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What Is Communication?

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Submitted By lisawestmoreland
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What is communication? According to The Webster Dictionary communication means: “The act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to express or exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., to someone else” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communication).

Personally, I think that communication is more than just words. One can also communicate with body language such as: eyes movements, arm and leg placements, and even just plain old facial expressions. Kirk Duncan, President of 3KeyElements, wrote in his training manual, ‘Master Your Influence’*, that “Communication is: 57% Gestures, 36% Tone, 7% Words”. He also observed that “In the first 4 seconds of conversation, people will make judgement about you…”. Basically, people evaluate your trustworthiness in the first 4 seconds of interacting with you.

Communication isn’t just for humans, animals do it as well. For example, My dog communicates in three ways. He either barks, puts his ears in different places (pulled forward means curious, pulled back means happiness, etc.), or his eyes express how he feels. Babies also have to use other means than words to explain how they feel whether its crying, cooing, being calm, smiling, etc.

Emotions are a great way to communicate without speaking. If you see someone smiling chances are that you don’t need to ask if they are happy. The smile on his/her face is a very good indicator of what they wish to communicate with the world. As a normal rule, you wouldn’t walk up to that person and ask them why they were sad. That would be silly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” A good example of this is something I witness with my younger sister. My sister, Elena, says she wants to graduate from high school but then refuses to do her homework or even go to class. Her behavior

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