The Frustrations of Poor CommunicationThe Need to Communicate Effectively
There are 3 key areas of my life that demands effective communication skills to be exercised. The first is in the area of relationships. Staying in hall means I only have the weekends to spend with my family. This creates space for communication disaster as I don’t get to talk them as often. Hence, there is a greater need to learn to listen actively so as to understand them better. Just merely a few weeks ago, there was a misunderstanding with my friend. She was furious and hurt to the point of tears. My mind was frantically formulating the right words to explain the situation accurately, appropriately and seeking to adopt the right tone as I asked for an apology.
The second is teaching and mentoring. The need to present clearly rose rapidly over the past year as I found myself having to teach often in my church. I have been given opportunities to teach individual bible studies and small groups occasionally. The clarity of the lessons is of vital importance as it would affect the listeners’ understanding. I found the need to structure my thoughts, use visual aids, include relevant examples and analogies and even pace my speech so that it is not too fast to the listeners to catch!
The Constant Conscious Effort that is Required
I would suggest that there is a need to consciously put in effort to be an effective communicator. I believe that effective communication is not something you can simply learn and it will stay with you. From my personal experience, it always required additional effort to be clear in what you present, to clarify what you have heard, to ensure that your intention is not misunderstood in your writings. Hence, learning the science and developing the skills are just the stepping-stones. Only when coupled with practice and conscious effort can one become an effective communicator.
5 comments:
I totally agree with you on the frustration of poor communication. It is up to both parties in most cases. For example, among close friends, it might just take a wink or smile to understand each other's idea, but we cannot expect it to be the same for all the people we meet.
In most cases, it require both parties to practice good communication skills to make things work. "It takes both hands to clap."
I have been through many occasions like this and I have to admit that I would be at fault half of the time and hopefully I would pick up something useful in this course. As you have said, it takes a constant effort to be an effective communicator. This is probably one thing i need to remind myself about. =)
Hi Peng Siang, I also agree that it takes a conscious effort to communicate well and you can't take it that since I have learnt the skills, I can communicate perfectly now because it may sometimes take just a slip of the tongue to destroy a relationship.
Speaking of your experience about running around the school because you didn't communicate your expectations of the welcome tea to your committee, my CCA faced the same problem too.
My president simply told me and another member to design a poster, book the venue and order catered food. After we did that we simply assumed we could rest on our laurels.
Only 45 minutes before the event, the president called me and asked me why the venue wasn't decorated. I had to rush all over the school printing up signs with the names of our sub-committees and arrows leading to our welcome tea venue.
It was a frantic rush but we managed to pull it off. Whew! However the event could have been done in a much more organised manner. It would have been better if the president could have communicated his requests earlier to us instead of assuming that we knew what he wanted. Sometimes assumptions can be fatal.
Hi Patrick, I have had a keen interest towards education, and hence agree with you that presentation of ideas and key concepts to audiences in a clear, concise and easily digestible manner is important, but at times challenging. To add on to your list of aids, I have personally found it useful to bring out a main learning point through games or activities. During the activity, the presenter can get immediate feedback on the audience’s understanding by merely accessing the problems faced during the activity. Therefore, I realised that the audiences themselves are at times their best teachers, and a learning objective need not necessarily be communicated directly from the presenter.
Hey Peng Siang, I agree that effective communication is like requiring two hands to clap. Problems like misinterpretation can still occur if the speaker gets his message across in a clear manner, but the receiver fails to listen actively (and vice versa).
In fact, I just met with a situation whereby assumptions on the speaker's part led to unclear messages sent across to the receiver. Hence, resulting in work getting incompletely done.
Every conversation (verbal and non-verbal) in our every day life is like a lesson for us. In order to be truly effective communicators, we have to spot our mistakes and work on them everytime. There is no end to this communication lesson. Let's work towards the common goal of effective communication together. (:
Hi Peng Siang, wonderful use of anecdotes to highlight the importance of being able to communicate well. Short but effective. Thanks for sharing them!
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