile measure of its successs is the extent to which the former influences the latter. To be an effective communicator you need to make the message interesting, appealing and comprehensible to your selected target. This calls for careful thought, not just about style and content but also about choice of medium. It also involves knowing where your audience currently stands on the subject you want to communicate. Effective communication is almost always based on research - though this often means no more than listening carefully to what is being said!
LISTENING, however, is a far more sophisticated skill than many people realise. And while a failure to communicate can sometimes be put down to deficiencies in the content of the message, or in the way it's put across, listening errors are at least as common a cause of communication breakdown. It is important to understand this. To communicate effectively, you have to know why communication is sometimes unsuccessful and to be aware of the rules which govern every attempt at it - particularly those concerning responsibility.
The problem is that we are habituated to the conventions of private life, where speaker and listener usually share responsibility for seeing that the lines of communication run smoothly. Professional obligations change all that. One party often has to bear the entire responsibility for seeing that the information is transmitted, and it's not always the speaker. If a salesman rings your bell and tries to sell you double glazing, you don't have to listen. The onus is entirely on him. But if a market researcher stops you in the street it's up to him or her - i.e. the listener - to coax a coherent response out of you. In both cases professional status make one party totally responsible for the way the transaction is conducted.
FACE TO FACE, remember that you have two ears and one mouth. Try to use them is roughly that proportion. End your contribution decisively, so that the other person avoids the embarrassment of replying prematurely. Some two-thirds of what we communicate to each other is conveyed non-verbally, by appearance, expression and gesture. Generally speaking we use language to communicate facts and hard information, and non-verbal signals to show whether or not we actually like the person we are talking or listening to.