You sent the email. You explained the requirement. Everyone nodded in the meeting. And yet, two weeks later, people have interpreted the message differently.
Communication models aren’t just academic diagrams: they give project managers different lenses for diagnosing why communication isn’t landing. And given that project communication is a huge part of most people’s jobs, it’s worth understanding a bit about it.
What are communication models?
Models of communication are ways of understanding how communication flows between individuals and groups. There are lots of ways to improve project communication, and understanding some of the theory really helps.
Below, you’ll learn about these theories of communications:
- Shannon-Weaver
- SMCR (Berlo)
- Lasswell
- Schramm.
How can communication models help?
So how do we take communication theory and make it practical for projects? The table below shows where you can take a model and apply it to a problem at work.
| Situation | Useful lens |
| Your message isn’t getting through | Shannon-Weaver |
| You’re deciding how to communicate | Berlo SMCR |
| You need someone to take action | Lasswell |
| You’re not sure they’ve understood | Schramm |
1. Shannon-Weaver
The Shannon-Weaver model is actually taught on Project Management Professional (PMP) training courses.
Most useful for: Understanding what is getting in the way of the message.
This model looks at the communication process. There is an information source (person) that is translated by the transmitter (email/phone etc) which the receiver receives and then decodes at their end. The process can get interrupted by noise (disruptions in the process e.g. poor signal, language barrier etc).
It’s a linear communication model works well for interpersonal (one-to-one) communication as it’s clear to see the application where the information source is a person and the receiver is another person.
However, it also works in groups, for example in a town hall meeting or where one person is emailing a group – in this group or mass communication situations you would expect there to be more noise. And with communicating to customers, even more.
Dealing with noise in communication
Project communication has plenty of noise.
Noise isn’t just a bad Teams connection. It can be jargon, assumptions, competing messages, cultural context, distractions or simply giving someone too much information at once.
There are four types of noise in communication:
- Physical and environmental noise e.g. a bad connection, crosstalk or background noise, gatekeepers who change or dilute the message (on purpose or accidentally)
- Physiological noise e.g. being hungry, tired or ill so you don’t focus on what is being said or, as the speaker, presenting your message clearly
- Psychological noise e.g. being angry, stressed or holding opinions that mean you don’t absorb or present information clearly
- Semantic noise e.g. lack of shared context, inability to access paraverbal and non-verbal messages e.g. people with their cameras turned off
We have to choose the right method to transmit to meet the needs of the recipient and do our best to avoid noise. For example, not making calls in a noisy environment (literal noise) or turning on automated captions (to reduce issues with language barriers).
So much of my communication is computer-mediated these days so noise has to be factored in. Shannon-Weaver is the only model that specifically mentions noise, although the others talk about the message being influenced by various factors, which would cover the disruption and interpretation of the content.
I hold most of my regular mentoring sessions on MS Teams, and it’s not as good as face-to-face for feeling like you truly understand what someone is saying because interpreting body language is harder. It’s also much easier to get distracted and get away with it. That’s noise.
2. SMCR (Berlo)
Berlo’s model is specifically called out in the Praxis Framework for projects, programmes and portfolios. It’s a transactional model (i.e. considers communication as a two-way process) and has four components.
The sender encodes the message which is passed through a channel and decoded by the receiver.
SMCR asks you to consider four things: who is communicating, what they’re saying, how they’re communicating it, and who is receiving it. Each can affect how the message is interpreted.
- S: Source: Influenced by communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, social norms and systems, impact of culture on comms
- M: Message: Influenced by the content and elements of the message, treatment of the subject, structure and code.
- C: Channel: influenced by delivery mechanisms e.g. hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting.
- R: Receiver: influenced by the same as the source.
Most useful for: Am I choosing the right message and channel for this person?
Different channels will be useful in different ways, and you are encoding and decoding messages all the time as a project leader.
How to use SMCR
SMCR prompts us to consider how the social and communication skills of the person passing the message influence how it is received, and that we should take those same skills into consideration when looking at how someone may receive the message. For example, if they have a different attitude to the topic to us, they may interpret the content of the message differently. Most of what I do relies on sight and hearing, I don’t often do any mentoring or training where other senses are used to pass along information.
Read next: How to choose the right communication channel for your audience.
I now work with a mainly native British team or people who have been in the UK a long time, but I used to work with a much more diverse team with members from across Europe. We had to make sure communication avoided colloquialism and was paced appropriately for those who had English as an additional language.
Project Management Rebels meets once a month and I sometimes do training in that, or run webinars for project managers. This is group communication, and I do try to take preferences into consideration but we are limited by the tech available.
I try to make these sessions interactive with lots of case studies and examples, asking and answering questions to keep people engaged and to ensure I’m using examples that are relevant to the audience so social norms, organisational systems and cultures are things they can relate to, which reduces the barrier to understanding.
3. Lasswell
Lasswell’s model has been around since the 1940s and the premise is that effective communication has to have an effect. It is based on 4 parts: the speaker, the subject, the channel and the person receiving the communication. If these are in place, the final question is ‘what’s the effect?’
It’s still a linear transmission model that doesn’t include the feedback loop to see if people actually do what you want them to, but that doesn’t stop you including that step.
Most useful for: What do I actually want people to do as a result?
Before you communicate, ask: “What do I want to happen?”
For example:
- Stakeholder update – maintain confidence
- Risk or issue escalation – secure a decision
- Team message – change behaviour
- Project board paper – obtain approval
- Lessons learned – change future practice
Honestly, this model feels very basic and very much predicated on communication being one-to-one which is rarely the case for project managers. Perhaps that was the case at the time, but I doubt it: there has always been a need to communicate to team members in groups, even in the 1940s, so that is a limitation of the model.
We do a lot of email and text-based communication, and we need to be able to communicate clearly in writing. Those written messages tend to be used for groups, so the effect required needs to be taken into account. If you want people to take an action, you have to be really specific.
Modern, office-based communication generally tells you the effect they want, if it’s directional or task based information. We won’t share information and hope that there is an effect. It will be spelled out: “please reply by Friday” etc.
4. Schramm
Schramm’s model covers the source, the message, the destination. It’s considered an interactive model as the comms is circular as feedback is built in. It was developed into the Osgood-Schramm model later.
The premise is that there must be some understanding or something in common (the ‘field of experience’) for the communication to work effectively.
In other words, communication isn’t successful because you sent the message. It’s successful when you and the recipient have created enough shared meaning to act on it.
For example:
- Project manager says, “The project is Amber” – does everyone know what Amber means?
- Finance says, “Forecast variance” – does the delivery team understand the implication?
- Technical team says, “API dependency” – does the sponsor understand the consequence?
- Project manager says, “We need comms for stakeholder engagement” – does everyone agree what that actually means?
In project management we have so much jargon it’s easy to see how lack of common professional background makes it harder to make messages land appropriately.
Most useful for: How do I know they’ve understood me?
How is Schramm different from Shannon-Weaver?
Schramm’s premise is different to Shannon-Weaver (and was published afterwards, building on their work) because the recipient of the communication is not passive, but actively engaged by providing a feedback loop.
Shannon-Weaver is about transmitting info – it’s very one-way.
Schramm has a feedback loop built in. Communication is a continuous loop. The sender encodes the message based on their field of experience, transmits it via whatever channel they choose, and then the receiver decodes it, providing feedback.
Disadvantages of Schramm
This model is limited by having a single sender and recipient, so it’s not so easy to apply to group communication. It can be hard to get feedback on a group basis like public speaking, or where feedback is delayed. The model works best for one-to-one, face-to-face comms.
It ignores any power imbalance and internal politics (although I suppose we could include those in the ‘noise’), and that is frequently the case for project stakeholders and change management comms. Here, the issue is that it can be hard to provide honest feedback to people in power.
Also, Schramm expects there to be turn-taking in conversation, which is often the case in face-to-face discussions, but it doesn’t work like that with online comms. I can be having a Teams conversation with one person, getting info from another, do a quick call with someone else and then email the stakeholder the answer, so comms strands can be multi-overlapping on the same topic.
Communication models in project management: a practical example
Let’s take one scenario and run it through all four models: a project manager needs stakeholders to understand that a project milestone is at risk.
Shannon-Weaver: What noise could distort the message? The action for you is to make sure that you understand how best to land this message with the stakeholders, so you minimize the noise.
Berlo: Is the sender credible? Is the message appropriate? Is the channel right? Does the stakeholder have the knowledge to interpret it? The action for you is to address all of those so the message has the best chance of landing.
Lasswell: What do you want the stakeholder to do? The action for you is to think this through beforehand and decide on the collaboration expected. Do they need to tell their teams about the risk? Do they need to make a decision? Then present that clearly.
Schramm: How will you know they’ve understood and agreed with your interpretation? The action for you is to consider how you’ll get feedback. Will it be because they’ve taken the action you needed, or through the questions they ask?
Remember, there is no single right answer here. How you communicate day-to-day is going to be different from how you communicate in a crisis, or in other scenarios.
Case study
Recently, I supported a colleague to complete his time tracking for the first time. He joined last month and had not gone through the process. He messaged me and I rang him back to take him through the system. Using screensharing, I displayed the time tracking files and showed him what to do, using examples from past months to illustrate the kind of thing that is expected.
This was effective because showing him the tool and what people had completed in the past is a very tangible way to quickly understand what to do. He could take screenshots and I got immediate feedback. It was a more useful way of communicating than if I had, for example, called his landline phone and tried to explain it to him with no visuals.
Your next steps
You don’t have to choose one model, and in fact, I wouldn’t. They all have their uses, and you can see from the case study above that choosing the right channel, minimizing noise, asking for and expecting feedback, and being clear about what you need the recipient to do are all parts of making sure communication is effective. You can build all of this into your project communication management approach.
You also don’t have to memorize the models. Instead, try to remember the questions that each model prompts:
- Shannon-Weaver: What’s getting in the way?
- Berlo: Am I communicating appropriately for this person?
- Lasswell: What do I want to happen?
- Schramm: How do I know they’ve understood?
Pop some notes in your communications plan template so you don’t have to keep looking this stuff up.
The important point is that sending a message isn’t the same as communicating effectively. Your email can be beautifully written and still fail. Your presentation can contain all the right information and still leave people confused. Your stakeholder meeting can end with everyone nodding and still result in four different interpretations of what was agreed.
Before your next important project communication, pause and think about the four questions above. Then consider what you need to do differently: remove some noise, change the channel, make the required action clearer, or create a way to check understanding.
Good project communication isn’t about communicating more, although that sometimes helps too! It’s about making sure the right message reaches the right people, in a way they can understand and act on.
