Positive Psychology at Work:

Communication

Communication is often misunderstood as being a technical exercise. The challenge is to find the precise form of words that will create the same sense or image in the receiver's head as in the transmitter's head, the unspoken assumption being that if I hear exactly what you say, I will understand exactly what you mean. Within organizations whole departments are devoted to creating communication statements that can be launched into the organization to create a perfect and universal understanding of intent. Dictionaries offering definitions of the meanings for words lend support to the illusion of the possibility of perfect communication: if words have fixed meanings, then I have only to select the words with the correct meaning to convey my message.

From this perspective, the challenge of communication becomes that of getting the right words in the right order. By definition, a failure to understand what was intended by the message, and to change behaviour accordingly, is either a failure of comprehension on the receiver's part or a failure of composition on the sender's part. Within organizations people focus on ‘getting the right message out there’, the right message being that which will achieve buy-in and avoid resistance. Communication frequently becomes seen as an event rather than a process. As an event, it has a limited existence: a specific communication becomes a specific, time-limited event. When it's over it's finished: everyone heard, everyone knows, everyone ...