Communications elements by Isnaldo Piñero Isnaldo Piñero magazine | Page 3

include letters, memorandums, purchase orders, invoices, newspaper and magazine articles,
blogs, e-mail, text messages, tweets, and so forth.
Receiver
As a receiver you listen, see, touch, smell, and/or taste to receive a message. Your audience “sizes
you up,” much as you might check them out long before you take the stage or open your mouth.
The nonverbal responses of your listeners can serve as clues on how to adjust your opening. By
imagining yourself in their place, you anticipate what you would look for if you were them. Just as
a quarterback plans where the receiver will be in order to place the ball correctly, you too can
recognize the interaction between source and receiver in a business communication context. All of
this happens at the same time, illustrating why and how communication is always changing.
Feedback
When you respond to the source, intentionally or unintentionally, you are giving feedback.
Feedback is composed of messages the receiver sends back to the source. Verbal or nonverbal, all
these feedback signals allow the source to see how well, how accurately (or how poorly and
inaccurately) the message was received. Feedback also provides an opportunity for the receiver or
audience to ask for clarification, to agree or disagree, or to indicate that the source could make
the message more interesting. As the amount of feedback increases, the accuracy of
communication also increases.
For example, suppose you are a sales manager participating in a conference call with four sales
reps. As the source, you want to tell the reps to take advantage of the fact that it is World Series
season to close sales on baseball-related sports gear. You state your message, but you hear no
replies from your listeners. You might assume that this means they understood and agreed with
you, but later in the month you might be disappointed to find that very few sales were made. If
you followed up your message with a request for feedback (“Does this make sense? Do any of you
have any questions?”) you might have an opportunity to clarify your message, and to find out
whether any of the sales reps believed your suggestion would not work with their customers.
Environment
The environment can include the tables, chairs, lighting, and sound equipment that are in the
room. The room itself is an example of the environment. The environment can also include factors
like formal dress, that may indicate whether a discussion is open and caring or more professional
and formal. People may be more likely to have an intimate conversation when they are physically
close to each other, and less likely when they can only see each other from across the room. In
that case, they may text each other, itself an intimate form of communication. The choice to text is