Toolbox Talk: Developing Interpersonal Communication Skills

Developing Interpersonal Communication Skills

Developing interpersonal communication skills is vitally important in today’s workplace. Even though you are an individual contributor in the workplace, you still need to communicate effectively with your boss as well as coworkers and customers. Almost all kinds of work require communicating with your co-workers.

When we communicate, we don’t actually swap ideas, we swap symbols that stand for ideas. Words are just symbols that do not have inherent meaning; we simply use them in certain ways to convey an idea or give it a meaning, and no two people use the same word in the same sense at all instances. The symbols attached to these words are a function of who we are, our social upbringing and culture, which will pretty much vary quite widely in today’s work environment.

Our personal communication skills would be largely dependent on our cultural background and unique histories. As a result, there is a real possibility that when two of us get together there are chances that we are less effective at communicating with each other than we would like. Interpersonal communication is inescapable.

We cannot ‘not communicate’

The very attempt not to communicate communicates something. When we are not
communicating .i.e., when we are silent towards the other person, we are communicating silence. Silence has many meanings depending on the circumstances and cultures. In one Culture, it might be a polite thing to have a long pause before answering a question while in another culture it may be considered a dumb thing or lack of intelligence.

Communication is not just spoken words
Remember the time you were caught coming home late? Remember the look on your mom’s face? She may not have said anything verbally, but we still got the message quite clearly “Grounded”. Any communication for that matter is based not just on words but also on body language, tonality, situation etc.

Using these techniques, we constantly communicate with others. Even when you sleep, you communicate. Remember the basic principle of communication: people are not mind readers. Another way to put this is: people judge you by your behavior, not your intent.

Inter Personal communication is irreversible
“Once a word goes out of your mouth, you can never swallow it again.” – A Russian proverb
You can’t really take back something once it has been said. The effect must inevitably remain. Despite the instructions from a judge to a jury to “disregard that last statement the witness made,” the lawyer knows that it can’t help but make an impression on the jury.

Some of the famous Murphy Laws on communication go this way:
“If communication can fail, it will.”
“If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in the way which does the most harm.”
“There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.”
“The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.”
“These tongue-in-cheek maxims are not real principles; they simply humorously remind us of the difficulty of accurate communication.”

Intra personal communication is contextual
In other words, communication does not happen in isolation. There is:
a. A Mental context, which is who you are and what you bring to the interaction. Your needs, desires, values, personality, etc., all form the psychological context. (“You” here refers to both participants in the interaction.)
b. A Relational context, which concerns your relations to the other person–the “mix.”
c. Social context deals with the psycho-social “where” you are communicating. An interaction that takes place in a classroom will be very different from one that takes place in a bar.
d. Physical/Environmental context deals with the physical “where” you are communicating. Furniture, location, noise level, temperature, season, time of day, all are examples of factors in the environmental context.
e. Cultural context includes all the learned behaviors and rules that affect the interaction. If you come from a culture (foreign or within your own country) where it is considered rude to make long, direct eye contact, you will avoid eye contact out of politeness. If the other person comes from a culture where long, direct eye contact signals trustworthiness, then we have a basis for misunderstanding.

By increasing your repertoire of interpersonal communication skills, you can increase your overall effectiveness and perhaps your job satisfaction.

Source: www.communication-skills-4-confidence.com
“Speak when you are angry – and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.” Dr. Laurence J. Peter

Thanks for the share TO!