„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

account the many changes that occur while people communicate and how meaning is
created between the participants. Recognizing this, many communication scholars have
used the term “transaction” (Barnlund, 1970; DeVito, 1994; Kreps, 1990; Sereno &
Bodaken, 1975; Stewart, 1986; Verderber, 1993; Watzlawick, 1978; Watzlawick,
Beavin, & Jackson, 1967; Wilmot, 1987).
According to Prizant and Wetherby (1990, p. 5), “in the transactional model,
developmental outcomes at any point in time are seen as a result of the dynamic
interrelationships” between the parties and the environment that may influence both
parties. Viewing the training process as transactional allows the trainer to see several
important factors that affect what is going on.
In the transactional framework, communication has numerous components. An
understanding of all the components is needed to provide a basis for the design of
training strategies. The remainder of this paper is devoted to describing the transactional
nature of the communication process and to providing an understanding of the way
trainers behave toward clients and vice versa. Major components of communication as a
transaction—such as system, process, perception, meaning, fault/blame, and
negotiation—are discussed.
COMPONENTS OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PROCESS
System
Rather than viewing communication as a message injected into a passive recipient or a
billiard-ball, cause-and-effect model, proponents of the transactional model assert that a
communication event is a system. A systemic view of communication acknowledges not
just the importance, but the constant awareness, of key factors such as interdependence
and environment.
The premise that individual behavior is a part of a system, rather than a
characteristic of the individual, provides an expanded view of the training process. This
expansion recognizes the influence of different levels of reciprocal effects. The trainee is
seen as one system immersed in and inseparable from a “larger ecological framework of
systems” (Simeonsson & Bailey, 1990, p. 430).
Holding this view of communication acknowledges that it is impossible to separate
the client, the trainer, the setting, the community, and the organizations from which the
trainee and the trainer come. These components do not act in isolation, but influence one
another in a complex and reciprocal fashion. A change in one element of the
communication event “may completely change the event” (Cronkhite, 1976, p. 53). All
elements are interdependent, and one cannot be considered without considering the
others. As Sereno and Bodaken (1975, p. 8) state, “to deal with any one element of
communication—say merely to analyze the verbal message—to the exclusion of all the
others falsifies the true picture of communication as a continuous interchange.”
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer ❚❘ 145