Effective communication implies being able to bring your point across to another party and allowing that party to fully comprehend what you exactly mean. In short, to understand people and be understood as well. In the 21 years that I have lived, I have without a doubt come across countless of incidents whereby miscommunications have arose. Some of them were due to parties not listening actively and thus misinterpreting information, while others were because information was incorrectly disseminated or sentences wrongly phrased. All these problems boil down to people not knowing how to communicate effectively or how significant effects may result if one misinterprets what you mean.
Developing effective communication skills is important in every aspect of life be it in a workplace, in school or even at home because firstly, to reiterate what the friend of mine said, it is crucial in how interpersonal relationships turn out. Secondly, it prevents added misunderstandings and last but not least, it makes you a better person!
In my opinion, communicating effectively is very important especially during group discussions or teamwork. I want to be able to look from the standpoint of my teammates, to understand why he or she gives certain ideas and be capable of providing constructive feedback yet not putting them down. Furthermore, I feel that it is crucial to be able to bring ideas across to people well, under different circumstances and using different communication channels. Below is a cartoon taken from a website and it depicts the poor communication skills within a company. Enjoy!
courtesy of: http://tobetterdays.com/tbd/index.php?page=10&entryid=000058
PS click on the image for larger view.
6 comments:
Hey, I love the overall look of this blog. Is that your mouth shouting into that hole? Very effective for our topic! (I love the pic of sunrise over the Grand Canyon, too. I want to live there...me and 2 billion other people.)
Now for post content:
Your first two paragraphs make perfect sense to me, though I start to wonder when the positive example is going to present itself. In the third paragraph, I feel like you need to explain more about "how interpersonal relationships turn out."
Again, where is the plus side of this discussion?
You wrap things up well in your last paragraph. I just feel that a bit more on the plus side would really add weight to your assertion.
Great cartoon though! Gracias!
Hey Tiffany and fellow East Sider.. LOL..
I love your comic at the end of your post! Besides the point of poor communication, I think the comic also depicts how different people can have different interpretations of something. If there's unclear or inadequate communication, we can expect inconsistency. That's what most departments or companies want to avoid. Especially in large companies when instructions or tasks need to be passed down a hierarchy, the lack of proper and effective communication can distort and screw plans up!
Hi, I agreed that active listening is really important, we tend to switch off our mind or assume we know the story's ending while listening and miss out the important information. Especially to someone we are close to (for example; our family's members) because we assume that we know them very well and it often upset the people who care about us.
To Brad: Unfortunately that's not my mouth shouting in the hole. A friend of mine took this shot and sent it to me and when we were told to set up a blog, the first thing that came to my mind was "I'm SO going to use this photo". Kudos to that friend who's now studying in France. Thanks for the advise, I'll defnitely work on those points you've pointed out!
To Xinyi (East-siders rock)
Thanks for taking time to comment! I totally agree with what you said that unclear communication will lead to inconsistency and different interpretations. Take for instance saying "ok". I can think of many different ways of saying "ok", some of which are:
1. Ok (boring kind of way)
2. Ok!(I am excited)
3. Ok (with eye-rolling)
4. Ok (with "I don't really care" attitude)
Just based on this, the tone of voice and the way a person says something will show a great deal about the intended meaning! I loved the picture you posted in your blog too. Pictures paint a thousand words don't they? :)
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