General information
Name: Reem Albanmai
Event: Business fundamentals: effective communication
Date of event:31January, 2019
Organizer: The open university
Speaker: Hilary Collins
The location of the event: online
Description:
I believe in the importance of effective communication not just in the world of business, but also in the whole life. Therefore, I was very interested to be more effective in the communication with people through different ways. In the beginning, DR. Hilary explained to us how the effective communication can impact on our relations to people specially in business criteria and also the development of communication skills and how much extent it is significant. The course includes a practical grounding in using a range of communication media to enhance our ability to communicate and get rid of stress or hesitation. The course gets the admiration of all attendance, since it introduces unprecedented and beneficial information. The initial purpose of the course is to learn us how to communicate effectively.
Analysis of learning:
The majority of people think that the communication limited to talking or listening, but communication goes beyond that, as the effective communication is also transmitting the information from one to another with retaining the same mean and goal of the content. This process requires many different types of skills and every skill should be appropriate with the situation you are in (McPheat, 2010 ) . DR. Hilary explained this definition and the lack in awareness about those skills, then gave us the full map of which skill relayed to different situations and how can we indicate the appropriate one to depend on.
DR. Hilary started by dividing the communication skills into two main groups, the first one is non-verbal communication and the second is verbal communication. Non-verbal skills represents non-linguistic gestures such as eye contact, body language and facial expressions, which can influence on the speaker or the listener positively or negatively due to the expression is suitable or not ( types of body language, 2016 ). Furthermore, non-verbal communication skills are also existed in the written messages as every type of message have special form and it can be illustrated by the font size, color, emoticons, and so on ( Burgoon, J., Guerrero, L., Floyd, K., 2010). That was from the illustrative example DR. Hilary gave to prove that any communication has non-verbal side even in the text.
In another hand, verbal communication skills are the skills, which require talking or writing messages.
DR. Hilary explained the elements of face to face communication, which are 3 contains verbal and non-verbal communication skills as following:
- Tone of voice: according Mehrabian , from 35 to 40 percent of the message’s impact on the listener is the tone of voice as the phrase has several meanings just by change of the tone of voice.
- Body language: Meharbian said that half meaning of the message is relied on the body language because the movement of your hands, your facial expressions, breathing rate, blushing, and others are solo messages integrated with verbal communication skills. furthermore the listener can be evaluated from his body language to indicate whether he/she satisfied or not for example.
- Verbal communication: DR. Hilary claimed that there is a gap between the social media communication and face to face or any other type of communication requires non-verbal skills.
Lastly, DR. Hilary doesn’t pay great attention to the academic definitions, because she learned us how to practice those skills in our life and also in our jobs. The course was divided into many parts including the common communication skills types in business field such as how to write a professional reports and proposals, how to make a successful meeting attached with presentation, respond positively to the messages sent, writing accurate reports and proposals, accomplishing beneficial meeting, along with mastering the future trends in professional communication.
Evaluation of learning:
I can’t deny that this experience from the turning points in my life and I learned many important and useful information, which required in any field.
Moreover, I strongly agree that the communication skills are significant in any person’s daily life including daily work also and the percentage of approval will be higher for the applicant who have better communication skills and that will be revealed in many different situations such as writing personal statement, the interview , and the phone calling.
Currently, I can see the full image of the communication skills and communicate with the people in the workplace effectively depending on scientific terms, as well as, differentiating the situations and applying the appropriate elements of each one. This will increase the probability of success and taking better decisions that resulted in better career and strong curriculum vitae. As right now, I can conduct productive meetings and spend less time and effort in telephone calls and emails. My writing skills got more better, and also my communication behavior integrated with cultural and interpersonal sensitivity.
As previously mentioned, the communication skills without practice equal nothing, so I will apply those skills in my all communications not just in the workplace, but also with my friends, family, colleagues and so on.
References :
Burgoon, J., Guerrero, L., Floyd, K., (2010). Nonverbal Communication, United states : Arizona state university. p. 3
Dom Barnard .( 2017 ) . The Importance of Communication Skills in Business[ online ] available at :https://virtualspeech.com/blog/importance-of-communication-skills
Mehrabian, Albert; Wiener, Morton (1967). “Decoding of Inconsistent Communications”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. P.6
Mehrabian, Albert; Ferris, Susan R. (1967). “Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels”. Journal of Consulting Psychology. 31 (3): 248–252
Sean, Cheat, ( 2010 ). Effective communication skills . United kingdom available from eBook collection.https://www.google.com.eg/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi23PT3zqzgAhWB16QKHTkOCt0QFjAAegQICBAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpromeng.eu%2Fdownloads%2Ftraining-materials%2Febooks%2Fsoft-skills%2Feffective-communication-skills.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1aLsnybHGafiN8iI9hovOB
reem albanmai 