Welcome to Part 4, the final installment of the YES! Your Human Resources Solution September series all about communication in the workplace. In Part 1, we discussed the initial assessment of a person’s communication skills, specifically what nonverbal communication says about job interview candidates. In Part 2, we talked about the best ways to give and receive feedback. In Part 3, we shared four secrets to instantly improve communication skills. This week, we’re going back to the basics of communication—a refresher you can combine with the rest of our series, on the road to becoming a great business communicator.

Remember that at its core, communication is how people convey information to one another. Sound broad? It is. And as you can imagine, communication has many components, and they all must work in harmony for the message to be conveyed and understood as intended. Those parts include:

• The sender. It is the sender’s responsibility to convey the message as intended, clearly and with enough information for the recipient to interpret the same meaning.
• The recipient. It is the recipient’s responsibility to listen carefully, ask questions for clarity, and periodically regurgitate the message to ensure a shared understanding with the sender.
• The context. The context includes the delivery method and the delivery medium.
  • The delivery medium. Via what medium (written, verbal, face-to-face) will the message be most effectively conveyed and suit the needs of both the sender and the recipient? Let’s consider firing an employee via text message. This communication makes for an easily understood meaning, and the delivery medium certainly suits the needs of the sender. But because this communication is unlikely to meet the needs of the recipient, text messaging is not an effective delivery medium for a termination. It’s important to think about delivery medium for every message, and whether the most effective, suitable way will be via phone call, text message, email, or an in-person meeting.
  • The delivery method. The delivery method highlights how the sender’s tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language work together to create an understanding of meaning. The sender’s emotions also come into play here—is the message delivered with anger, compassion, joy, or apathy? All of those will affect how the recipient interprets the message. It’s key to remember that many aspects of the delivery method are only understandable in person; body language, facial expressions, and even tone are not discoverable in written messages, and can open the door for a miscommunication to occur.
• The content. The most basic idea behind communication is to share content. With that in mind, the content should be presented clearly and with enough detail to ensure a shared understanding between the sender and the recipient.

As you can see, effective communication requires a lot of moving parts to create shared meaning and to avoid miscommunication. When comprehensively understood, these basics can be used to produce communications that start out on the right foot, with clear content, delivered via the most effective medium and method. As you work toward becoming a better communicator, bear these basics in mind; build on their foundation with skilled techniques, and refer back to them when you need a refresher!