1.3 Online communication skills

2 Communicating with colleagues and peers

2.1 The basic communication model

The main reason for speaking or writing is to communicate with other people. This consists of giving them a written or spoken message they can understand and respond to. As illustrated in Figure 2, communication takes place when a sender, in this case a speaker or a writer, sends a message to a receiver, in this case a listener or a reader. The receiver often responds to the sender by speaking or in writing.

The key feature of this process we will look at first is the concept of feedback. As we will see, this is a vital tool for developing your skills when you are communicating with colleagues and peers on a one-to-one basis.