Introduction We cannot survive without other people. Our relationships, and how well we communicate in them, help us define who we are. We all want to be heard, understood and appreciated. We need each other to feel whole, valued and connected. When we communicate well, we feel good. When our attempts at communicating fail, we feel frustrated and alone.
Good communication brings people together. Poor, fragmented communication, leads, at a minimum, to confusion and stress. In the worst cases, poor communication can lead to bad decisions, lawsuits, the fracturing of relationships, divorce, political gridlock and even war.
At first glance, communicating doesn’t seem very complicated:
1. You speak,
2. The other person hears what you said and responds, and
3. You hear the response and answer back.
The cycle continues until the conversation is completed.
But, if communicating is so simple, why do we have so much trouble understanding each other?
Let’s Begin In order to make sure that we are all on the same page, let’s define some terms. These definitions started with The American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd Edition (30). From its definitions, I crafted my working definitions:
Information is everything that we communicate, not just the words we speak and hear. It also includes what we see and feel, or don’t, as we participate in a communication.
A message is a short communication transmitted by words, signals, or other means from one person to another.
Communication is the receiving and exchanging of information.
To communicate is to convey, transmit or transfer information.
Conversation is the spoken communication/exchange of information about our thoughts, opinions and feelings.
Communication is to communicate information from one party to another in conversation or some other type of message.
Now, let’s see what “information” we communicate in our conversations and messages.
The 7%-38%-55% Rule The classic work in this area was done by Albert Mehrabian. Wikipedia says “Albert Mehrabian… currently Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA), has become known best by his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages. His findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes have been quoted throughout human communication seminars worldwide, and have become known as the 7%-38%-55% Rule (or the 3 V’s: Verbal, Vocal and Visual).” (32)
He studied what happened to people’s perception of and feelings about a person when the words that person spoke were not consistent with the tone of their voice and their body language. In his work he calls, these the “elements of speech” (32). What he found was:
First, there are three elements in any direct communication:
1. Words
2. Tone of Voice
3. Nonverbal Behaviours (Facial Expressions and Body Language)
Second, the non-verbal elements, tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors, are particularly important for communicating feelings and attitude.
Third, he found that when all three elements of speech are congruent, when they agreed and sent the same message, the person communicating was better liked and what they communicated was better accepted, than when they were not congruent.
Further, when the three elements were not in agreement, and the words spoken did not match the tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors, people tended to disbelieve the words and to rely more on the tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors to determine the real meaning of the communication and the attitude of the person sending the message.
His results are reflected in the graph. The importance of words in his study (7%) was much smaller than nonverbal behaviors (55%) and tone of voice (38%).
Mehrabian’s work is a classic but, in my experience, it is frequently misstated. The percentages he calculated do not apply to all types of communications. He was concerned primarily about with whether or not we like or dislike the person who sends us a message, and how these feelings are influenced by the congruence of the three elements. Because of his focus, the percentage balance of his results may not be representative of our usual, ordinary, relatively unemotional, everyday conversations.
When our communications are carried out using our various technologies or are in a context other than direct communication, the percentage composition of the communication is different. (I’ve put a few examples of different kinds of communications in Appendix #1.)
So, regardless of his specific focus, we must always remember that communication is more than just the words we speak. Our tone of voice and body language are important too. Sometimes, they are even more important than the words we use. And, if they are missing, our ability to decipher the communication accurately may suffer.
1 – Fragmented Communications When communication becomes fragmented, when the elements are not congruent or are actually missing as it is so often in our modern, technology saturated society, with radio and television’s sound bites, cell phones, computers, etc., it becomes more difficult to communicate well. We find ways to compensate, some good, some bad. But either way, they affect how we communicate.