P2 - Effective communication

Effective communication – Unit 1 P2

General skills

Cultural differences

When communicating with others whether it be friends, work colleagues or strangers it is fundamental that you understand there are cultural differences. Cultural differences can vary from being in a different city to being in a totally different country, for example going from Manchester to Liverpool the accent people use changes vastly. A change in accent may cause problems with communication and lack of understanding of some words so you must take time to reiterate sentences if someone is finding it hard to understand what you are saying. Also in some other countries some words may mean different thing in their language an example would be if you said “back” this could be misinterpreted in Japanese to “baka” which means idiot.

Techniques for engaging an audience

Engaging an audience is a key factor of communication, this is because if you cannot grab the audience’s attention and keep them focused they will get bored and begin to stop listening. Key techniques used to engage an audience include confidence, voice projection and movement of the body to attract attention.

Confidence is one of the key techniques because without confidence you may stutter or forget what you are talking about due to the pressure of the audience. Voice projection is also a key technique as you need to make sure everyone in the room can hear you, though you should change the projection of your voice dependent on the venue, this is because you may seem like you shouting or over exaggerating if you project to much in a small venue and you may seem to lack confidence if you are quiet in a large venue. 

Also body movements are useful for engaging an audience as people naturally look towards objects that move so if you are constantly moving and using your hands people will take more notice of you whereas if you stand in the middle of a stage with your hands in your pockets then you may seem boring and lacking in confidence.

Adapting content and style to suit audience needs

Adapting the content of your work and the style of your communication is very good for communicating with people of all ages and intelligence. A way in which you may change the way that you communicate to a different age group may be using smaller words and explaining your points in more detail, this particular change would appeal more to younger people. Another way in which you may change to appeal to other audience would be for example changing a presentation from having lots of colours and animations to something more formal and direct, this would be changing from something that would appeal to younger people to appeal to older people.

 Interpersonal skills

Positive and negative language

Dependent on the reason you are communicating with people you may have to use positive or negative language, if you are praising somebody for a piece of work you would use a positive attitude and have a light voice, for example “Good job on that work Joe.”. Alternatively if you are using communication to tell someone off for making a massive mistake then you would have a harsh voice and speak at a higher volume, an example of negative language would be “You idiot! How did you lose all the paperwork?!”.

Barriers

Barriers cause a lack of communication from you to others, an example of a barrier could be sound from a projector fan or perhaps an exterior source like a construction site. Another barrier that may get in the way of communication would be faulty equipment like a PA, if the microphone is broke or the cables are faulty then this could stop sound coming through the system. Also barriers like people looking away from you could cause problems as they probably will not be focusing on you.

Active engagement

Active engagement requires constant information coming from you to the audience in a way that keeps the audience’s attention. For example if you were talking to school children you would continuously use images and videos to keep them engaged in the subject. Whereas with adults you would probably use informative images to keep them occupied for example in a meeting pie charts are used in presentations to inform and keep them engaged in the meeting.

Written communication skills

Written communication is key when sending formal letters of application or giving information in meetings via worksheets, for example if information is given to a person using massive paragraphs that go twenty lines down then the people who have the sheet might get lost or lose interest in what they are reading, whereas if it is split up into smaller sections of information then the readers may read more into the document without losing track of where they are.

Email, letters and fax

Emails are the most common form of communication this day in age. This is because they are a fast and easy way to send a message from one person to another, whether that be in the same building or over thousands of miles away, they are also good for sending files for work to others.

Letters are an old fashioned form of communication but they are good to grab a person’s attention as they take time to write out and will seem more important than an email that can just be sent. Also people might be more eager to open a letter than to check their emails. For example personally I don’t read my emails often but I always open letters and parcels on the day I receive them.

Faxing is a good way to send documents from a computer to a person somewhere else, faxing is good because it saves the recipient from printing off the information themselves. An example where faxing may be used is sending signed documents from a scanner to a fax machine somewhere else in the country, this kind of process is used when a child needs a parent to sign their application for a passport but their parent isn’t with them. The application is emailed to a parent then the parent prints it off, scans it and sends it back via fax to the passport office.

Emoticons 

Emoticons are used to mainly in phone texts and instant messaging, they are a friendly way to show the how you are feeling to someone else. It also allows the other person so see how you are feeling and respond appropriately an example of an emoticon in use would be in the phrase “I've had a bad day L” this emoticon shows that they are feeling sad because they have had a bad day oppositely a person may put “I've had a great day J” to demonstrate how they are feeling.

Spelling and grammar

Spelling and grammar is one of the most important thing when communicating with people as if works are spelled wrong or incorrectly placed in a sentence then the sentence could make no sense or mean something totally different.