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Write a note on the four styles of communication.

Once we have defined our objective, we will choose the appropriate

communication style. Now we are going to have a little introduction of the styles
of communication. In communication style doesn’t means fashion regarding
clothes or haircut etc. But here we will go through the styles used in
communication. There are four main styles used in communication. Which are
tell, sell, confer and join. These types are different in their nature as they vary
from 95% participation to 5% participation in the communication. So all these four
type of communication have their own significance in communication.

Significance:
The all four types of communication have their own significance at their
end. If we have to communicate upward to our leadership the communicate
presents its “tell” style to be used in our communication. This is very effective for
the communication as if we know all about the matter to be discussed with our
boss and leader we can use this style. This style has the significance in the way
that in the tell style we must have to carry all the information to be delivered but
in this style we include the audience’s experiences or acts and then we collect all
the information because sometimes we don’t have all information all the time.
Sometimes we have to get information from some source so by the help of
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audience’s participation we’ll somehow get much information. In this way we can
make our communication more effective as we know the audience’s point of view
about that topic and there would be very minor chances of any communicational
barrier among us and the communicator.

We have still two types of communication in hand the “confer” and the “join”. In
confer style communication we interact with the audience and gather their
opinions. So that the report formed
would be according to their opinions while the last and more effective way of
communication is join. This style provides newly created and discovered ideas
from the audience as we spend less time in telling to the audience we discuss,
share information with the audience which provides the best way of report writing
a well.
Hence all the styles of communication have their own significance and
plays an important role in communication. Now we will discuss all of these types
in detail.

• TELL:
This is the style of communication in which we have the full knowledge about the
objective so that we could transfer it to the audience effectively. In this style,
basically a major part of the communication is done by the communicator. As the
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communicator speaks 90-95% and 5-10% is the audience’s participation. This

style is generally used in the report writing to one’s higher authority or for delivery
of a lecture or for any kind of presentation. So in all cases of lecturer or presenter
or the employee, they all must have enough knowledge to transfer to the
audience or students. So that their communication would become successful.

Example:
Let’s take an example of an Army officer who is teaching the war strategies to his
student officers. So he must have enough knowledge about the war strategies
that he could be able to clear the concept of these strategies to the other officers
effectively because the trainees doesn’t have any experience with the war
strategy so they cannot share their experience or ideas, the only thing they can
do is to ask questions about the subject which usually takes the 5-10% of
communication so the teacher must have enough knowledge about the subject.

• SELL:
The second style of communication is the sell style. In this style of
communication we have to try to make our audience to respond different. We
know the answer but we want to know their answer in their own style. In this style
the communicator speaks to 60-70% while the participation of the audience is 30-
40%. The achievement of the goal in this style depends upon our selling skill.
How much we convince our audience to agree with us. Or in other words it’s our
convincing power. This style doesn’t make the audience to learn but also to
change their actions according to our communication.
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Example:
Let say an officer of planning and development section of a Department wants to
launch a new project at a site. He will first prepare a PC-1 and after the approval
of the Head of department, the PC-1 would be sent to the Planning Commission
along with the member of the board from that department. Now the officer will
deliver the presentation regarding his proposal, mentioning all the objectives of
that project and proves that, this project will go in the favor of the Government
and the public aswell. Here his convincing power will effect his communication if
he succeeds to sell his ideas he will get his project approved by the Commission
so now the planning Commission will approve the project PC-1 in respect of his
presentation. This was an effective example of sell style of communication.

• CONFER:
The third style of communication is to confer. This style is reverse to the previous
styles of the communication. In such case the communicator does not have any
knowledge about the answers of the objective here he needs to acquire answers
from the audience. In this style the participation of the communicator is 30-40%
and the audience’s participation is 60-70% as the communicator has to depend
upon the audience point of view.
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Example:
A common example to confer is the gathering of a social group where some of
the members of that group are working for the betterment of a specific society
And there is a monthly or weekly meeting of that group to exchange their ideas
and experiences gained from that society. The members are the communicators
and the audience aswell and gain the answers of their desired questions about
that society from one another’s ideas and experiences. Such type of meeting is
usually called “Conference” or “Workshop” where different ideas and experiences
are exchanged. Communicator will now asks the members about there
experiences and ideas about that society in that way so that he would get
enough knowledge regarding his desired objective.

• JOIN:
The last and the most effective and creative style of the communication is to join.
In this style the communicator is totally unaware of the answers that he has to
totally depend upon people’s opinion. But it is a very creative style of
communication. In this style, communicator do not have to speak that his
participation gets limited to 5-10% he just have to listen to the ideas and opinions
of his surroundings. There is a great advantage to the communicator in this style
in the way that he gathers a lot of information from his surroundings related to his
objective.
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Example:
Take an example of a student of PhD, who
has given the task to research on the
relevant topic. Now he dun have that much
knowledge or he do not have any
knowledge about the given topic, he would
be given a long span of time to be done
with his research so that he could gather
enough information about the research
topic. So the student would start research
on his task and would go into the field and
try to get information about the objective,
he would concern each and every source from where could he get the
information and collects the information about the subject. After researching he
has a lot of information that he could create his own theory on that objective
which shows, how effective and creative this style of communication is.