Question

Identify the two attitudes/behaviors on “focus on communication” that you believe are pertinent to the courses you are currently taking. Explain your rationale for picking specific competencies.

1. Values different means of communication (auditory, visual, and tactile).

2. Accepts responsibility for communicating effectively

Answer 1

1: Become an engaged listener

When communicating with others, we often focus on what we should say. However, effective communication is less about talking and more about listening. Listening well means not just understanding the words or the information being communicated, but also understanding the emotions the speaker is trying to convey.

By communicating in this way, you’ll also experience a process that lowers stress and supports physical and emotional well-being. If the person you’re talking to is calm, for example, listening in an engaged way will help to calm you, too. Similarly, if the person is agitated, you can help calm them by listening in an attentive way and making the person feel understood.

If your goal is to fully understand and connect with the other person, listening in an engaged way will often come naturally. If it doesn’t, try the following tips. The more you practice them, the more satisfying and rewarding your interactions with others will become.

Skill 2: Pay attention to nonverbal signals

The way you look, listen, move, and react to another person tells them more about how you’re feeling than words alone ever can. Nonverbal communication, or body language, includes facial expressions, body movement and gestures, eye contact, posture, the tone of your voice, and even your muscle tension and breathing.

Developing the ability to understand and use nonverbal communication can help you connect with others, express what you really mean, navigate challenging situations, and build better relationships at home and work.

You can enhance focuss on communication by using open body language—arms uncrossed, standing with an open stance or sitting on the edge of your seat, and maintaining eye contact with the person you’re talking to.

You can also use body language to emphasize or enhance your verbal message—patting a friend on the back while complimenting him on his success, for example, or pounding your fists to underline your message.

1.Values different means of communication (auditory, visual, and tactile).

Values of auditory communication

1. Allows for Multi-tasking
Proponents of this learning style claim that learning by ear allows an individual to be versatile when it comes to accomplishing several tasks. This is because by merely listening to audio recordings, one can process information without having to use the eyes or hands. That said, a person can do other things while studying. These can be driving, cooking, painting and cleaning, among others. This makes this learning style effective for people who have to engage in other activities during the process. Consequently, more things will be done in a little time.

2. Increased Retention
People who advocate for auditory learning posit that a good listener has the ability to process information through hearing information and eventually retains it. By playing audio recordings repeatedly wherever the location may be, there is an increased possibility of improved retention in the memory bank.

3. Availability
Another advantage of learning through listening is that there are many sources available in the market and over the internet. With the advent of technology, people today have more means to get information from podcasts and other audio materials.

Visual

Visual communication is the act of using photographs, art, drawings, sketches, charts and graphs to convey information. Visuals are often used as an aid during presentations to provide helpful context alongside written and/or verbal communication. Because people have different learning styles, visual communication might be more helpful for some to consume ideas and information.

If you are considering sharing a visual aid in your presentation or email, consider asking others for feedback. Adding visuals can sometimes make concepts confusing or muddled. Getting a third-party perspective can help you decide whether the visual adds value to your communications.

Be sure to include visuals that are easily understood by your audience. For example, if you are displaying a chart with unfamiliar data, be sure to take time and explain what is happening in the visual and how it relates to what you are saying. You should never use sensitive, offensive, violent or graphic visuals in any form.

Values of visual communication

Deliver information more directly

Some information, such as statistics, is always better conveyed in a picture than verbally explained. For an example, take a look a the following organizational chart. In a glance you can identify the poor performers, future hires and people who’ve worked for more than 1 year. Imaging doing this using text and you’ll realize the power of visual communication.

The audience would not only understand the information instantly and far more clearly, but it would also let the presenter make his/her point rather easily. Using visual aid will allow you to illustrate a complex idea in dynamic ways.

You can effortlessly generate an org chart like the one above using our org chart tool. Or you can directly use that diagram by clicking this link.

More flexible than verbal communication

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, a single picture can convey an idea that would take several sentences if you had to describe it in words. Moreover, an image makes sense to everybody despite cultural, geographical, ethnic or language differences among people.

For an example, if you are promoting your product or service among an audience which is spread across different geographical areas and speak different languages, an image could convey your message far more effectively than in any form of verbal communication; especially since visual images do not pose any language or cultural barriers. Therefore, using visual communication would allow you to deliver the message more persuasively to the diverse audiences.

More attention-grabbing and engaging

People only tend to remember 10% of what they hear and 20% of what they read. However, they actually tend to remember 80% of what they see. This is why most of us use the visual aid to express ideas or share information.

For an example, if a blog post only consisted of long paragraphs of details, the reader would lose her interest and abandon reading altogether. However, with a couple of relevant images, the attention of the reader can be won and retained successfully. Likewise, with diagrams and charts, you can elaborate the information you want to convey in a much more appealing and engaging manner.

Makes an impact on the audience

If you want to spark a response in or stir the emotions of the members of your audience, using visual communication is the guaranteed way to do so. An image has a higher chance of evoking an emotional response in a person than a set of words, written or spoken.

For an example, in a newspaper ad campaign, using a set of consistent images to accompany the text will generate a far more positive response from the target market. With the right image, you could make a great influence in terms of brand building.

Increase the credibility of your message

“Seeing is believing”. An image, a video or a graph is not just a way to get the attention of your audience, but it is also a way to win their trust. A couple of catchy sentences about your brand will get your target market to look your way, but a nice image or an interesting video of your product and service would guarantee a positive response from your audience and help you earn their trust; for, an image could reinforce the credibility of what you represent or the idea, product, service etc. that you are trying to promote.

Values of tactile communication

In the case of emotions, it is not our hands but the body, which is crucial to emotional experiences. It is difficult to imagine emotions in the absence of their bodily expressions. Different emotions are induced in the brain and are played out in the theatre of the body (Damasio, 1999). Given the apparent relationship between bodily-tactile information processing and emotion, it is not surprising that recent neuroscientific research have found evidence for strong neural connections between the somatosensory cortex and the brain regions involved in the processing of emotions; the limbic system (figure 8, see next page). The limbic system is a set of brain structures including the hippocampus and amygdala, which support a variety of functions including behavior, long term memory and emotion. Every neuroscientist knows that emotions are as much to do with the head as the heart, but as a number of new studies show, the heart — or rather the body — and the brain are by no means independent purveyors of feeling and emotion (Johansen-Berg & Walsh, 2001). The anterior insular cortex, a limbic-related cortex, has increasingly become the focus of attention for its role in body representation and subjective emotional experience. It has also been identified as playing a role in the experience of bodily self-awareness. Awareness can be defined as knowing that one exists (the feeling that “I am”). The anterior insular cortex provides a unique neural substrate that instantiates all subjective feelings of emotion in the immediate present (Craig, 2009). Subjective emotional experience (i.e. feelings) arises from our brain’s interpretation of bodily states that are elicited by emotional events. This is an example of the concept known as embodied cognition (e.g., see Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Views of embodied cognition discuss how our neural and developmental embodiment shapes both our mental and linguistic categorizations and argue that all aspects of cognition are shaped by aspects of the body. Furthermore, the strong link between the processing of tactile information and emotions has been demonstrated in the clinical condition of touch-emotion synesthesia. Synesthesia is a condition in which a sensory stimulus presented in one modality evokes a sensation in a different modality. Ramachandran & Brang (2008) have shown that in individuals with touch-emotion synesthesia, specific textures (e.g., denim, wax, sandpaper, silk, etc.) evoked equally distinct emotions (e.g., depression, embarrassment, relief, and contentment, respectively), suggesting an increased cross-activation between somatosensory cortex and the emotion processing regions of the brain. 12 The neurodevelopmental mechanisms underlying the tactile-emotional connections are still unclear. However, a study using an integrative psycho physiological approach to investigate the features of the development of different brain mechanisms (corticosubcortical and limbic–reticular), found a correlation with the features of the emotional and cognitive development of six- to seven-year old children to an unfamiliar tactile situation; tactile interaction with dolphins (Ilyukhina et al., 2008).

2. Accepts responsibility for communicating effectively

Whenever you speak or write in a business environment, you have certain responsibilities to your audience, your employer, and your profession. Your audience comes to you with an inherent set of expectations that is your responsibility to fulfill. The specific expectations may change given the context or environment, but two central ideas will remain: be prepared, and be ethical.

Preparation

Being prepared means that you have selected a topic appropriate to your audience, gathered enough information to cover the topic well, put your information into a logical sequence, and considered how best to present it.

Organization

Being organized involves the steps or points that lead your communication to a conclusion. Once you’ve invested time in researching your topic, you will want to narrow your focus to a few key points and consider how you’ll present them. You also need to consider how to link your main points together for your audience so they can follow your message from point to point.

Clarity

You need to have a clear idea in your mind of what you want to say before you can say it clearly to someone else. It involves considering your audience, as you will want to choose words and phrases they understand and avoid jargon or slang that may be unfamiliar to them. Clarity also involves presentation and appropriate use of technology.

Punctuality

Concise means to be brief and to the point. In most business communications you are expected to ‘get down to business’ right away. Being prepared includes being able to state your points clearly and support them with trustworthy evidence in a relatively straightforward, linear way.

Be concise in your choice of words, organization, and even visual aids. Being concise also involves being sensitive to time constraints. Be prepared to be punctual and adhere to deadlines or time limits.

Some cultures also have a less strict interpretation of time schedules and punctuality. While it is important to recognize that different cultures have different expectations, the general rule holds true that good business communication does not waste words or time.

Ethics in Communication

Communicating ethically involves being egalitarian, respectful, and trustworthy—overall, practising the “golden rule” of treating your audience the way you would want to be treated.

Communication can move communities, influence cultures, and change history. It can motivate people to take stand, consider an argument, or purchase a product. The degree to which you consider both the common good and fundamental principles you hold to be true when crafting your message directly relates to how your message will affect others.

The Ethical Communicator Is Egalitarian

The word “egalitarian” comes from the root “equal.” To be egalitarian is to believe in basic equality: that all people should share equally in the benefits and burdens of a society. It means that everyone is entitled to the same respect, expectations, access to information, and rewards of participation in a group.

To communicate in an egalitarian manner, speak and write in a way that is comprehensible and relevant to all your listeners or readers, not just those who are ‘like you’ in terms of age, gender, race or ethnicity, or other characteristics. In business, an effective communicator seeks to unify the audience by using ideas and language that are appropriate for all the message’s readers or listeners.

The Ethical Communicator Is Respectful

People are influenced by emotions as well as logic. The ethical communicator will be passionate and enthusiastic without being disrespectful. Losing one’s temper and being abusive are generally regarded as showing a lack of professionalism (and could even involve legal consequences for you or your employer). When you disagree strongly with a coworker, feel deeply annoyed with a difficult customer, or find serious fault with a competitor’s product, it is important to express such sentiments respectfully.

The Ethical Communicator Is Trustworthy

Trust is a key component in communication, and this is especially true in business. Your goal as a communicator is to build a healthy relationship with your audience, and to do that you must show them how they can trust you and why the information you are about to share with them is believable.

Your audience will expect that what you say is the truth as you understand it. This means that you have not intentionally omitted, deleted, or taken information out of context simply to prove your points. They will listen to what you say and how you say it, but also to what you don’t say or do. Being worthy of trust is something you earn with an audience. Many wise people have observed that trust is hard to build but easy to lose.

The “Golden Rule”

When in doubt, remember the “golden rule,” which is to treat others the way you would like to be treated. In all its many forms, the golden rule incorporates human kindness, cooperation, and reciprocity across cultures, languages, backgrounds, and interests. Regardless of where you travel, with whom you communicate or what your audience is like, remember how you would feel if you were on the receiving end of your communication and act accordingly.