Effective Communication and Decision Making
INTRODUCTION Effective communication and decision making is the ability to pass information from one area to the other by observing clarity in the process of decoding. Effective decision making is associated with the fact that communication help decision makers to explore different approaches using the right knowledge. For this reason, unless effective communication is established, effective decision making could be hard to achieve. The reason for this is due to the reliability that effective decision making has on effective communication. With effective communication used as a tool for informing decision making, one would rely on effective communication for the information required to make right decisions. The elements of effective communication are important tools to use in relation to getting right information useful for decision making.
As communication books, journals, forums, and articles ascertain, communication is not always between one person and another. Communication at the wake of the 21st century has changed from being between people only to including people and gadgets, the internet, and other objects that are considered movers of today’s life. With the common elements of effective communication set to be the sender, message, decoder, channel, encoder, and the receiver, communication seems to be defining interaction between human parties. Sending of commands and search strings to gadgets and the internet search engines in technological terms is referred to as communication as well. With uninterrupted information flow considered as one advantage of having a reliable communication channels, effective decision making would also be depending on similar variables. The variable that is effective enough to make it easy for decision making is reliable information and thorough research on the effectiveness of the considered decisions.
For this case, associated research is required to be one of elements that lead to effective decision making. Research involves literature reading in secondary sources, interviews and observation in primary sources. During observation, the eyes and the brain work hand in hand to develop a logical and understandable theory for the observed situation. This interaction between the eyes and the brain can be termed as communication. With this in mind, it is important for everyone to understand that without information there can be no effective decision making and without effective communication there can be no information to be used in the decision making process. OBJECTIVES By conducting this research, it will be possible for one to: Understand the requirements of communication; How to establish effective communication; How communication and decision making are connected and; Why it is important to rely on communication to obtain information before making decisions.
MAIN BODY Establishing Effective Communication The establishment of effective communication involves establishing communication elements that are reliable. There is the need to establish who the receiver of the intended message would be and how to effectively communicate with them. The internet is a channel of communication that can be used by the message sender to communicate to other people. The other people in this case are the receivers of the message. In establishing effective communication, language and level of understanding of the recipient plays a great role in choosing the kind and nature of message.
With the efforts of establishing effective communication; be it through the internet or other means, the target group is always the most important entity that needs to be researched on (Barker-Collo, 1996). The sender of information directs the message and the information he intends to pass to other people or objects by using varables that are well understandable to the receivers. In this case, language is one of the most important aspects that influence the effectiveness of the communication. Language is a broad term when it comes to general reference; with reference to the terms it is used in, there are differences in terms and conditions within which it is used in (Bott & Farmer, 1997). Communication is different in terms of how is used between people and other objects. When dealing with machines, machines language is used to establish communication between the person sending the commands and the machine.
Machines cannot understand human language and so are humans in understanding machine languages. Assuming that one person used human language to communicate with another human being, it is important to understand that the channels that transfer this message use machine language. For the conversion of information from human language to machine language, encoding is required to establish primary communication between the human entities and machine interfaces. The reliability of the conversion channel depends highly on the nature of message and the urgency of the message. Establishment of effective communication highly depends on the channels and the nature of recipients that are considered for the messages to be traded (Barnes, 1991). Requirements of Effective CommunicationEffective communication involves flow of information from the right source to the right recipient through a designated direction.
Direction is a vector quantity that defines communication as a varying element of life. In organizations where the flow of communication may be multi directional, many considerations have to e made in order to establish a network that favors all the parties. Vertical communication is a directional entity of communication that defines communication from the top to the bottom or vice versa. For this case, information flowing from the top to the bottom should flow through the right channel so that decoding of the information can be reliable. With the communication that flows from the bottom to the top, the channel that has to be used should be involving parties and means that would establish a tone familiar to the indented recipient. For example, a casual laborer would not address the CEO of a firm directly but would use the supervisors and the managers to pass his message.
The kind of language and tone used between the casual laborer and the supervisor/manager would not be the same as that the supervisor/manager would apply to communicate to the CEO of the firm (Biklen, 1993). The receiver is the person to whom a message is intended for. Chances are that the receiver may or may not understand the message concerning the language and the meanings a sender applies. Without the receiver, communication is rendered immobile in that it would not be moving to specific destination and the purpose it would have served would be pointless. For this reason, a recipient has to be established before any kind of information is traded. The system or the means that make sure information reaches the destination are equally as important as the recipient in that they make it possible for the communication to get to the recipient.
The start of communication is the sender and he/she is required to format a message in away that the intended recipient would understand. Without understanding of a message, communication is not established and the response may not be appropriate or serve the purpose expected (Beukelman and Mirenda, 1992) The machinery part of communication makes it possible for communication to be established across a considerably long distance. Communication can be made without the use of machines if only short distances are in place. Many are the times when communication would be flowing from the top ranked officials to the bottom ranked employees. In this case the choice of media or channel of communication would highly depend on the distance and the scope of audience.
The internet is one of the examples of channels that can be used in communication where many recipients are involved. The advantage of the inteernet over other means and channels of communication is in the range of people that can be reached at the same time. With the consideration of all entities, variables, and elements involved in communication, it is understandable that effective communication can only be established if there is a sender, channel, an encoder, and decoder, a recipient, and a response (Biklen, Morton, et al, 1991) Effective Decision Making Effective decision making is the process through which informed choices are made to influence and propagate a certain aspect or task. Decision making process is one that involves research and the use of literature associated with the type or case to be addressed. Decision making involves considering three aspects namely: the chances that a decision will work and the chances that it will fail; the chances that a decision made would remain effective over the period designated; and the chances that the decision would be flexible enough to fit to other tasks that require such decisions or similar drifts of decision making. Communication is related to decision making in that it is considered before a decision can be made.
Communication is to be used in terms of cross referencing and consultation. The same waycommunication is of importance prior to decision making, it remains so after the decisions are made. The reason for this is because all parties that are to be affected by the decision cannot all be involved in the decision making process and therefore are to be informed on the decisions made. To inform them requires a form of communication favorable to the communicator and understandable to the audience (Bloomberg, Johnson, 1991). Decision Making StrategiesDecision making is the processes that ensures smooth running of organizations. In this case, making the right decisions is more important than the act of just making the decisions.
The effectiveness of a decision can be quantified through the process and the criteria followed and the effect it brings upon implementation. The Criterion for decision making depend highly on the level of information that one has regarding the outcomes of the decision. Information as discussed earlier is the only way in which the effectiveness of a decision relies on. When one is informed thoroughly on the variables of a task, decision making process ceases from being difficulty to being strategic. Strategies that can and are oftenly adapted in decision making involve the effectiveness of the decision, least number of people and departments affected negatively, and margin of positive changes and developments that the decision entails (Bochner, Outhred, 1991).
By making a decision that affects a company, an organization, or even a group of persons; one is supposedly required to have a clear understanding of the areas that are most likely to be affected by the decision. When this knowledge is applied together with information regarding to the expected results, effective decision making is established. At the event that the decisions made will work in the favor of the individual, organization, company, or a group of people; then effective decision making is achieved. CONCLUSION Effective communication is the process through which information is passed from one person to the other or to a number of people at the same time. However it has been discovered that communication is not restricted to person-to-person.
It can be used between people and machines and the other way round. Communication is the process of sending messages from one area to the next with utilization of reliable channels, encoding and decoding equipment, recipient, and most importantly the message should be originating from a sender. Effective communication gives way to effective decision making in that information is crucial to making effective decisions. For this case, information is gathered through communication from parties and databases that contain the materials necessary for making informed decisions.
