Профессиональная коммуникация

Communication in the workplace is challenging. Just because you have said something or told someone something does not mean that it has been understood or that there is agreement. There are other skills that effective communicators develop.

Task 2:

For 2 minutes please tell to your peer about your today’s situation on the working place. Than analyze them using Communication Tip.

Sources:

Bolton R. People Skills. Simon and Schuster, 2009. 324 p. URL: https://books.google.ru/

Ormond Coaching and Training. URL: http://www.leadership-development- tips.com/what-is-communication.html.

Задания к теме 2:

1.Прочтите и переведите текст.

2.Выполните задание 2.

3.Сравните практику международной коммуникации (Communication Tip) и практики, приводящие к разрушению коммуникации.

4.Приведите примеры коммуникационных ситуаций с блоками.

5.Приведите примеры барьеров коммуникации. Найдите их аналоги в интернете.

6.Зайдите на https://books.google.ru/ и найдите книгу R. Bolton.

Распределите доступные главы книги между собой. Сделайте обзор доступных глав книги.

Тема 3. Оценка коммуникативных способностей магистров.

Topic 3. How Good Are Your Communication Skills?

Communication skills are some of the most important skills that you need to succeed in the workplace.

If you want to be an expert communicator, you need to be effective at all points in the communication process – from "sender" through to "receiver" – and you must be comfortable with the different channels of communication – face to face, voice to voice, written, and so on. Poor communicators usually struggle to develop their careers beyond a certain point.

So, are you communicating effectively? Take this short quiz to find out.

The Communication Quiz

Instructions

For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Please answer questions as you actually are (rather than how you think you should be), and don't worry if some questions seem to score in the 'wrong direction'. When you are finished, please click the 'Calculate My Total' button at the bottom of the test.

№	Statements to Answer	Not at	Rare	Sometimes	Often	Very
		All	ly			Often
1	I try to anticipate and predict possible causes of
	confusion, and I deal with them up front.
2	When I write a memo, email, or other document, I
	give all of the background information and detail
	I can to make sure that my message is understood.
3	If I don't understand something, I tend to keep
	this to myself and figure it out later.
4	I'm surprised to find that people haven't
	understood what I've said
5	I can tend to say what I think, without worrying
	about how the other person perceives it. I assume
	that we'll be able to work it out later
6	When people talk to me, I try to see their
	perspectives.
7	I use email to communicate complex issues with
	people. It's quick and efficient.
8	When I finish writing a report, memo, or email, I
	scan it quickly for typos and so forth, and then
	send it off right away
9	When talking to people, I pay attention to their
	body language
10	I use diagrams and charts to help express my
	ideas
11	Before I communicate, I think about what the
	person needs to know, and how best to convey it
12	When someone's talking to me, I think about what

№	Statements to Answer	Not at	Rare	Sometimes	Often	Very
		All	ly			Often
	I'm going to say next to make sure I get my point
	across correctly
13	Before I send a message, I think about the best
	way to communicate it (in person, over the phone,
	in a newsletter, via memo, and so on)
14	I try to help people understand the underlying
	concepts behind the point I am discussing. This
	reduces misconceptions and and increases
	understanding.
15	I consider cultural barriers when planning my
	communications increases understanding

Score Interpretation

Score Comment

15-35 You need to keep working on your communication skills. You are not expressing yourself clearly, and you may not be receiving messages correctly either. The good news is that, by paying attention to communication, you can be much more effective at work, and enjoy much better working relationships! The rest of this article will direct you to some great tools for improving your communication skills. (Read below to start.)

36-55 You're a capable communicator, but you sometimes experience communication problems. Take the time to think about your approach to communication, and focus on receiving messages effectively, as much as sending them. This will help you improve. (Read below to start.)

56-75 Excellent! You understand your role as a communicator, both when you send messages, and when you receive them. You anticipate problems, and you choose the right ways of communicating. People respect you for your ability to communicate clearly, and they appreciate your listening skills. (Read below for more.)

Detailed Interpretation

Whenever you communicate with someone else, you each follow the steps of the communication process shown below.

Here, the person who is the source of the communication encodes it into a message, and transmits it through a channel. The receiver decodes the message, and, in one way or another, feeds back understanding or a lack of understanding to the source.

By understanding the steps in the process, you can become more aware of your role in it, recognize what you need to do to communicate effectively,

anticipate problems before they happen, and improve your overall ability to communicate effectively.

The sections below help you do this, and help you improve the way you communicate at each stage of the process.

The Source – Planning Your Message

(Questions 2, 11)

Before you start communicating, take a moment to figure out what you want to say, and why. Don't waste your time conveying information that isn't necessary

– and don't waste the listener or reader's time either. Too often, people just keep talking or keep writing – because they think that by saying more, they'll surely cover all the points. Often, however, all they do is confuse the people they're talking to.

Task 3:

To plan your communication:

Understand your objective. Why are you communicating?

Understand your audience. With whom are you communicating? What do they need to know?

Plan what you want to say, and how you'll send the message. Seek feedback on how well your message was received.

When you do this, you'll be able to craft a message that will be received positively by your audience.

Good communicators use the KISS ("Keep It Simple and Straightforward") principle. They know that less is often more, and that good communication should be efficient as well as effective.

Encoding – Creating a Clear, Well-Crafted Message

(Questions 1, 5, 8, 10, 15)

When you know what you want to say, decide exactly how you'll say it. You're responsible for sending a message that's clear and concise. To achieve this, you need to consider not only what you'll say, but also how you think the recipient will perceive it.

We often focus on the message that we want to send, and the way in which we'll send it. But if our message is delivered without considering the other person's perspective, it's likely that part of that message will be lost. To communicate more effectively:

Understand what you truly need and want to say.

Anticipate the other person's reaction to your message.

Choose words and body language that allow the other person to really hear what you're saying.

With written communication, make sure that what you write will be perceived the way you intend. Words on a page generally have no emotion – they don't "smile" or "frown" at you while you're reading them (unless you're a very talented writer, of course!)

When writing, take time to do the following:

Review your style.

Avoid jargon or slang.

Check your grammar and punctuation.

Check also for tone, attitude, nuance, and other subtleties. If you think the message may be misunderstood, it probably will. Take the time to clarify it!

Familiarize yourself with your company's writing policies.

Another important consideration is to use pictures, charts, and diagrams wherever possible. As the saying goes, "a picture speaks a thousand words." Our article on charts and graphs has some great tips that help you to use these to communicate clearly.

Also, whether you speak or write your message, consider the cultural context. If there's potential for miscommunication or misunderstanding due to cultural or language barriers, address these issues in advance. Consult with people who are familiar with these, and do your research so that you're aware of problems you may face. See our article on Effective Cross-Culture Communication for more help.

Choosing the Right Channel

(Questions 7, 11, 13)

Along with encoding the message, you need to choose the best communication channel to use to send it. You want to be efficient, and yet make the most of your communication opportunity.

Using email to send simple directions is practical. However, if you want to delegate a complex task, an email will probably just lead to more questions, so it may be best to arrange a time to speak in person. And if your communication has any negative emotional content, stay well away from email! Make sure that you communicate face to face or by phone, so that you can judge the impact of your words and adjust these appropriately.

When you determine the best way to send a message, consider the following:

The sensitivity and emotional content of the subject.

How easy it is to communicate detail.

The receiver's preferences.

Time constraints.

The need to ask and answer questions.

Decoding – Receiving and Interpreting a Message

(Questions 3, 6, 12, 14)

It can be easy to focus on speaking; we want to get our points out there, because we usually have lots to say. However, to be a great communicator, you also need to step back, let the other person talk, and just listen.

This doesn't mean that you should be passive. Listening is hard work, which is why effective listening is called active listening. To listen actively, give your undivided attention to the speaker:

Look at the person.

Pay attention to his or her body language.

Avoid distractions.

Nod and smile to acknowledge points.

Occasionally think back about what the person has said.

Allow the person to speak, without thinking about what you'll say next.

Don't interrupt.

Empathic listening also helps you decode a message accurately. To understand a message fully, you have to understand the emotions and underlying feelings the speaker is expressing. This is where an understanding of body language can be useful.

Feedback

(Questions 4, 9)

You need feedback, because without it, you can't be sure that people have understood your message. Sometimes feedback is verbal, and sometimes it's not. We've looked at the importance of asking questions and listening carefully. However, feedback through body language is perhaps the most important source of clues to the effectiveness of your communication. By watching the facial expressions, gestures, and posture of the person you're communicating with, you can spot:

Confidence levels.

Defensiveness.

Agreement.

Comprehension (or lack of understanding).

Level of interest.

Level of engagement with the message.

Truthfulness (or lying/dishonesty).

As a speaker, understanding your listener's body language can give you an opportunity to adjust your message and make it more understandable, appealing, or interesting. As a listener, body language can show you more about what the other person is saying. You can then ask questions to ensure that you have, indeed, understood each other. In both situations, you can better avoid miscommunication if it happens.

Feedback can also be formal. If you're communicating something really important, it can often be worth asking questions of the person you're talking to make sure that they've understood fully. And if you're receiving this sort of communication, repeat it in your own words to check your understanding.

Key Points

It can take a lot of effort to communicate effectively. However, you need to be able to communicate well if you're going to make the most of the opportunities that life has to offer.

By learning the skills you need to communicate effectively, you can learn how to communicate your ideas clearly and effectively, and understand much more of the information that's conveyed to you.

As either a speaker or a listener, or as a writer or a reader, you're responsible for making sure that the message is communicated accurately. Pay attention to words and actions, ask questions, and watch body language. These will all help you ensure that you say what you mean, and hear what is intended.

Sources:

KISS ("Keep It Simple and Straightforward"). URL: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/KeepItSimple.htm

How Good Are Your Communication Skills? URL: URL: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCS_99.htm

Body Language. Understanding Non-Verbal Communication. URL: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/Body_Language.htm. (+ видео)

Задания к теме 3:

1.Прочтите и переведите текст.

2.Выполните тест (The Communication Quiz).

3.Выполните задание (task 3).

4.Прочтите и расскажите про KISS.

5.Напишите сообщение на заданную индивидуально тему и передайте его одногруппнику. Одногруппник дает рекомендации по его улучшению с использованием материала этой темы.

6.Найдите дополнительную информацию по эмпатии и языку тела, расскажите о методиках и приемах.

7.Разработайте собственный оценочный инструмент коммуникационных навыков с использованием существующих аналогов в сети интернет.

Тема 4. Важные коммуникационные навыки

Topic 4. Essential Communication Skills

How To Listen When Your Communication Styles Don't Match

Why do people who consider themselves good communicators often fail to actually hear each other? Often it’s due to a mismatch of styles: To someone who prefers to vent, someone who prefers to explain seems patronizing; explainers experience venters as volatile.

This is why so many of us see our conversational counterparts as lecturing, belaboring, talking down to us, or even shaming us (if we are venters and they are explainers) or as invasive, out of control, and overly emotional (if we’re an explainer and they’re a venter).

Facing this kind of mismatch, what do you think the chances are for either person actually listening with an open mind?

It is tempting to say “zero,” but since it’s not possible (or even desirable) to work only with people who match your communication style, you need to develop the skill to try to listen around their communication style.

Listening around that style, however, can be incredibly effortful. When someone is either venting/screaming or explaining/belaboring it triggers a part of your middle emotional brain called the amygdala, which desperately wants to hijack your attentive listening and instead react reflexively with whatever your hardwired reactions are. And resisting that amygdala hijack is exhausting.

What do to with a venter/screamer

If your conversational counterpart is a venter/screamer, your hardwired survival coping skill might be to tell them to calm down (which will only make them more upset), to shut down and get silent (which will only make them yell longer, because they’ll think you’re not listening), or to try to point out how irrational venting is (which, as noted above, they will perceive as patronizing and belaboring).

Instead, say to yourself, “Okay, here comes another temper tantrum. Just let them blow. Try not to take it between the eyes and imagine you’re looking into the calm eye of a hurricane and the storm is going over your shoulder.”

To do this, focus on their left eye. The left eye is connected to the right brain

— the emotional brain. Let them finish. Then say, “I can see you’re really frustrated. To make sure I don’t add to that, and to make sure I don’t miss something, what was the most important thing I need to do in the long term, what’s the critical thing I need to do in the short term, and what do I need to get done ASAP?” Reframing the conversation this way, after they’ve finished venting, will make sure that your “explainer” self knows what to do – instead of ignoring the venting as another random outburst from “Conan the Barbarian” or “the Wicked Witch of the West.” Chances are, they do have something important they’re trying to tell you – even though they’re not communicating it very well.

After they respond, say to them, “What you just said is way too important for me to have misunderstood a word, so I’m going to say it back to you to make sure I am on the same page with you. Here’s what I heard.” Then repeat exactly, word for word, what they said to you. After you finish, say to them, “Did I get that right and if not, what did I miss?” Forcing them to listen to what you said they said, “because it was important,” will slow them down, will help you stay centered and in control, and will earn you their and your own respect.

What to do with an explainer/belaborer

If your conversational counterpart is an explainer, your hardwired survival coping skill might be to say to yourself, ”Here they go again, make sure you smile politely even if you want to pull your hair out. Try not to let your impatience and annoyance show.” The problem with this is that even though they may be oblivious to others as they go on and on, at some level they may be aware of your underlying impatience and… that might actually make them talk longer. Yikes.

Realize that the reason they explain and belabor things is probably because their experience is that people don’t pay attention to what they say. They don’t realize that while that may be true of some truly distracted people, for others, the reason they don’t pay attention is that the speaker is belaboring something that the listener already heard — and doesn’t want to hear over and over again. Another possibility is that these explainers may not be feeling listened to somewhere else in their life (by their spouse, kids, parents, or boss) and is now relieved to have you as a captive audience.

When the explainer goes into his explanation/lecture/filibuster, say to yourself, “Okay, this is going to take a while.” Put a mental bookmark in whatever you were working on. Then look them in their left eye with a look that says, “Okay, take your time, I’m fully listening.” Instead of feeling frustrated and reacting by become impatient and fidgety, remind yourself, “They need to do this. I can be patient.”

Then when they finish then apply a similar response to the venter/screamer with the following minor edit:

“I can see that you really had a lot that you had to say. To make sure I don’t miss something, what was the most important thing I need to do in the long term, what’s the critical thing I need to do in the short term, and what do I need to get done ASAP?” ”

After they respond to that, say to them, “What you just said is way too important for me to have misunderstood a word, so I’m going to say it back to you to make sure I am on the same page with you. Here’s what I heard.” Then repeat exactly, word for word, what they said to you. After you finish, say to them, “Did I get that right, and if not, what did I miss?”

Your amygdala is probably saying to you and to me, “I don’t want to do either of those things. These people are obnoxious and unreasonable. Why should I kowtow to them?”

Here are several reasons:

1.They aren’t likely to change. These are deeply ingrained personality traits.

2.Being more open and inviting them to talk rather than closed and resistant will lessen their need to act this way. Listening patiently hath charm to soothe the savage (or boring) beast.

3.You will feel more self-respect and self-esteem. The above approaches will enable you to remain cool, calm, collected, centered and communicative in situation that formerly frustrated you and made you react poorly.

6 Tips for How to Communicate Clearly in Business

The opinion of Stacy Blackman, President of Stacy Blackman Consulting (www.stacyblackman.com/).

In my business, I see a lot of business school application essays. One problem that nearly all candidates struggle with is how to communicate clearly, particularly adhering to word counts. If the admissions committee gives a 500 word limit for writing about your accomplishments, many applicants write essays 1,000 words or longer. For them it seems an impossible task to share their many accomplishments in a single page, but doing so just takes a special skill: The ability to be clear and concise.

People in the post-MBA world also struggle with how to communicate clearly. How many emails do you receive in a day that go on for paragraphs and leave you thinking, what’s the point? Long, rambling emails have become such a scourge that a new product, Shortmail.com, limits users’ messages to 500 characters; for my Twitter-minded readers, that’s roughly three and a half Tweets. If you attempt to send a Shortmail user an email over 500 characters, they won’t receive it until you edit it down.

This might seem like an extreme measure, but almost everyone could benefit from focusing on sending more concise emails, memos and business letters. Here are a few tips to help you with how to communicate clearly.

Lead with your main point: If you were forced to boil down your email to one or two sentences, what would they say? Always start by writing your main point. Then elaborate as necessary.

Cut the jargon: You and your office mates might talk to each other about the current state of your bandwidth, but in writing it’s much more clear and concise to say “My schedule is full.”

Use short, direct sentences: You’ll likely remember this rule from grammar school: Put the subject at the beginning of your sentence. So instead of, “A new meeting date was set by the steering committee,” write, “The steering committee set a new meeting date.” Also, watch out for sentences that go on for three or more lines. Shorter sentences are much easier to read.

Read it aloud: When you’re getting ready to send an important communication, you’ll catch mistakes and other problems more easily if you read it aloud. If something trips you up or doesn’t make sense as you’re reading, rewrite until it’s clear.