Effective Communication Skills

Practical and Written Assessment Reflection Essay

Communication is the cornerstone of coordinating and sustaining organizations and professional life. It is the organizing element in organizational life. Communication in a workplace is regarded as a cumbersome process, which has significant influence on personal and organizational performance. I will demonstrate how the understanding of communication process-verbal, non-verbal and listening has helped me to develop interpersonal communication skills in order to communicate in Team and Group: Process Communication. Working in a team is very challenging but can be coordinated with an effective communication strategies which will include special topics in professional communications: Power, persuasion, influence, logic and argument. This reflection will describe the communication incidents that I have experienced in my workplace. Then I will analysis the understanding of the various aspects mentioned above and its consequences linking to my real life experiences. In other words, this reflection will be an insight to understand myself, identify my weakness and the theories I have learnt will be a tool for my continuous professional development. Undertaking the course BUSN20017: Effective Business Communication has helped me to understand that even minor communication in the workplace has great impact on a person’s career progress.

Communication is the process of sharing of meanings by means of verbal or non-verbal messages. According to Brink and Costigan (2015, p. 892-895), oral communication is most important competency or skill for a manager to have a successful impression. I understood that I have great capabilities to listen but I am weak at presenting and conversing. This is one of the passive strategies that I have been following. According to Gregory (2013, p. 116-122), these particular weaknesses can be improved by questioning others and active involvement of conversation. Roebuck et al. (2015, p. 93-120), states that there is high influence of home country, gender and position on listening. According to my experience, I did not find myself comfortable when communicating with my supervisor as she is female but I got along with my manager who is male. I am more exposed with my manager because he uses a proper mode of communication.

This approach of my manager has helped me to understand the importance of communication in building a relationship. This has further influenced me to apply an effective communication means in a team consequently developing, my interpersonal communication skills. For example: interpersonal communication refers to communication in situations where people can interact directly, such as one-to-one and in a small group or team. It is an art to practice those communication skills, as they are very important in relation building, uniting every single individual within specific framework and directing towards a common goal. It can be improved by active interaction and practicing communication skills between the members.

 Communication skills are developed and enhanced depending upon the degree of message sending and receiving. The more there is a flow of giving and taking the more it increases the interaction and feedback is perceived (Fig 1: Communication Model). This phenomenon helps me to identify myself and developed interpersonal communication skill. According to DeKay (2012, p. 449-452), most of the managers and business professionals maintain the “interpersonal communication”. This learning has developed a skill to identify the real needs of clients and other staffs with an extended ability to work in a team. It has also helped me to handle conflicts and manage stress (work-life balance). According to Hynes (2012, p. 466-475), interpersonal communication is one of the important training that need to be provided for the employee engagement to learn behaviours. An effective team can be developed by providing the trainings like giving and receiving criticism, dealing with co-workers, developing channel from “buddy to boss”, conducting performance review, dealing offensive team members, working with disabled (DeKay, 2012, p. 449-452). According to research conducted by Crouch, et al. (2013, p. 892-895) in one of the organization, interpersonal communication was considered to be an important aspect for a positive work environment.  However, in one of my past experience I was much more affected by my supervisor aggressive communication behavior, which had damaged my self-concept and escalated my aggression. Verbal aggression of a supervisor has a great influence on job satisfaction and commitment (Madlock & Dillow, 2012, p. 593-607) as this is an assault on another’s self-concept. This was due to the fact that I had incompetency argumentative skill. In addition, I find that my behaviour closely resembles with assertive behaviour as I express my feelings frankly, I ask questions, stand up for my rights and can have strong arguments to support my beliefs. This all understanding helped me to understand the importance of a team and team performance. It is very important to respect each other’s opinions and views. To get along with the team members for an effective organizational performance it is very important to have a strong communication bond between the staffs in the hierarchy. It is very essential to deliver the exact expectation of the organization into a team performance, which is followed by organizational performance and driven by communication.

Communication plays an important role in a team and group building. Most of the successful organization, which has continuously improved their performance and overall outcome, has seemed to practice an effective communication within the organization. I learned that a strong and dedicated team is generated because of the significant communication strategies, channels and understanding among the staffs.  Different pattern are followed within an organization to circulate the information from one sector to another like, all channel network, Chain Network and Wheel Network (Summers & Smith, 2006). In brief, communication can be passed in two forms i.e. formal and informal in order to circulate the information within. Formal mode of communication follows some guidelines and disciplines, articulated with respect and practiced professionally. Example could be professional meetings. The pre-meeting talk is very important to motivate the members personally. According to Allen, Lehmann-Willenbrock & Landowski (2014, p. 1064-1081), pre-meeting talk has a significant impact on the meeting effectiveness. In one of my past experience, my supervisor arranged for a pre-presentation talk. We were assigned a project to do and have to present in front of the senior lecturer. Pre-presentation helped me to prepare and understand what the content was. That also helped me to overcome the fear of public speaking. This experience was crucial to understand the importance and benefits of pre-meeting talk, side conversation that has beneficial effects for the meeting outcomes. Informal communication also has great importance in understanding each other in a team. Unlike formal, it is another way of communication, which generates comparatively flexible environment, as it mandatorily does not follow any guidelines. This is most common mode of communication practiced within family or friend circle. This has helped me to better understand my co-workers in a comfortable way. This aspect of communication develops an environment where each team member can get along with each other. The feeling of respect, self-assessment, mutual understanding builds a-team and maximizes performance. This builds a hospitable environment that motivates member to come up with creativeness, innovation and improve their potential. Team performance is significantly increased due to the strong bond between the members as they are directed towards a goal of mutual understanding. This could be all because of the communication strategies and channels followed with mutual respect. However, a poor communication generates a chaotic working environment where every member is demotivated towards a common goal. I used to have misunderstanding with my supervisor, as the task assigned by her was not loud and clear. She never used to follow any communication model and keeps forgetting what she said and due to my passive strategy, I never used to raise questions, which further increased our misunderstanding. This Chapter helped me to understand that communication is the best alternative to get along with the members. Poor communication cultivates team conflict among the team members. Alaceva & Rusu (2015, p. 715-728), highlights that low understanding of counterpart’s environment is because of poor communication and unclear specifications, limited cooperation and lack of mutual commitment. This could be because of personal issues like attitudes, designation, and perception and also could be because of unclear goals, cultural diversity and various unrevealed factors that arise from poor communication. In my workplace there are various staffs from different cultural background. To help me better get along, knowing the values, ethics and beliefs of their respective culture has helped me to strengthen my personality. However, incase of misunderstanding and conflict, only an effective communication can resolve that. This has influenced me to communicate effectively revealing the fact that the information should be loud, clear, unbiased and with a common goal perspective. In addition, working in a team it is very important to addresses the member’s talent, self-respect, potential and duties and responsibilities. This all experience reveals that I have some leadership skills and further more I have also learned that to be a leader or manager it is very important to persuade the members with unique influencing skills.

As a leader or manager it is very important to have an influencing and persuasive behaviour to lead a team. As explained in paragraph three, the formal training or meeting that are conducted with pre-meeting schedules is more effective if the trainer just does not instruct the attendees. Instead the trainer must persuade the attendees by informing; training would be more helpful to enhance and reinforce their potential and more generally applies to their everyday work activities (Dwyer, 2016). In order to deliver a persuasive message it is fundamental to have an ability of developing and understanding argumentation. Argumentation is the action or process of reasoning systematically in support of an idea, action or theory that helps to persuade audience (Tippett, 2009, p. 17-25).

According to Aristotle, rhetoric is to persuade others through argument by appealing their emotions, in order to sway their thinking. This has three elements or triad: ethos (logical reason, proof), pathos (emotional values), and logos (credibility, trust). The Rhetorical Triangle is represented by an equilateral triangle, which means each element should be balanced within a speech delivered to persuade others. I did not consider the logical reasoning and emotions of my supervisor and poor communication was the main barrier in getting along with her. I did not feel comfortable to communicate with her because my manager had higher degree of persuasion on me rather than her. I was more influenced by my manager than her. This resulted into the lack of trust with the supervisor and conflicts were generated. This chapter helped me to improve this behavior by taking an active part in logical arguments, create persuasive and influential messages. As well as this helped me to self-assess my influencing capacity in order to lead a team.

To conclude, undertaking this course has been an effective improvement that has added value in my career progress. To develop a dedicated and result oriented team, techniques of effective communication should be effectively practiced. Listening to what is being delivered, restating that with clarification and reflection has helped me to stay focused. This in other hand helped me to share perception and eliminate the silence from the group, which makes the communication mode more comfortable and productive. In addition, this generates a humor and fun doing assigned job and everyone is motivated to come up with suggestions and feedback. Finally this develops a strong channel of communication between the members that make the process smooth.  And maximizes the active involvement of members and forms an effective team due to an effective communication. I learned that even a minor communication has a great impact in career progress and this statement has helped me to understand the communication process that motivated me to develop interpersonal communication skills in order to communicate in team and group. This has further developed my professional communications: Power, persuasion, influence, logic and argument. Finally, communication competence is a life-long learning project. Collectively, all the experience perceived in those real life experiences and the knowledge gained from various theories and strategies has helped me to improve my communication skills. Therefore, improving communication skills and using communication strategies are key points of success.

Reference

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