The World of Communication

The World of Communication

If two otherwise equally qualified individuals compete for the same senior position in an organization, most of the time the one with better communications skills gets the job. Information and the ability to convey it is power.

But it is not just speech. Communication takes place in many forms - audio, visual, sensual - through sounds, images, and physical impulses. It consists of talking, listening, looking, touching, tasting, feeling, smelling, acting and much more.

It can involve sending messages through photographs, posters, books, newspapers, magazines, television, radio, recorded sound, video tape, computers, fax machines, and other forms of electronic telecommunication.

Everything you do and everything around you communicates messages. There are unlimited ways for you to organize ideas and communicate them to others.

Today we are experiencing an information and communications explosion. Years ago it seemed possible to give full attention to just about all the important ideas we heard in any given day. There were only a few television stations to choose from and only a handful of monthly news publications, popular magazines and newly published books in any given week.

Today, our choices are unlimited. There are more books and magazines to read, movies and television programs to watch, and speeches and lectures to listen to than we can possibly digest in a single lifetime.

Look in any bookstore, library, video outlet, or at the number of different courses available in any university. We are so swamped with “communications opportunities” that we cannot absorb all of the messages being conveyed.

There is so much communication noise going on in our world that it is very difficult to decide what we should pay attention to. We must make such choices quickly to keep up with the flow of data to which we are exposed. To cope, we tend to filter out most attempts to communicate with us and give our attention first to those ideas which “grab” us most, like the ones that are creatively conveyed to hold our interest.

Because of today’s information explosion, we must learn to compete with all of the other messages out there. It is critical that we communicate as quickly and effectively as we can. The challenge in today’s world is to capture other people’s attention – to get them to turn their concentration away from others and focus on us and our ideas.

The above is an excerpt from the soon to be revised and republished - "Secrets of Power Presentations".