Buckley (2003) identifies communication as essentially being about conveying a message to another, the process of communication is thus said to have three discrete elements: A message sender, a message and a message recipient. The importance of communication to an individual is immeasurable, effective communication allows for a person to succeed in many aspects of their life, whether it may be in regard to their career, their friendships or indeed relationships. Not only this, communication can allow an individual to shape their persona and how others view them. Hargie notes that the very essence of communication is the ability for a person to be able to form their own ideology and opinions thus developing themselves as an individual. As...show more content...
The whole idea of communication is to deliver a message to another party, there are many conventional ways to do this however a great deal of what we wish to communicate comes primarily from our non verbal communication.
Mehrabian describes non verbal communication as a collection of behavioural cues that we use to express feelings or opinions in a non linguistical way, such as: facial expressions, eye contact, limb movements and voice qualities.
Mehrabian later conducted some research into the subject of communication and he concluded that our overall communication is split as such: 55% Body language (or non verbal communication) 38% non verbal aspects of speech and 7% verbal content.
It is clear from this that as human beings we communicate more through our body language than we do through direct speech and such when we are delivering a verbal message any conflicting body language can disrupt the effectiveness of the message being delivered.
It is vitally important that when you are presenting to an audience that you can offer effective eye contact throughout to ensure that your message is being fully received and understood by your audience.
Kendon (1967) noted that offering eye contact during a communication had many useful and important purposes such as: being able to express emotive information effectively, maintaining engagement with your audience and observing the feedback that they offer. An old