The functions of communication are coordination, the transmission of information, and sharing emotions. These are some of the fundamental elements that make organizations operate. But how exactly does this happen? Well, communication is comprised of eight basic components. Typically, the sender has a message for the receiver. The message is always delivered through a channel. A channel could be a text message, an email, a face-to-face meeting, and so on. Leaders will need to be cognizant to match the channel with the goal of the message. For example, assigning a new project to a team may better be done in-person as opposed to a text message.

Here are a few tips for choosing the most appropriate channel. Use written communication when conveying facts and use verbal communication when conveying emotion and feeling.

When time is sparse, use verbal communication. And when the ideas need to become instilled in policies, be sure to use written communication.

Here's another way to look at channels. Channels have levels of information richness. In other words, face-to-face conversation provides nonverbal, verbal, and paralanguage information, while an email is only written information.

Now, unless you live in a vacuum, then messages will also be delivered within an environment and a context. This is where communication really becomes dynamic. The environment consists of the surroundings of the sender and the receiver. This can include your office or a meeting room, and even encompass psychological aspects such as informal versus professional. Other environmental considerations include stress levels and overall climate or mood of the receivers. Context is temporal in that it involves expectations, or even breaking expectations, over time.

For example, when you go to work, the context yields the expectation that employees will wear appropriate attire. If a coworker shows up in a swim suit, then he or she is out of context and your expectations are interrupted. A more realistic example is evident in cross-cultural communication; a phrase or expression in one culture may mean something else in another. That's because it's out of context.

Feedback is a message in itself. It occurs both intentionally and unintentionally, verbally and nonverbally, genuinely and deceptively. But at its very core, feedback offers a chance to ask for, or confirm, clarity in the original message.

Finally, interference is the eighth basic component of communication, and I’ll discuss that in the next post.