Unit 3 Employability and Professional Development

Communication Skills

2.1 communicate in a variety of styles and appropriate manner at various levels

Your development plan should include a section on improving your communication skills. You can include your invovlement in this session as evidence in your weekly log that you are working on meeting that criterion.

Effective Communication
Message Sender Receiver Result The Receiver is of key importance in the communication process.

Think about the message you need to communicate

Consider the following statement:

This is your Captain speaking . Im afraid to have to tell you that we dont have enough fuel to reach London. We hope to land at Paris to take on more fuel. This should take an hour
The captain has not considered how his message could be received. What should he have said?

Before you Communicate

Ask yourself Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Can you think of some communications examples?

Think about your communication over the

last few weeks. Can you give 1 example of a communication that went well? Why was it successful? Can you give an example of communication that didnt go well. Why was the communication ineffective?

Internal Barriers to Communication

Perception inability to understand a situation,

tunnel vision. Cultural we dont do that here, put it in writing Emotional response towards individuals, feeling uninvolved and demotivated Intellect Cant do more than one thing at once, lacking mental agility. Expression limited vocabulary, poor listening, speaking and writing skills.

External Barriers to Communication

Physical and Structural issues time pressure, poor information flow, high noise levels. Social Climate poor disclosure of information, climate of suspicion and mistrust.

Rules for Effective Communication

Clear Concise Language appropriate to audience Well prepared Delivered at an appropriate time and place

Content
What do you want to say? What needs to be understood? What is already known about the message? What will the reaction to the content be?

Aim
What is the purpose of the message? passing information, making something happen

Method
Usually defined by the content. People often prefer instructions face to face as they can ask questions.

Method
Facts and figures are best presented in a presentation or report. A phone conversation is often a better way to resolve a problem than putting the problem in writing.

The Receiver
What will the reaction to the message be? What do they already understand? How will they interpret your message?

Verbal Communication
We are all islands shouting . to each other across seas of misunderstanding Speaking Listening Questioning Reflecting and Summarising

Speaking
Tone of voice Vocal Variety lift your voice and let it plummet to keep your audience interested. Questioning vitally important to check understanding and obtain clarification.

Questioning Open and Closed

Open questions are useful to get people talking who, what, when, why, how, where, tell me about. Reflective questions show you are listening and interested So youre finding Assignment 1 difficult? What can I do to make it easier? Closing questions help to obtain decisions will you be handing your assignment in today or tomorrow?

Listening
What is the difference between listening and hearing?

Listening
What is the difference between listening and hearing? Listening implies that you need to understand what has been said. Someone has claimed that if we improved 10% as listeners we would improve communications by 50%.

Active Listening
Non Verbal Listening
Look into speakers eyes Nod Lean towards

Paraphrasing
As I understand it What youre saying is

Reflecting
Would that mean? Are you saying?

Active Listening
Asking for more information
What happened then? Tell me more about..

Empathising
If that happened Id be upset That must have been annoying Give positive reactions before negative ones

Non Verbal Communications

Body Language Tone Use of Personal Space

Body Language
Make sure you are as open as possible in your gestures and facial expressions. Make sure your gestures dont contradict your words e.g. yawning will imply boredom. Find out your own habits what is your nervous gesture? Smile Posture tilting the head can imply interest, looking at the ground disinterest.

Body Language
Dont tilt back on one hip it implies you dont want to be there. Leaning forwards implies the opposite that you are ready and willing to go. Eye contact 5 seconds. Avoid darting eyes and prolonged blinking. Personal Space 48cm 1.2m with friends 1.2 3.6m with colleagues.

Written Communication
Never use a long word if a short one will do. If its possible to cut a word out, do. Use the active rather than the passive, e.g. He was seen by us, We saw him Dont use technical jargon or acronyms if there is an English equivalent.

KeepItShortSimple

Good Written Communication:

Accurate Clear Brief Relevant

Good Written Communication:

Get all the information you need before you start writing. Use short sentences wherever possible. Alternate long and short sentences. Use familiar rather than obscure words Have one main idea per sentence.

Written Exercise
Look at the Written Communication exercise on Moodle. Can you simplify this piece of writing?

How clear is your writing?

Take a sample of writing of more than 100 words. Calculate the average number of words per sentence Count the number of long words of more than 3 syllables. What percentage of words are long words? Add the % of long words and the average no of words per sentence and multiply by 0.4. The result is the Fog Index. Ideally this should be between 10 and 12. Over 14 is unacceptable.

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/effec tive-e-mail-communication/ http://academic.cengage.com/resource_up loads/downloads/0324587902_143597.pdf

Log Entry
Review your communications skills in the light of this session. Are you able to reflect on your communications skills in the light of what you have just learned? Consider trying to use some Active Listening skills over the next few days and review how these have gone in your log. Consider testing the Fog index of some of your assignments to see how clear your writing is. You could add this to your log and reflect on any changes that need to be made to your written style.