What Are the Steps in the Communication Process?
The communication process has four steps, which are encoding, medium of transmission, decoding and feedback. Following the steps of the process helps to establish effective communication and ensures that no messages are lost or misunderstood.
The first step of the communication process, encoding, is perhaps the most crucial since assumptions will follow. The sender needs to deliver a message that is concise and clear. Issues such as tone of voice and body language also need to be considered, as these factors play a key role in how a message is interpreted.
This leads on to the second step, medium of transmission. It is the responsibility of the sender to decide how and when to deliver the message to increase the chances of it being understood. The form that a message takes can be critical to the next step, decoding.
Once the message has been fully delivered, the role of the sender ends. It is then up to the receiver to decode the message in the way it was intended. Once the receiver has understood the message clearly, feedback ends the communication process.
Feedback is given by the receiver to the sender through the form of acknowledgement or short response. This final step is important because the sender then understands the effectiveness of the message.
