In business, as in life, communication is a key element of success. Effective communication skills play a huge role in personal and professional growth. Whether you are "sending" or "receiving" messages in a communication channel, you have to be aware of the "noise" that surrounds you (Organizational Behavior, 2002). Encoding and decoding success depends on the ability of the participants to ignore, incorporate, or overcome the noise.
In a recent business meeting, the leader lost control of the meeting when several small groups began having private conversations around the table. The leader (sender) kept talking louder and louder, trying to overcome the noise (real noise as well as the rhetorical noise of the text) generated by the sub-meetings in order to convey his information to the few of us (receivers) that were still listening. Rather than waiting, while glaring pointedly at the offenders, or even speaking to one member of each of the offending sub-groups requesting their attention, he let them continue to disrupt his meeting. He was not effective in delivering the information to the group. Nothing was resolved, and he was left looking powerless and out of control. This is an example of a poor communicator.
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I was able to be a successful sender recently using email. I needed an installation disk for a piece of popular software. I needed it fast, and I knew that I would need to get the message to as many people as possible in a very short period. I sent out a concise request to an all inclusive email group, requesting that anyone with the software contact me within the hour. I had the software in my hand within minutes. I then sent out an acknowledging email in order to avoid inundation by further responses. It was time effective, inexpensive and I got exactly what I needed. This is an example of effective communication.
In the past, email played a much smaller role in business.