Coding

Effective Communication

 It was a treat to be at the campus.

Last week some administrators of schools were invited to listen to some views accorded by a Professor from a local university. He spoke on communication skills. We found him down to earth and communicated on matters close to our era ( baby boomers) and so we understood him well. He confessed that it would be a challenge to him to handle students of the X, Y generations. He found it difficult to speak their language and commended on our ability to understand them. He must know how much we had to compromise to learn to think and speak like them.I suppose that keeps us younger than our age and closes the communication gap. We have to think like them to handle them.It's all about adaptation and making a decision to communicate effectively.

At the talk, he related that all communication starts with a coding procedure: you put forward an idea and let it be encoded by the hearer. It is when the process fails that miscommunication happens and causes a gap.

Doesn't it happen between teachers and students, teachers and teachers and definitely parents and teachers ? Yes it does.

There is no denial that there are almost miscommunications in school every other day. Just when you thought you will enjoy a peaceful day, there comes in the disgruntled parent and child. You will have to equip yourself with tall skills ; speech, body language, right intonations and alertness. You must be polite even if you disagree and like business, the client has to be treated with the right approach. 

It is most difficult to persuade involved parties to be cautious in their speech as the expression 'monkey see, monkey do' is surely real. Children learn best through examples. That's what my girls tell me. Whenever they do some things against the grain, their fingers are at me. How unfair. What about the finer points?

Well, the professor professed that the cultural context is important in all exchanges. When we handle people, we have to consider their backgrounds and the cultural influence. One example he quoted went like this.

A Malaysian student went to the States for further studies and being new to the country did not understand the local context enough. When asked if he wanted tea he casually replied; "no worries" and so he did not get his tea.He was later chided not to behave like Malaysians here. The Malaysian context is to say no when asked to be offered but in actuality it was a polite way of meaning 'yes'. So you have to say 'yes' when you want it and 'no' when you do not want and not to expect otherwise. Oh it is not easy as we have been brought up to not blatantly want something too outright or we may sound rude. 

So the coding and encoding becomes a mismatch.

Mismatches of this nature can happen when children are brought up differently too. Some think it is not wrong to take things that do not belong to them; others think it is alright to smoke as after all there is no prevention from the home and still others reckon it is right behavior to litter.

The list is endless.

Communication whether verbal or non verbal is effective when we encode precisely.

It was an entertaining day with the professor.

It was a good day as old friends got together and effectively communicated in conjunction with school issues; we face almost the same challenges and speak the same language. A teacher will be known as one wherever they are; their speech and body language are the same.

Do it right.

Effective communication.