Communication is humanities greatest accomplishment, however how we communicate can greatly affect the way we’re understood, and how we understand others. Communication is a learned ability with many skills, which are programmed into us (for better or worse) by our parents, friends and all that we have contact with. These skills can be defined as listening, assertion and conflict resolution skills, and with all of these skills being used appropriately, we can bring down the barriers to communication, and put an end to the frustration that comes from poor communication. Like most things in this life, if you put your mind to something and practice it, you will achieve what you set out to do. Such is the case in becoming more skilled in communication.
It is important to identify some of the communication spoilers so that we can avoid such major roadblocks in our relationships with others. It has been said that there are three types of communication spoilers; judging, sending solutions, and avoiding others concerns. There are many barriers that can fit into these categories, however the example of the “dirty dozen” is what is commonly known. They are: – criticising, name-calling, diagnosing, praising evaluatively, and ordering, threatening, moralising, excessive/inappropriate questioning, advising, diverting, logical argument and reassuring. While some of these responses are not always destructive to communication, when one or more of the persons communicating is under stress, the likelihood of these types of responses being harmful increases. If we are to improve our communication skills, it is necessary to learn when not to use such responses and to develop the self-control to know when we are using such things in a negative way.
The Term Paper on Communication Skills
... people and to understand what information others want to convey. Communication skills can be of many forms, including: • Gestures • Facial ... includes Attitude, kind of work, skill, interest, ability, leadership and accomplishment. 13) Response and reactions: Interviewer judges those ... qualities by your alertness and quickness of response. 14) Forces and drives: It is the ability ...
The most important thing in communicating is to be able to understand what is being said. It is one thing to be able to hear, but to actually listen takes more than just a pair of ears. The difference is when we are properly listening to a person, we are attending the conversation and not merely hearing the words that are spoken. Effective ‘attending’ skills can have a huge impact on your relationships, and they include – a posture of involvement, eye contact, appropriate body motion and to consider your environment as not to distract from the conversation. There are more skills, however, they can be grouped by the terms ‘following’ skills, and ‘reflecting’ skills. ‘Following’ skills include door opening questions such as “Something bad happen today? Would you like to talk about it?”
Minimal encourages to keep talking such as “yes”, “for instance…” etc. infrequent questions that, again, encourage the speaker to keep talking like “how does that make you feel?” and it is most important to know when to remain silent in a way that still enables you to be attentive. There are also four ‘reflective’ skills that help our speaker feel that they are being heard or attended to. They are -reflection of content, reflection of feelings, questioning and paraphrasing. All of these listening skills help us to appear warm, inviting, encouraging and open, and by consciously being aware of these ‘listening’ skills while involved in our conversations, we can significantly improve our relationships with other people.
It is most important to listen to the speaker in a conversation, but when we are speaking we need to be able to voice our feelings, ‘say’ what we ‘mean’ and defend our personal space when we feel ourselves doubting our own worth, and to do this takes assertion. There are three types of people: – submissive, assertive and aggressive. The aim of becoming assertive is to have more of your needs met, communicate your feelings without any undue stress or guilt (without violating the dignity of others), become more self-confident and to be able to take responsibility for what happens in your life. Robert Bolton PHD in his book ‘People Skills’ outlined a six step assertion process that involved preparation, sending the message, silence, reflective listening to the others defensive responses, recycling steps two-four as often as necessary and focusing on a solution. This six-step process to assertion can be a great tool in improving our communication, however, it takes great self-discipline not to revert back to whichever side of the submission-assertion-aggression continuum you reside on. One must take great care in monitoring such things as body language, tone of voice, eye contact in order to deliver a message of clarity and that expresses ones self-worth. If we do not take care in this aspect, our attempts at assertion may be either disregarded or taken as an attack on the receiver. Where either of these responses are evident, conflict won’t be far around the corner.
The Essay on Conflict and Example Black People
These are the most obvious aspects of conflict that people may face in their everyday life. War is the major part of conflict between nations, countries and people. War can be caused by many reasons; however ignorance is the most significant ground. For example in Afghanistan, about four decades ago a group of people without education and knowledge made troops to fight against Russian who invited ...
Conflict is unavoidable; it is most commonly viewed as destructive, however it is not without its benefits. It emphasises when one or more parties are not communicating effectively – either not communicating their feelings or not being listened to – but it also fosters personality traits such as self-confidence and belief in ones own opinions. Eradicating conflict should not be the purpose of improving ones communication, but reducing the damage we cause by our words and heightened emotions. There have been some suggestions made in Robert Bolton’s book ‘people skills’ about methods to control conflict. They include, using fewer communication spoilers to reduce the amount of conflict you have, reflective listening when the speaker has a strong need or problem, assertion skills to improve the likelihood of your needs being met and awareness of the behaviours and actions that trigger certain people into conflict.
The Essay on Report Identifying The Different Reasons People Communicate And Explain How Communication Affects Relationships In The Work Setting
Communication is basically the giving and receiving of information. It’s the base of everyone does in every life. What we say, how we say it and what we do communicates lots of messages that are given and received consciously and subconsciously by using different communication methods. Generally when people communicate with you it’s because they have something they want you to know or something ...
Communication is an integral part of everyday life. We can either embrace the skills that make life easier, or get prepared for a life of frustration and conflict, but with effective listening, assertion and conflict resolution skills we can rid our lives of the barriers that hinder communication. It is the glue that binds us and the hammer that breaks us, but to truly communicate is something that few in their life accomplish.
Bibliography
Bolton. R People Skills © Prentice Hall of Australia Pty Limited, 1986.
