Overview of Interpersonal Communication Skills

Question:

Write an essay on “Interpersonal Communication Skills”. 

Interpersonal skills are defined as those skills that one needs to communicate effectively in a group or with another person. There are some core areas which can bring effective interpersonal communication through verbal and non-verbal means. The communication through verbal means are, effective listening, questioning, self-awareness, facilitating or helping, communicating through oral presentation, being assertive and reflecting. The communication through non-verbal means is gestures, facial expression, postures, and gaze and paralinguistic cues.

The paper discusses the interpersonal skills of feedback, listening and questioning and their benefits in the effectiveness of the communication. The advantages of using this skill in a particular field are discussed and different views of the people are put to give in-depth information about the methods of interpersonal communication skill. In this essay, the importance of interpersonal communicational skills in the area of software project management has been discussed.

The success factors of the business organizations which are handling the software development projects are highly dependent on the project development. Software project development is dependent on the efficiency of the team work. Software developments are handled by a team of employees who have to work collaboratively for achieving the corporate goal. In this context, the interpersonal communications are very important for making the objectives clear to all the employees associated in the project. The three major interpersonal skills and their used in the organization communication have been discussed in the following section (Beebe et al. 2014).

Listening is a vital for effective communication. One of the common cause of mistakes, misunderstanding, lost customers and sales is due to poor listening. The productivity of a person reduces due to poor listening, the employee turnover of a company increasing because the employee feels that managers do not listen to them. Good and attentive listening makes the task easy (Knapp et al. 2014). Poor listening of the managers may make them loose the opportunities and create tussle between the managers and employees. Listening improves relationship in an organization, it increases the credibility and trust and willingness to work more towards the organization. It reduces the misunderstandings and hence the chance of error. Less error reduces the cost of an organization and enhances their profit. Further, better listening improves productivity and teamwork (De Janasz et al. 2015).

There are several benefits of good listening, such as it saves your time. The people who listening carefully generally makes less mistake and work more effectively. There will be less communication glitches, productivity will increase and he person’s morale will improve in the organization. Good listening is explained by CARESS model which explains that as a person begins to concentrate, acknowledge, research, exercise, emotional control, sense and structure, their ability to receive the message accurately increases (Beebe et al. 2014). Listening with concentration helps to eliminate the surrounding noise and receive the message clearly. If a person acknowledges the listening, it helps the speaker to send a much clearer message. If the listener some research about the topic before the listening then it helps to prompt questions and understand the message in depth. Listening with emotional control helps to concentrate on understanding the message regardless of being a provocative message. Listening the message and organising the information in a particular structure improves and retain the understanding of the message (Lane et al. 2013). 

Benefits of Listening in Interpersonal Communication

The interpersonal communication skill through questioning helps to stimulate conversation, gain information, to know other’s view, to develop trust and rapport, to check agreement and to verify the information. The two major types of questions asked are of open and closed in nature. Open questions cannot be answered in objective form, i.e., by just saying “yes” or “no” (Beebe et al. 2014). It required to be explained with dialogues and sentences. However, closed questions are answered briefly by saying “yes” or “no” communication by asking questions helps  in finding facts and feeling the facts, expanding the information, clarifying the message and directing the conversation to a specific goal (Knapp et al. 2014).

Closed end questions helps to understand the information more correctly and promptly. The benefit of using open end question can be understood when it is required to gather information about the person’s feeling. It is used to gather information in details. Question helps to clarify the doubt in the conversation and helps in expanding the topic to gather more information. Some questions are directing and assist in getting the answer to the point. If required, questioning also helps to direct the information to different topic, or assist in coming to a particular decision (Baker et al. 2013).

There are different ways in which questioning can be done. Proper planning and good understanding of the questions can help in coming to effective conclusion. Good strategic questions benefit in a fruitful conversation. Questioning through funnel technique is highly beneficial in understanding the person’s expectations and needs, opportunities and problems. Funnel technique of questioning starts from broad questions and then narrows down to specific questions to get into the depth of the topic (Li and Lam 2013). Interpersonal skill of communication through questioning, if done by keeping the questions simple, then it helps to remove confusion among the people and is beneficial for the long term growth of the product. The questions keep the focus on the topic and bring more clarity in the conversation. Communication through asking questions avoid ambiguity and manipulation of words, It has helped in gaining information, building trust, verify information and stimulate the opinions and views of others (Sommer and Kulkarni 2012).

Interpersonal communication through feedback method can also be an effective means of communication. Several problems of communication can be solved by simply asking the consumers to fill up the feedback form and later using the information on the feedback form to make the communication better and to work on the loopholes to be expertise in the communication skills (Ditton et al. 2016). Feedback forms are beneficial in understanding the customer better as the customer generally write the truth on the form to avoid uninterrupted services. The feedback method helps to give correct definition to the problems. The words used in conversation may be different from the words written on the feedback form. The people are generally more careful in writing words to describe the problem than using in oral communication. Feedback gives clarity of thought and avoids making assumptions due to the wrong usage of words in oral communication. Feedback forms acts as a source of data to collect information from the customers and to know their actual requirement and accordingly take necessary actions to make the communication fruitful in the future (Baker et al. 2013).

The questions used in feedback forms helps to take information from different angles and are beneficial in understanding the different aspects of the topics. It is beneficial in taking different views about the topic and then work on the betterment of the topic by making necessary changes. It is beneficial in keeping the people updated with the everyday changes and makes the communication more informatics (Plummer 2015). 

Conclusion:

The essay discusses the three major methods of interpersonal skill of communication. They are feedback method, questioning method and listening method. These methods are the most effective method of communication and enhance the results from the communication. They helps in getting the maximum out of the communication and brings better understanding of the topic and going to the depth of the information. Communication if done effectively can solve major problems and increase productivity of the interaction between people which in turn bring productivity in the place of work and in the particular field of description.  

References

Baker, A., Perreault, D., Reid, A. and Blanchard, C.M., 2013. Feedback and organizations: Feedback is good, feedback-friendly culture is better.Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 54(4), p.260.

Beebe, SA, Beebe, SJ and Redmond, MV 2014, Interpersonal Communication: relating to others, 7^th edn, Allyn & Bacon, Boston, MA, pp.1-15

De Janasz, SZ, Crossman, J, Campbell, N and Power, M 2014, Interpersonal skills in organisations, 2^nd edn, Mc-Graw-Hill Education, North Ryde, NSW, pp. 424-431 

Ditton-Phare, P., Sandhu, H., Kelly, B., Kissane, D. and Loughland, C., 2016. Pilot Evaluation of a Communication Skills Training Program for Psychiatry Residents Using Standardized Patient Assessment. Academic Psychiatry, pp.1-8.

Knapp, M.L., Vangelisti, A.L. and Caughlin, J.P., 2014. Interpersonal Communication & Human Relationships. Pearson Higher Ed.

Lane, H.C., Hays, M.J., Core, M.G. and Auerbach, D., 2013. Learning intercultural communication skills with virtual humans: Feedback and fidelity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(4), p.1026.