Communication

A bank branch manager emails her team: "Please clear the pending files today." One officer clears the loan files. Another clears out the old records cupboard. The message was sent, but it was not understood.

The word comes from the Latin communicare, to share. It is the transfer of information and understanding from one person to another. Louis Allen calls it a bridge of meaning: a systematic and continuous process of telling, listening and understanding. Both definitions put understanding, not sending, at the centre.

Forms. Communication takes four forms: verbal, non-verbal, written and digital. In this list "verbal" means spoken. Strictly, written words are verbal too, as the block on oral and written communication explains.

Characteristics.

• It is a two-way, continuous process: messages and replies keep flowing.
• It needs at least a sender and a receiver.
• It carries facts, ideas, opinions and feelings.
• It is pervasive, found at every level and in every department, and goal-oriented.

Functions, shown in an auto-parts plant in Pune:

Done well, communication gives an organisation clarity, coordination, cooperation, better relationships and a shared sense of objectives.

Don't confuse communication with information. Information is the content, such as a notice on a board. It becomes communication only when someone receives it and understands it.

Where it breaks. The definitions describe a two-way exchange. Much of what organisations send is one-way: circulars, manuals, broadcasts. In these, nobody checks whether the reader understood, so the bridge of meaning may never be built.

For exams. Match each definition to its author: "exchange of facts, ideas, opinions or emotions" is Newman and Summer; "bridge of meaning" is Louis Allen. Know the four forms and the seven functions.

On a noisy shop floor in Pune, a supervisor shouts, "Torque it to forty." The worker hears "fourteen" and sets the machine wrong. Every step between the two of them was a chance for the message to change.

Seven steps.

1. The sender forms an idea.
2. The sender encodes it into words, gestures or visuals.
3. The message carries information, ideas or emotions.
4. It travels through a channel: spoken, written or electronic.
5. The receiver takes it in.
6. The receiver decodes it, making sense of it.
7. Feedback returns to the sender and confirms understanding.

Noise is interference at any step. It comes in three kinds: physical (machine noise, a bad phone line), psychological (worry, anger, prejudice) and semantic (a word understood in a different sense). The goal is to minimise distortion and maximise understanding.

Back to the shop floor. The idea was a setting of forty. The encoding was a shouted word. The channel was the air of a loud shop, so physical noise changed "forty" into "fourteen" before decoding. No feedback came back, so nobody caught the error. Two fixes close the gaps: write the setting on the job card, and ask the worker to repeat it back.

Don't confuse the medium with the channel. The medium is the broad means: spoken, written or electronic. The channel is the specific route the message takes, such as a phone call, a letter or an email. Face to face, feedback is immediate. In writing, the sender cannot see the receiver's face and must wait for a reply.

Where it breaks. A step-by-step model makes communication look like posting a parcel. In a real conversation both people send and receive at the same time, and the relationship between them colours every word. The models in the next block try to capture this.

For exams. Know the steps in order, the three kinds of noise, and that feedback is what closes the loop.

Encode, send, decode, reply.

Two engineers read the same email and agree at once. A new trainee reads it and is lost. The words did not change; what each reader brought to them did. Models of communication try to show what is going on.

Each model adds something the last left out. Shannon and Weaver add noise. Schramm adds two-way exchange and shared experience. Berlo adds the human factors that shape each element.

Berlo in more detail. The source and the receiver are each shaped by communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, social system and culture. The message is shaped by its content, elements, treatment, structure and code. The channel is one of the five senses: hearing, seeing, touching, smelling and tasting.

An example. Mumbai's dabbawalas mark each tiffin with a short code of letters, numbers and colours. To a dabbawala the code says where the tiffin goes. To an outsider it says nothing. The channel and the message are the same; the fields of experience are not.

Don't confuse a linear model with a two-way one. Shannon and Weaver draw a one-way line from source to destination. Schramm draws a loop in which both people send and receive.

Where it breaks. Shannon and Weaver's model measures how well signals travel, not whether meaning is shared. Berlo's SMCR, as usually drawn, shows neither feedback nor noise. Every model simplifies; each is useful for the question it was built to answer.

For exams. Match the model to its year and its key idea: noise (Shannon and Weaver, 1949), field of experience (Schramm, 1954), SMCR (Berlo, 1960).

A factory announces a cut in the festival bonus by circular on Monday. By the Saturday before, the canteen already knew, and had a version that was half wrong. The news travelled by two routes; only one was official.

Formal communication by direction:

• Downward, for example circulars.
• Upward, for example grievances.
• Horizontal, between peers, for example joint forums.
• External, for example annual reports.

Informal communication travels by five common routes:

• The grapevine: unofficial, fast, often inaccurate.
• Casual face-to-face talk: direct, with instant feedback and non-verbal cues.
• Social media: fast and flexible.
• Personal phone calls: immediate, but with limited visual feedback.
• Non-verbal signals: gestures, posture and facial expression.

The same media can carry formal messages too: a regional manager's phone call giving instructions is formal. The channel, not the medium, makes a message informal.

An example: a public-sector bank branch. Formal: a head-office circular on new rules for checking customers' identity; the branch manager's monthly report to the region; a meeting between the loans and deposits heads; the bank's annual report. Informal: a chat over tea, the staff's messaging group, and the grapevine on who is being transferred.

Don't confuse informal with spoken. The test is whether the channel is official, not whether words are spoken or written. A board meeting is spoken and formal. A message in a staff chat group is written and informal.

Where it breaks. Formal channels can be slow, and messages get filtered as they pass through levels. Informal channels cannot be controlled and can spread rumour. Neither works well alone.

In practice. Use formal channels for anything that must be recorded or binding. Listen to informal ones to sense mood and test ideas early. When a rumour spreads, a quick, clear formal statement takes away its fuel.

For exams. Expect to classify examples as formal or informal, and to name the four formal directions and the five informal forms.

A store-keeper notices that a supplier's parts are arriving late. The plant head hears about it three weeks later, when the line stops. The information existed; it could not travel upward fast enough.

Each direction does a different job. Downward communication carries authority and objectives. Upward communication brings feedback, ideas and early warning. Horizontal communication coordinates. Diagonal communication saves time when speed matters.

In the plant. The plant head's safety circular goes down. The store-keeper's note on late parts should go up. The production and quality heads settle a schedule across. A quality inspector who phones the purchase manager about a faulty batch is communicating diagonally.

Don't confuse horizontal with diagonal. Horizontal is between people at the same level. Diagonal is between different levels in different departments. Fayol's gangplank is horizontal: peers talk directly, with their superiors' consent, and keep them informed.

Where it breaks. Upward communication is often the weakest, because people soften bad news before it reaches the top. Diagonal links are fast but can leave the managers in between uninformed.

In practice. Make upward flow safe: open-door hours, suggestion schemes, and meetings where senior managers hear directly from front-line staff. When people talk diagonally, ask them to copy their own managers.

For exams. Expect a short case asking you to name the direction. The diagonal example with the finance executive is a favourite.

A rumour that the plant will close reaches 300 workers before lunch. The official notice denying it takes two days. A manager who knows how messages travel can use both routes, and not be surprised by either.

Chain up and down a line

Wheel all through one centre

Circle each to two neighbours

All-channel everyone to everyone

An example: a college fest committee. When the convenor phones each volunteer separately, the committee is a wheel. It works for quick tasks such as "who has the banners?" When the core team argues out the budget in one group chat, it is all-channel: slower to settle, but more ideas surface.

The grapevine is the informal network that grows from social ties. Keith Davis described four patterns along which it carries news.

The grapevine is fast and tells managers how people feel. It also carries rumour and distortion. It works best alongside open formal channels.

Don't confuse the grapevine with rumour. The grapevine is the channel. A rumour is unverified content that it sometimes carries. The grapevine also carries true news, often faster than the formal route.

Where it breaks. The classic network findings come from small groups solving set puzzles in a laboratory. Real organisations mix all four patterns, and change them from task to task.

For exams. Expect: which network is fastest for simple tasks (wheel), which gives the highest satisfaction (all-channel), and Davis's most common grapevine pattern (cluster).

Go deeper for practitioners

Where the findings come from. Alex Bavelas and Harold Leavitt ran the first network experiments around 1950. Groups passed notes along fixed channels to solve a simple puzzle. Centralised networks such as the wheel solved it fastest, and the person at the centre became the leader. Members at the edge were the least satisfied.

Complex tasks reverse the result. Later work, notably by Marvin Shaw, found that decentralised networks did better on complex problems. The person at the centre of a wheel becomes overloaded, which Shaw called saturation, while an all-channel group can share the thinking.

A decision. You lead a six-person project. For daily status updates, a wheel through you is efficient. For redesigning the product, open the channels so that everyone hears everyone. The mistake is to use one network for both.

A branch manager tells a clerk on the phone to waive a ₹500 late fee for a customer. Months later an auditor asks who approved it. Nobody can prove anything, because nothing was written down.

An example: a college fest committee. The convenor phones a caterer to bargain over the menu. Speech is quick, and both sides can adjust on the spot. Once they agree, she confirms the price, the date and the number of plates by email. If the caterer later disputes the bill, the email is the record.

Oral and written communication are both forms of verbal communication, because both use words. Non-verbal communication (gesture, expression, posture, tone, pictures and symbols) accompanies them. It often carries the feeling behind the words: the same "fine" can mean agreement or anger.

Don't confuse verbal with oral. Verbal means using words, spoken or written. Oral means spoken only. A letter is verbal but not oral. A nod is neither: it is non-verbal.

Where it breaks. Writing loses tone, so a short email can sound curt. Speech leaves no proof of what was agreed. Neither, on its own, tells the sender whether the receiver understood; that still needs feedback.

In practice. Discuss it, then write it down. Put policies, approvals and anything involving money or legal duties in writing. Give sensitive news in person first, and follow it up in writing.

For exams. Expect a case asking which form suits a message, and a question on why both oral and written communication count as verbal.

Say it for speed; write it to keep it.

A head-office circular says: "All branches to ensure full KYC compliance by EOD." A new clerk does not know what EOD means. A worried manager reads it as a threat. The same words failed in two different ways.

Semantic barriers, a kind of language barrier, are a frequent problem at work. They include one word with several meanings, poorly built messages, faulty translation, jargon and unstated assumptions. "EOD" in the circular is jargon; "full compliance" is an unstated assumption about what counts.

Overcoming barriers:

• Clarify the idea before sending it.
• Choose the right medium for the message.
• Use simple language.
• Listen actively.
• Ask for feedback.
• Keep channels open in every direction.

Rewritten, the circular might say: "Please finish identity checks on all customer accounts by 5 pm today. Call the regional office with any questions."

Don't confuse barriers with noise. Noise, in the process model, is interference at some step. Barriers are the sources of that interference. Physical noise comes from physical barriers; semantic noise comes from semantic barriers.

Where it breaks. The categories overlap: jargon is a language barrier and also a perceptual one, since experts and newcomers read it differently. A list names the barriers but does not say which matters most in a given case.

For exams. Expect to match examples to the seven types, and to recognise semantic barriers as a kind of language barrier.