Reflection on Learning in the Course (Blog Post #4)

For this final post, I will be reflecting on the long weeks of learning interpersonal and work communication module. It had been a long journey through this module and of course, it had been challenging to say the least. Right from the very first day of the lesson, I felt compelled yet excited to learn this module. I learned about the importance of communication skills, process, models and channels. I have achieved the objectives that I set in the beginning of this course. I will apply the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) for handling interpersonal conflict. I will put the use of Daniel Goleman's quote of using the five components of emotional intelligence and success to further enhance my communication.

  

In forming a group of four team members, teamwork is always going to play a huge part in the group project for this module. Luckily, working with my team members seemed to be getting on very well.  I had always found myself getting stuck in coming up with ideas for the project pitch and its content during group meetings. I always said what I felt was necessary. This was down to feel very comfortable amongst the rest of my group and knowing that they would respect my opinion and this was the same for each member. There was always a lot of respect for one another.

Overall, the project has been a lot of fun and completely challenging experience right from start to the finish. Having to produce an almost three-minute video skit production from scratch was very rewarding and the video could not have been achieved without each of my member's contribution. I'm very pleased with the outcome of the sound piece and the presentation. This could not have been possible without teamwork. On the other hand, I was not completely satisfied with my presentation outcome and wished I could have done more and better improved myself. It was a shame but now I know what to expect to improved my presentation skills.

Below were my group presentation slides including my notes and scripts for the presentation. A lot of changes need to be made to meet the content  requirements however the effort invested in were definitely worth it.😄

Below was my group video production.

Finally, that was the end of our presentation and it was a wrap up for this module!😌

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict (Blog Post #3)

Such accidents often occur in our daily life, but it was unfortunate that I had to encounter a traffic accident on the 16^th of January 2017. I witnessed a road traffic accident and a conflict right before me. It happened on a Monday night at approximately 2240 hours along Bukit Timah Road. While I was riding back home from Bugis, I noticed a black Volkswagen sedan car horned furiously and hit another car from the rear of the vehicle. The driver of the black car got off from his car and started to hurl vulgarities and hammering the body of the red Mercedes hatchback car. Furthermore, he demanded the driver of the red car to get out of the vehicle. An athlete built, a male driver, got out from his red car and confronted the aggressor, hence the conflict started.  In his sharp and harsh tone, he accused the driver of the black car for driving too fast and for failing to stop the vehicle on time. In his retaliation, the accused driver threw a tantrum and blamed the other driver for failing to check his blind spot and poor judgment of the road. 

Instead of compromising and being apologetic, the blame-game further escalated the tension between both of them which then turned out to be disastrous. Based on my observation, I concluded that the black sedan car’s driver felt ballistic and exasperated after constantly being accused by the other driver. A thoroughly unlikeable scene from both drivers turned sour as the argument was starting to turn physical. In the end, the argument was broken up by two traffic police officers who arrived shortly on the scene. Both seems reluctant to end their argument as one of them felt the competing for whoever had the right of way. Furthermore, being in an accident sure costs money. Therefore, I believe that the respective drivers would not like to be the one paying more than the other. In your opinion, what could either of them have done for the situation to be handled more positively?    

Evaluating Listening Skills & Nonverbal Behaviour (Blog Post #2) [Revised]

There is the time that when we interact with people, we unconsciously act upon our emotions or display non-verbal behaviours that we are not aware of. Arguments occasionally happen in our lives, which is not any different for me at home. Through my own experience, I felt that my father lacks in good listening skills when having a conversation. I feel that this could be one of the reasons to those occasional arguments between my parents.

One of such occasions which I observed was an argument between my parents. A minor misunderstanding could lead to a verbal argument. I noticed that my father did not maintain an eye contact with my mother when she is trying to give an explanation. This caused my mother to be frustrated and therefore created tension between my parents due to lack of attention from my father. My mother assumed that my father was just passively listening to her explanation. My mother's assumptions were further proven when my father could not answer a question relating to the unresolved issue.

Apart from that, I observed that my father would frequently interrupt my mother whenever a discussion takes place. I believed my father created a communication barrier which further prevented my mother from expressing her thoughts. Not only that he would disregard her opinion, but also brought up matters from the past which results in a sour relationship and communication.   These one-sided conversations occur whenever my parents trying to make a mutual decision or when both being defensive among themselves.

In my opinion, age is also a factor to communications. As my father is in his mid-fifties, I believe that he would prefer a brief conversation than lengthy ones due to his short attention span. While my mother is in her mid-fortifies, age gap difference may be a factor to a barrier communication between both of my parents. My mother shows a better engagement while conversing and have significant influence as a good listener. Hence, age gap difference will bring a difference in term of deciding to a mutual understanding or an agreement. In addition to this, I evaluate that culture is also an affecting factor. In this context, having such short conversations is a norm in marriage culture. Perhaps it is due to the years that they have been together and I believe my parents are expected to understand each other. But alas, sometimes we all demand a certain level of attention depending on the topics and depth of the conversation. Another factor that plays a part is gender influence in listening skills and nonverbal behaviour. For example, females are more accurate decoders of most nonverbal cues. The overall superiority of females as decoders has been found in many different cultures. Females also tend to be more accurate encoders of emotional cues than males. Females are more non-verbally expressive; for example, my mother showed a direct gaze, touch, direct body orientation, facial expressiveness, nods and vocal cues whenever she disagrees or disapproved. As men and women were often described as Mars vs Venus, their brains and thoughts processing are different. Men and women respond to a problem differently. Men tend to respond to problems with a solution while women tend to desire a sympathetic response to their troubles.

In conclusion, I learned the importance of acquiring good listening skills by implying emotional intelligence. Thus, this has helped me to be a good listener and  I can prevent mistakes when engaging a conversation with others.

The role of emotional intelligence in interpersonal communication

On week one, I learned about an introduction to interpersonal communication. It explores about verbal and non-verbal communication and the communication process of how the message is sent and received from another party through a various different communication channel. Going further in depth, I learned about emotional intelligence which is developing strong "People Skills". I find that this topic is intriguing as emotional intelligence skills are the right skills that I need in order to improve my challenges in communication.  

From my understanding, emotional intelligence is the key to both personal and professional success. Daniel Goleman define emotional intelligence into five elements which are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. I believed that people with high IQ do not determine a successful life. Although certainly, a baseline IQ is necessary for effective performance but emotional intelligence may be twice as important as IQ in contributing to excellent and effective performance.

Self-awareness is a core factor that contributes to the improvement of individual performance and development of effective communication and relationship with others. It is important to control one's own emotions and understand the emotions of others which thereafter manifest their emotional intelligence by exercising interpersonal communication skill to communicate effectively, motivate others, resolve conflicts and build teamwork.

I believed that successful people have higher emotional intelligence, hence higher interpersonal communication skill. Emotional intelligence has a positive influence on the implementation of relating well to others and achieving your goals. Emotional intelligence affects the people who you are working with which means that you value others, listening to their wants and needs, and able to empathize with them on many different levels.

Strengths and Challenges in Communication (Blog post #1) [Revised]

Communication is a way of exchanging information, whether receiving or sending information through speaking, writing or any other platform of communication.  There are a group of people that communicate with each other effectively. Through various different available channels of communication, face-to-face communication is my biggest strength in communicating with the others. Personally, I find that face-to-face communication establishes more trust than other modes of communication. It is more likely to be perceived as credible. Face-to-face communication is more productive and efficient as there is less likelihood of misunderstanding or misinterpreting. Through face-to-face communication, it allows for better rapport and trust-building than audio or written communications which possibly make the difference in reaching an agreement, ensuring that each party fully understands the other.

Challenges that I faced in communication are deep listening, translating criticisms and complaints into a request for action and having a little conversation that causes anxiety. One of the problems in communication is getting an attention from others and listen carefully to the message. Through experienced, I had difficulties communicating with my peers in pitching out of my idea to contribute to the team whilst asking for their feedback or comment.  I was too afraid that my request would be taken into a wrong perception as a demand. I probably spend most of the time trying to arrange for an agreement and cooperative action, hence I need to be concerned about engaging the people. However, I noticed that the attention and energy from my peers will often go into a combination of defending oneself by trying to save face and counter-attacking. It is only when my peers feel safe, they are likely to listen and consider how they might meet our needs.  

There are two objectives that I will set to achieve by the end of this course. Firstly, I will set or reset my expectations when communicating. Each individual has a natural communication style, but to work effectively within a team, I need to determine how much communication needs to happen to make everyone comfortable. Secondly, I will try a different method in communicating effectively. I communicate brilliantly over the phone but jumble everything up by e-mail. I do great with sketches but never understand my written descriptions. Hopefully, by the end of the course, I will try a different format by writing it out, talk through it, draw sketches, give examples, or do whatever I can to make the concepts in my head translate into something that the other person can understand.

Week 0

How important is it for you to develop effective communication skills?

What might you do in this course to help yourself develop as an effective interpersonal communicator?

Communication is essential and it is important for me to develop effective communication skills as I believe it is applicable in the working world. Communication can be categorized in this manner, verbal or non - verbal. However in my opinion, I think that combining both ways is most effective.

i.e Remaining eye contact and correct body posture while speaking to a client shows that you are interested in working together to fulfil the agreement. After all one needs to make a good impression as it goes a long way.

Another example is the 'tone' in your messages via email, letters and etc. Let say if you want to indicate a matter of importance in your email, Through my experience, I believe one would bold that part of sentence to indicate deadlines or urgency. I might be wrong, but there are many ways on how messages are being delivered through communications. Through this module, I will learn and improve my communication skills that will be taught by the lecturer from this module. Furthermore the skills that I will be learning will be useful in work and also in daily life events.