Communication Skills

Ellis Richard

Description

Essential reading for young professionals on the first rung of their career ladders, this second edition is an up-to-date and invaluable guide to improved communication skills, designed to develop the ambitious individual's prospects in their chosen profession. Tackling a broad range of different communication skills in careful detail, the book also contains guidance for the ongoing development of these skills, and is useful for professionals at every level of competence in communicating. Ellis promotes reflection and participation through exercises, encouraging not just passive reading, but active engagement.The volume has wide coverage – from making presentations, producing a concise CV and negotiating and asserting to debate on current issues of the real effectiveness of e-mail and PowerPoint versus face-to-face communication: issues very relevant to the contemporary work place. Drawing from experiences in his own successful communications training and consultancy business, Ellis bases his advice on the most recent developments in communications research, and clarifies with examples of current professional practice, making Communication Skills the essential aid to career advancement.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• Style Manuals
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• Personal Growth
• EDUCATION
• Lettres et linguistique
• Communication studies
• General officer
• Self-help
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9781841502984
• Langue: English

Extrait

Communication Skills
Stepladders to success for the professional
Richard Ellis
First Published in Hardback in 2002 by Intellect Books , PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in USA in 2002 by Intellect Books , ISBS, 5804 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2002 Intellect
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
Consulting Editor: Masoud Yazdani Cover Illustration Peter Singh Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Production: Robin Beecroft
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-826-8 / ISBN 1-84150-022-4
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Wiltshire
Contents
1 Introduction
Getting up the stepladder; Careers, Professional competence; Reflective learning; Communicative competence; The reflective practitioner & the learning organisation.
2 Skills development
Motivation to learn; Key factors in learning; Skills acquisition; Using this book.
3 Interpersonal skills
4 Your audience
Information you need prior to communicating; Post-communication feedback.
5 Listening and interviewing
Active listening; Barriers to active listening; Enhancing our listening; Asking questions to improve our listening; Making use of behaviour questions; Summary: 3 key aspects of listening to remember.
6 Being interviewed
Why interview?; Preparation before interviewing; The phone call for the interview; Your CV/application form; Before that interview; At the interview; After the interview.
7 That favourite - the telephone!
Factors in successful telephoning; Time management and telephoning; Feedback on your telephone skills.
8 Assertiveness
A balancing act; Examples of assertiveness; Assertiveness and communication; Training ourselves to communicate more assertively; Assertiveness and handling conflict; Transactional analysis (TA); TA and giving/receiving criticism; Other applications of TA.
9 Negotiation
TA applied to negotiating; Stages of negotiation; Negotiation and problem solving; Linkage in negotiation.
10 Communication in groups
Stages groups go through; Roles we may play in groups; Other theories on groups and their effect on how we may communicate.
11 Communicating in and out of the Chair
Key questions to ask before a meeting; Auditing your meetings; Ways in which participants can assist meetings; Some key skills in chairing meetings; Taking minutes in meetings.
12 Communicating on your feet
The invitation to give a presentation; Analysing and clarifying your remit; Detailed preparation (notes for your talk); Coping with nerves; Delivery skills Using visual aids appropriately; Handling questions; After the presentation.
13 The ingredients of effective writing
Being concise; Being clear; Being readable; Finding the right tone; Being consistent; Being relevant; Finding a suitable structure; The appropriate use of graphics; Finding the appropriate register; Finding the right language; Getting the nuts and bolts right.
14 The process of writing
Your readers; The questions you need to ask and have answered; The actual writing process; Going for it; Editing and proofing; Checking and checking.
15 Specific types of writing
Reports; Letters and memos; Writing for publications.
16 Creativity in your communication
Strategies: Ways of getting out of holes; Examples of escape; Inertia in our communication; Different kinds of thinking and how these can assist our communication.
17 Keeping up the progress
10 ways to keep up progress; 10 questions to remind you about communication; Final checklist.
Introduction
The ability to communicate is a vital ladder to all career development. Without sufficient communication skills it is possible that there will be little movement upwards (or increasingly these days, sideways). If you are planning one day to develop your own career in self employment then communication skills will be critical to any chances you have of gaining, holding and enlarging your client base. There is considerable evidence to suggest that those who lack communication skills find it difficult to advance their careers. This shouldn t really surprise us if we consider just how much time we spend communicating with our colleagues, managers, clients and customers and how the quality of that communication will affect our relationship with these.
Surveys of what employers are looking for when they recruit graduates suggest that effective communication skills are very high on their list. However, there is some vagueness as to what communication skills actually refers to-that will be addressed in these pages! Many people-you may know some-are effectively blocked in their careers because they are unable to draft that report, make that presentation or sustain that interview. This book is concerned with providing you, the professional, with approaches, techniques, advice to assist you in your communication skills and so unblock barriers to progress in your profession.
The words profession and professional are rather vague; as far as this book is concerned they refer to the work that someone does which requires special training/expertise, for instance accountancy, teaching, medicine, law, surveying, health and safety, personnel, politics? (there s one for an argument!) If your particular profession is not in the above list please don t take offence!
This book is best regarded as a guide like one to the countryside (or the search for that favourite pub!). Dip into it for particular advice on particular issues; for example, how to write that letter of application to go with that CV, browse through it for ideas; it might spark off some thoughts for your next presentation to clients.
As this book is concerned with skills we will take some time to examine how we can develop skills of communication; we ll present some contemporary research on skills acquisition and development (see chapter 2).
Getting up the stepladder
A stepladder is just that-a means by which you can take certain steps to reach your goal e.g. change that light bulb in the hall. In fact that s quite a good metaphor: very often in our careers we will need to change light bulbs , get some new ideas, develop brighter ways of communicating, put new sources of energy into our talk and writing, hence this book.
Developing your self-esteem and reducing stress
If we feel confident about our communication then this tends to increase our self- esteem and, in turn, our feeling of self-worth. There are very many people who have never developed this sense in themselves and consequently find it very difficult to be assertive and confident in their communication with others. These feelings of inadequacy can increase stress-we bottle up our feelings instead of expressing them, and this can do damage to our health. Enhancing your skills in communication should have real benefits to your health. If you look and sound more confident, people may think you are more confident; this can have beneficial consequences for you.
We cannot promise you that by reading this book and acting on its advice you will immediately experience less stress in your life but it may help. It should certainly encourage you to be a more confident communicator. We very much hope that the experience of reading this text and taking the ideas back to your life and work does increase your feeling of esteem.
Careers today
We make much use of this in the book and so a word of explanation. Some years ago, say before the 1970s, careers meant exactly that: gradual and in some ways quite predictable steps upwards-under factotum, factotum, senior factotum, managing factotum etc. These days there are still careers, one can still move from junior doctor to house officer, registrar and consultant but in many organisations there is now a core and a periphery, the core-these are the essential workers-and those on the edge, the periphery who may be engaged job per job, short-term contract by short-term contract etc. Charles Handy has written of the increasing emergence of the portfolio career where there are a number of distinct strands within it; this he suggests will more and more replace the traditional career of junior to intermediate to senior to retirement.
Professional competence
We will be dealing with these in chapter 2. We are familiar with the word skill. As professionals you will have gained certain skills, you will also be learning through your professional practise of how to use those skills in order that you achieve competence.
The notion of competence has been much written about: it implies knowledge of the what (for instance, the core professional concepts) and knowledge of the how (the ways in which we put these concepts into practice). This implies that what we do is underpinned in some way with concepts of theory , in other words our skills are not built up haphazardly; according to the theory of competence we may build up theories of how things work -what is successful, what fails, what could have worked better etc.
Reflective learning
David Kolb in his work in reflective learning suggests that we should move from the experience (that meeting which didn t come off) to reflection (Why not? Was it the agenda, the timing etc?) to thinking about various concepts and theories, i.e. theories about the effect of peer pressure or groupthink (see page 66).
Following this we should move into active experimentation such as Let s try this change at the next meeting , and further reflection on the results. (So how did these changes operate?) His model (1971) follows the pattern in Figure 1.1.
In essence then the experience will, if possible, be followed by some kind of reflection. We have to admit that for most of our professional lives it is very diff