The wrong audience ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I once attended a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, of British Psychological Society.

Fortunate to have been presenting a paper there, I was nevertheless distracted by very large number of other presenters, many of whom were presenting papers that, on reading their paper's titles in Proceedings, looked really interesting.

With a couple of hours to spare before I was due to present, I picked what appeared to be an interesting presentation, and sauntered casually into lecture room.

So you can imagine my dismay when I found, about five minutes into presentation, that title was a 'trick' title, a play-on-words by author that no doubt struck him as funny and clever, but struck me as dastardly.

As Robert Cialdini would say, presenter was a 'smuggler' of influence. That is, he used a 'hot' topic of day to entice an audience in, only to then present to them something that had VERY little relevance to that 'hot' topic.

I was not alone (and not first) in walking out of lecture theatre and heading for a 'second choice' presentation (which, incidentally, I did thoroughly enjoy!)

I also remember a very large and cumbersome booklet being left on my desk overnight by a then employer. The booklet went to great lengths to inform me of latest company initiatives in a particular HR area. Whilst time and expense company went to to create and publish booklet was considerable, actual initiative itself affected perhaps less than a fifth of total employees in company. Even then, from talking to colleagues in that 'fifth' group, I doubted that more than a few of fifth would have been interested in it, too.

The company had its own intranet (it was one of pioneers in computing industry) before business really understood power and potential of internet publishing, so it could have just as easily and far more cheaply just emailed everyone with a link to specially-written pages on their intranet.

But these were days when it was IT department that controlled access to and publishing on intranet, not individual business groups.

At least these days HR Department could have published their own webpages on intranet and sent an email out to individually affected employees.

Presenting your message to wrong audience for your business communication is a complete waste of your time and money. Don't do it -- pick your audience then pick medium that will best find them.

A distracting environment ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There's nothing worse than trying to communicate your message to a group of people who cannot 'hear' you.

Whether their inability to 'hear' you is because of:

* your voice not being strong enough * too many others talking in room at same time * police and ambulance sirens outside venue * too many phone calls coming in to their office while they're trying to read your memo * interruptions while they try to read your report * incoming emails keep popping up while they are reading your web-based communication * their minds are full of other pressing matters * they are supposed to be somewhere else at that moment * their mobile phone keeps ringing, or vibrating if they've set it to 'silent' instead of switching it off * their internet connection is slow * their internet connection keeps dropping out * there are too many interesting people to look at * room's airconditioning is not working and room is hot and stuffy * room's heating is not working and room is cold and clammy

Well, there are of course a thousand possible distracting reasons why they cannot or will not attend to your business communication.

The point is to do whatever you can, whilst acknowledging that this might be next to nothing, to reduce number of distractions your chosen audience might be subjected to.

In closing... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The barriers to effective business communication are many, but with care and attention majority of them can be overcome.

The fewer barriers, greater chance that your business communication will be heard, understood and your MDA ('Most Desired Action' you wish them to take) will actually occur.

* Standing passively: Crossed arms, crossed legs... they signal just one thing—u—detachment, as if you really don't want to be there, listening to other person, but you have to. Passively standing kicks down building bricks of trust, over time reducing your career reputation to rubble.

* Avoiding eye contact: Whilst too much staring at someone can cause discomfort, so can too little. By not looking at your audience (of one of one thousand) in eye, you come across as nervous and insincere. A reasonable period of eye contact is between 4 and 7 seconds at a time, per person, especially when you are talking to them.

* Playing with your hands: Wringing your hands, or playing 'fig leaf' is a sure way of conveying insecurity about yourself or your message. And recently I was reminded by my Toastmasters club colleagues of a habit of mine that I need to break——twisting my wedding ring around my finger when I present. My colleagues found themselves focusing more on my ring-twiddling than my message.

* Speaking too softly: A habit that is a sure sign in eyes of others, that you are not confident about yourself, your message or your authority to deliver it. You come across as near-invisible, weak and insubstantial, as well as make yourself difficult to be heard by those who are hard of hearing. And as I get older, my hearing is definately getting worse—u—a legacy of spending years in front of PA stacks as a lighting manager for rock bands.

* Using qualifying words: This is quite possibly one of worst habits anyone could have. Absolutely nearly everyone qualifies their words, and most often effect is to dilute power and impact of your message. Seriously, using words such as "kind of", "sort of" and "maybe" make even smartest of us appear unsure.