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| Miscommunication |
Everyone communicates with different people every day. Sometimes the communication may run smoothly while on certain occasion, the communication may not end up to the way we want it to be. Even worst, it may come to a situation in which both parties eventually seeing one another as enemy. How can these all scenarios happen?
When we talk about relationship with other people, effective communication plays a big role. In simple, effective communication means the ability to communicate our ideas or thoughts clearly to the other parties as well as being able to identify whether they really understand what we are trying to communicate. Besides that, we must also be a good listener and have a good understanding of what the other parties are trying to communicate. The choice of communication channel is crucial in effective communication. Therefore, we need to identify the audience as well as the channel that may work best for an effective communication to happen.
Effective communication has been a major concern for me. I believe that it is very important, be it on maintaining my relationship with family, relatives, friends or even someone whom I just knew. Besides that, I find it useful for me when I need to liaise with different speakers/organizations to invite them to my CCA events. The same goes to the success of an interview as well.
In maintaining my relationship, the first thing I do is to identify the characteristics of the people who I communicate with. I tend to differentiate the way I communicate with people who are easy-going, shy, friendly, or easily irritated. Besides that, I also use different approaches to communicate in different context. For example, we need to differentiate the way we communicate in a meeting (which is in serious mode) and in the conversation during spare time (less tense mode).
Effective communication is also an important element in my CCA. In my CCA, I have the responsibility to invite speakers/organizations to our CCA events. In order to ensure that I get the speakers on time and the activities to run smoothly, I need to do liaising with different speakers. Some speakers are alright with invitation just through email while others might prefer to be called through phone. Sometimes, the speakers even prefer me to meet up them to get things clearer to them. Before liaising with the speakers, I usually consult with seniors from previous committee to get advice on what is the best approach to get different speakers. Furthermore, I also need to apply different approaches to communicate with the speakers since the communication channels and the characteristics of each speakers is different.
Another important application of effective communication is during the interview. I had been to several interviews. Some of them were successful while others were not. I feel that there is a mix ratios between luck and effective communication in a success of an interview. Interviewers might have a bias judgement. However, apart from the luck, I still believe that effective communication is very crucial since it leaves the first impression to the interviewers and will increase our chance of getting through the interview.
The importance of effective communication in the working world is not surprising for me. On the last Thursday of week 2, I was attending an event called Suit-Up 2011! In that event, we were given the opportunity to network with the companies that we might be interested in. As I approached their booth and asked them questions regarding their job qualification, most of them mentioned communication skills as one of their most important criteria. This real scenario shows us that effective communication is very crucial nowadays in getting a job.
In conclusion, I believe that effective communication is very important in every aspect of my life and this is also one of the reasons that motivate me to keep on improving my communication skills.
hi johan,
ReplyDeletei agree with you that effective communication involves many aspects including listening to others and to have understanding of the person you are trying to convey the message to.
By identifying and understanding the audience, one can bring across his or her message effectively.
Furthermore one can also avoid offending the other party as mentioned in paragraph one while having successful communication leading to effective communication.
Hi Johan, I like the way you start your blog! It is very catching to start with a cartoon.:)
ReplyDeleteBased on my understanding, you have three points: 1."what effective communication means"; 2."what makes an effective communication"; 3."why effective communication palys a big role in maintaining relationship". You gave a very clear definition of effectvie communication and explained what makes a communication effective in a persuadable way. You may add an example to elaborate on the second point. About the third point, you talked about your own experience which is vivid and helpful, since it made us relate to our own real life experience. I think it is very good that the things you shared in your blog could arouse the same feelings from the readers. :)
I want to give some suggestions. Firstly,organise your content: introduction, body, conclusion. In the introduction,you should have a topic sentence that tells us clearly what you are going to argue.(And do not throw us a question that you are not going to answer.)In the body part,you can come up with 2 or 3 points to argue your topic sentence. I think you have done well in your argument. However,the points are not well organised so it is a bit confusing. Thirdly, you lack of a conclusion. I think your last paragraph is a new point.
In all, it is a good blog which shows your own thoughts on effective communication and enlightens me!
I agree that effective communication is required to maintain a good relationship with family, relatives, friends or even someone whom I just knew!
ReplyDelete@Malcolm and Xiu Xian : Thank you for your comment. :)
ReplyDelete@Huang Huan: Thank you for your constructive suggestions.
1. The idea is that I would like to address the issue "Why effective communication is important for me?". So I came out with an introduction which is to bring an issue of communication problem,followed by the definition of "effective communication" and what makes an effective communication. Only after that, I bring an issue of why effective communication is important for me.
2. About throwing the question, I intentionally did that because I want to catch the readers attention that "effective communication" is what we need in the subsequent paragraphs. Moreover, I assumed that as a rhetorical question.
3. I agree with you that I am lacking of elaboration in my points in the third paragraph. Perhaps I will break them down in different paragraphs to elaborate each of the points. This is because I thought we are limited to 250 - 300 words in our blog post, which is a miscommunication.
4. For the last paragraph, it is one of the example of the importance of effective communication, followed by the conclusion that it is important in my life.
Once again, thank you for your suggestion. I will edit and try to make it better. :)
Yes these days because most large organisations have a cosmopolitan employee profile, interviewers want to know how culturally sensitive you are and whether if put in a multinational, multicultural context, would you be able to communicate effectively.
ReplyDelete