WELF1019 Communication Skills In Social Work And Human Services

This assessment task requires you to:

 

Identify 5 communication skills that are important for your area of study and discuss why these skills are important.

Seek feedback from someone you interact with regularly concerning the communication skills you have identified.

 

This feedback needs to identify the strengths and areas of development concerning your communication skills.

Write about the feedback you received and how you can use this to enhance your communication skills within your area of study. 

Introduction

Communication plays an important role in every sphere or walk or life, may it be a professional or a professional commitment, and one has to master the skills of communication to create a lasting impact and also to convey the message in the best possible manner (Moore et. al., 2018). The purpose of the essay here is to entail the 5 communication skills most important to the area of study. The feedback on the skills identified have to be taken, based on which the strength and areas of development concerning the communication skills have to be created. Towards the end, it will be explained how the communication skills can be leveraged for creating the desired impact.

One of the most fundamental and important communication skills is the ability to effectively listen to the communicator. Most people think that the definition of communication starts with them communicating and the other person listening. In reality, it is not so, effective communication takes place when the person is able to understand and correctly interpret the message from the receiver, which starts with listening. Thus, it is extremely crucial to master the art of listening, and also it is extremely important skill in communication (Novakovich, Miah & Shaw, 2017).

Body language is another skill which plays an important role in delivering effective and efficient communication to the stakeholders. Body speaks in volume about the person, before a person even opens his mouth. One should ensure that he should understand the kinetics of body language while communicating with another person. A person with a tired and lethargic body language cannot create the right impact on the employees/followers or peers. Thus, one should make a good note of his/her body language before engaging in communication (Nurius et. al., 2017).

Another important communication skill is the art of Probing while communicating with a person. Good probing skills help an individual to extract the hidden essence of the communication, its essence or the underlying issues. In the absence of probing, a person cannot extract the best out of a person, and this way the communication stays incomplete. Thus, a person should ask as many questions as possible to better ascertain the situation and make the most out of it (Dainton & Zelley, 2018).

Articulation is another relevant communication skills which has the potential to creating the right impact while communication on any possible topic. Articulation is the modulation a person brings in his tone, his intonation, pronunciation, speech rate and his body language. Right articulation has the ability to create a long lasting impact on the receiver of the message (Byrne, 2018).

People have become quite smart, thanks to the technology revolution which gives people an easy access to variety of content and information on the web. This smartness, help the people to identify a person who is not authentic in his words, or does not mean or stand by his words, and use the words to just decorate the communication(Engleberg et. al., 2017). A person loses his respect and authenticity in front of the people, if he does not believe in authentic communication. Thus, one should always try to communicate with authenticity and ensure that he does not deceive people by misquoting words which the receiver does not intend to comply with in the near future.

I always look up to my elder brother who is working in the capacity of marketing manager in the world biggest e-commerce company Amazon. My brother has always been supportive of my learning and he on frequent occasions advises me on the skills required to excel in the corporate environment. He also tells me to focus on my communication abilities and to communicate with more and more people on a regular basis freely. This will help me in gaining self- confidence and also master the art of communicating effectively (Hynes & Veltsos, 2018).

My brother also felt that body language is an important attribute of delivering effective communication to the receiver. He gave me insight on how to develop the body language depending on the context of communication. He realized that I communicate issues having serious consequences with no change in my body language. To which, he suggested me a book to read on body language, and understand the nuance of body language in communicating with different people, based on different situation(Moore & Morton, 2017).

I also received a good feedback on my listening skills. I was told that rarely listen, I always listen with the intention of replying to the sender of the message. I also frequently stop the communicator to convey my message first, this according to my brother is a very bad habit, and I must work on it’s to develop this as my strength. It is effective listening which helps the person to understand the concern, grievances or issues of the person, which can be managed only if the receiver is listening carefully to the sender of the message.

One communication skill which my brother agrees that I have is authenticity in my words and communication. He mentioned that he rarely came across a time when I was speaking on any topic without gaining substantial information over it. He believes that I only communicate when I have a thorough or complete understanding of the topic, and I don’t make a fool out of myself. This communication skill would help me in establishing trust and strong relationship with any person I interact, as my communication is always derived from statistics, facts and my understanding of the topic and issue.

Articulation in the simplest words can be understood as the act of expressing something in the most coherent verbal form. It can also be understood as to clear pronunciation of the words, so that they can be easily heard and acknowledged. My brother agreed with me over the fact that articulation is an important communication skill, and when should understand the purpose of articulation and intonation in one’s speech. The feedback of my brother on my articulation was impressive, he told me explicitly that I have an art of articulation and I speak very clearly and fluently, so much so that I am able to deliver the right impact of my communication to the receiver.

Based on the feedback, which was extremely constructive in nature, I have developed my strength based on the feedback and have also identified the weakness in my communication skills. The motive here is to leverage or develop the strength, whilst alienating the weakness in my communication skills. I have been informed that I always give or pass on authentic information to people; this makes me a very reliable person. I can leverage on this strength by communicating with my peers and colleagues and convert them into strong followers by the virtue of authentic communication. I would also expand my knowledge and learning base to be a constant source of authentic communication with my followers/colleagues/peers and others.

I have been advised that I use the perfect articulation and intonation while communication with people. I understand and analyse the situation in great depth, before beginning to communicate with a person. My intentions are always to judge the mood of the person, and the criticality of the situation, based on which I bring change in my articulation to communicate effectively.

In order to minimize the impact of poor body language and work towards it, I have decided to join training on interpersonal communication skills using body language. I am also reading various literatures and watching plenty of video tutorials to learn the art of body language in communicating with people. It has been identified that I often listen to communicate and not to understand. In order to work towards this weakness I am practicing the art of listening, I am applying this practice in my personal life. I have started listening quietly until the end of the communication, and only then I respond based on the understanding of the message by the sender. I am of the opinion that in a couple of months I would be in most definite position to convert these weaknesses into my advantage. Thus, I have decided to work on the constructive feedback by creating an action plan to work on my weaknesses. The action plan will help me to systematically target my weakness, and work on turning them into my strength. It is only then I can communicate effectively with everyone and be an able communicator (Chandor, Hargie & Crute, 2017).

Thus, in order to bring the essay to a logical conversion, I would like to say that communication plays a pivotal role in every walk of personal and professional life. There is a theory with which I adhere in my personal and professional life while communicating with other people; I always use Intent V/s Impact communication theory. I always tend to create the same impact as the intent of my communication. I have decided that I have to be an effective and able communicator, in order to achieve this I have decided to leverage on my strength and minimise the weakness as identified according to the feedback.

References

Byrne, D. (2018). Introduction. In Contemporary Issues in Accounting (pp. 1-14). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Chandor, A., Hargie, O., & Crute, V. (2017). Professional interviewing. Routledge.

Dainton, M., & Zelley, E. D. (2018). Applying communication theory for professional life: A practical introduction. Sage publications.

Engleberg, I. N., Ward, S. M., Disbrow, L. M., Katt, J. A., Myers, S. A., & O'Keefe, P. (2017). The development of a set of core communication competencies for introductory communication courses. Communication Education, 66(1), 1-18.

Hynes, G. E., & Veltsos, J. R. (2018). Managerial communication: Strategies and applications. SAGE Publications.

Moore, P. M., Rivera, S., Bravo?Soto, G. A., Olivares, C., & Lawrie, T. A. (2018). Communication skills training for healthcare professionals working with people who have cancer. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (7).

Moore, T., & Morton, J. (2017). The myth of job readiness? Written communication, employability, and the ‘skills gap’in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 42(3), 591-609.

Novakovich, J., Miah, S., & Shaw, S. (2017). Designing curriculum to shape professional social media skills and identity in virtual communities of practice. Computers & Education, 104, 65-90.

Nurius, P. S., Coffey, D. S., Fong, R., Korr, W. S., & McRoy, R. (2017). Preparing professional degree students to tackle Grand Challenges: A framework for aligning social work curricula. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 8(1), 99-118