Communicating To Be Heard/Communication

In my last post, I mentioned some of the reasons people are unable to listen. This time, let us look at the main distractors that keep our audience from listening. All of what I am about to say is quite obvious and most of us are aware of the points raised here. Despite this, we are all guilty of ignoring them for the most part.


The first thing to always bear in mind is, the fact that all of us are actually able to concentrate on any one thing for just a few seconds. It is thus absolutely essential for all communication to be so engaging that the audience’s attention is brought back again and again to whatever is written or is being said to them. To work towards this, we can begin by being aware of the things that can distract and in some cases eat into that few seconds’ window too.

Fillers are those repeated words and sounds we keep dotting our speech or text with. ‘Like’ and ‘You know’ are typical words used as fillers and sounds such as ‘um’ and ‘ah’ are frequently used by speakers too. For instance, someone says “ I ah would like request you to ah take up the ah presentation.” Redundancy is another problem, this is when someone writes something like: “ It was an interesting talk on a very interesting and relevant topic. The speaker related interesting anecdotes”. What the usage of fillers and redundancies do is dilute the importance of the point and may even indicate a lack of confidence in some cases. Repeated words or phrases can make the audience skip the accompanying words as they will assume that the point being made has already been covered; this is true of both oral and written communication.



Too many facial expressions and gestures very obviously draw the attention of the audience and eat into the message. Incessant flaying of the hands, constant adjusting of spectacles, rolling of the eyes can become something that grabs the total attention of the audience. This is not to say that no facial expression or gestures ought to be used; they are, in my opinion, essential to a well delivered oral message. 


Inappropriate words, jargon and unsuitable grammatical forms force the audience to focus on the correct form or sort out whatever confusion they cause. It is not uncommon to read something like: ‘Pls find attached’ and this is one of my many pet peeves. Firstly, if the person writing the message did not have time enough to type 2 ‘e’s and an ‘a’, it is not clear why she or he bothered to write at all; secondly, one can safely assume that the attachment is neither lost nor hidden so it does not need to be found.  In addition, poorly framed sentences or even mispronounced words may lead to undesirable or unfair labelling of the person delivering the message. Something as simple as pronouncing the word as ‘gowrment’ can make the discerning listener focus on the speakers possible background rather than what is being said.

It could be that the words used are good enough and that the language has no flaws, yet they are so inadequate in expressing the point that the audience is left a bit bewildered or responding in an unexpected manner. Let us imagine that an organisation has an important visitor and one of the personnel is asked by a superior to ‘look after’ the guest. The superior may have meant that the guest was to be accompanied everywhere and provided with all that she/he needs, the person in question may understand it to be merely looking into matters such as transport, meals and entertainment after the work is done.


Long messages, whether spoken or written, seldom captivate the audience. Their mind wanders off to unrelated matters or they keep thinking of how the person delivering a painfully long message needs to get to the point. A statement such as “Yesterday, being a Sunday was a holiday, and I went for a long ride on my bike. I was heading towards the lake when my tyre skidded on the gravel and I was thrown off the bike. The bike fell and I fell too. When I was lifting it, I slipped and the bike fell on me, my ankle came under the wheel and I have twisted it. This is why I cannot attend the meeting at 10 am this morning” is an example of such garrulity.  In the case of long written messages, readers often merely skim through them and are liable to miss important parts. Not many people read the terms and conditions section of anything they sign up for and that is a perfect example of long messages being skimmed over, even extremely important ones. Being so brief that the message becomes too esoteric is not a good idea either.


Oral messages with incorrect intonation, pauses and a pace that is unsuitable are distracting too. The audience is likely to either concentrate on these factors, struggle to comprehend the points or just give up and stop listening altogether. Written messages have a tone and the punctuation creates the pauses and thus care needs to be taken while writing too.


Another distractor, one we have limited control over, is outside factors. Physical factors such as noise, temperature and weather, ambience of the venue for oral communication and format of the message in written communication, unrelated matters that may be leading to a preoccupation and a mismatch of priorities.
Communicating in a manner that takes into account just the possibilities I have  mentioned will surely put one on the path to being effective.