Communication Objectives

Last update: 21 August 2002

Although the person who creates and delivers a message may not always recognize it, every message has a purpose or objective. The sender intends—whether consciously or unconsciously—to accomplish something by communicating. Sometimes the primary purpose is simply to enjoy another person’s company and the conversation. In business contexts, however, messages typically have a more definite objective. This is, in fact, one of the principal differences between casual conversation and business and managerial communication.

The Meaning of a Message Is the Response it Elicits

Each of us is naturally inclined to believe that our messages communicate what we think we communicate. Unfortunately, this is not the case. When we send a message to another person—whether we do so face-to-face, over the phone, or in writing—the message means what he or she thinks it means. For this reason, we will become better communicators to the degree that we can construct messages that elicit the response we desire from others.

To be able to do so, we first need the ability to recognize what effect our message actually has on another. Then, if the response is not what we had hoped for, we need the flexibility to change our message in a way that will increase our chances of obtaining the desired result. Although people are infinitely varied in individual traits, they have enough in common so that we can predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy how they will respond to the kinds of messages we usually need to prepare and deliver in a business context.

Sensory Acuity

Rapport (see Establishing Rapport) facilitates communication. Of course, once you have achieved rapport, you need to know what to do with it and how to maintain it if you are to achieve your communication objectives. In face-to face communication, you also need the sensory acuity to recognize whether you are gaining rapport or losing it and whether your communication is bringing you closer to achieving your objective.

Sensory acuity requires that you attend to the external environment. In face-to-face communication, that means paying attention to others, to what they are actually saying (the language being used), to how they are saying it (rate of speech, tone of voice, and stressed words), and to whether their nonverbal messages support or contradict the verbal messages. Paying attention to the external is more difficult than it would seem. In conversations, most people attend more to what they want to say next than they do to what the other person is actually saying. Have you ever missed an important piece of the conversation because you were busy planning what you were going to say next?

Even though the nonverbal aspects of a message (including paralanguage) often convey most of the meaning, people often fail to notice what should be an obvious message. Have you ever heard someone say that something was true while shaking his or her head “no”? How did you respond to the negative head shake?

Sensory acuity also plays a role in telephone conversations and in written communication. Because most telephones do not yet convey visual images, communicators need to pay close attention to what and how something is said. Even in written communication, the language used may convey more—or less—than the writer intended.

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~bowman/comobj.html