Task 2 - Communications

By Ajay Sandhu

Explain the principles of effective Communication

The three main principles are:

General Communication Skills Interpersonal SkillsWritten Communication Skills

These principles aid the employees to communicate with other people more effectively.

General Communication Skills

This includes; understanding cultural differences, finding ways to engage with someone who is of a different ethnic group or background.

Interpersonal Skills

These include the use of language and overcoming barriers to effective communication.

For example: Language Barriers, these can be overcome by the employee gaining basic standards of the language and/or having a translator present.

Written Communicational Skills These include following company

guidelines and taking care with spelling and grammar ensuring that everyone is able to read it.

If the employee has used written communication skills effectively they can be used to persuade a client into a meeting or buying a company product.

Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills are related to how you interact with other people. There are many ways of communicating with colleagues in the workplace.

Positive and Negative Language to one another.

Active Engagement – In meetings or discussions etc.

Positive Language & Negative Language

Positive language in the workplace is used to provide embracement and in some cases constructive criticism.

Negative language can be used, however they are also used with out sounding too critical/rude.

For example:‘Sorry, but I don’t like what you’ve done there’You could say:‘I see what you’ve done there and here are some points to where I think you can improveit’

Active Engagement

There are different aspects of how you can show you’re actively engaged:

Nodding: showing the speaker your understand what’s being said.

Summarising: Repeating the main points of the meeting and building from them.

Paraphrasing: Using different words in the same context, ensuring that everyone understands what was said.

Communicate in Writing

There are many ways to communicate through writing, whether the text has been formed through word-processing software or being handwritten.

Companies have sets of guidelines as to how they want employees to layout documents whether they’re to the company, or outgoing to others.

Organisational Guidelines & Procedures

Some organisations have guidelines in place to show portray the company’s level of professionalism to the employees.

These rules are known as House Style for example:

Left Margin: 3cm Right Margin: 2.5cm Top Margin (Header): 4cm Bottom Margin (Footer): 2cm Justification: Full (Text is centred) Line Spacing: 1.5

Spelling & Grammar

Considered that most word-processing software is now updated to have spell and grammar checking, there should be no reason for these mistakes to occur.

However, when handwriting it’s hard not to make mistakes. Poor spelling and grammar indicate that the person doesn’t take much care over the presentation of work. The recipient may wonder if the person doesn’t care over the work too.

Technical Problems of Communication

Not having an email account could mean that when you apply for a job, the company could struggle to contact you as many companies rely on a person’s email to provide them with important information. This could be overcome by the candidate setting up an email account to receive important emails like these, accounts are made very simple to set up nowadays, it literally takes a few minutes.

Technical Problems of Communication

Not having phone signal can prove a vital barrier for employees, for example: if the employee was on an important conference call in a car journey, and went under a tunnel they’d lose signal and access to the conference. This could be overcome by the employee making sure they do not have to do anything else (e.g. driving) whilst on the call, therefore they are less likely to lose signal and more likely to be engaged and not distracted.

References to Images

http://www.echinacities.com/china-media/top-10-questions-foreigners-love-to-ask-chinese.html

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/21/designing-style-guidelines-for-brands-and-websites/

http://sortitout-inc.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/interpersonal-skills-part-1-positive.html

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/n/nod.asp

http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/blogarchive/010298.html

http://www.spellingdoctor.com/ http://www.comm100.com/blog/email-mar

keting-ebook/best-practices-for-sales-conversion-emails.html

http://www.pixmac.com/picture/can+you+hear+me+now/000012125811