Needed Effective Communication In The Workplace Business Essay

It was very interesting to learn human relations and its various aspects. Study of human relations helped me to understand the critical aspects related to it and helped me to understand the core concept of good relationships. In our lecture we came across the different themes of human relations and understood the technical side of those themes, which will help us in developing and sustaining good relations not only at the workplace but also in personal life to create a win-win situation not only for the organization but also for the employee. Communication and communication styles and skills and motivation are the themes of human relation in which I was more interested. As far as I understood I found that communication is the back bone of the entire human relations including all its themes whether it is about motivation or about negotiation, communications has the key role in every theme.

Good communication skills help in expressing your ideas, views and feelings to others in a very effective way. Better communication related to the better scope of self-disclosure, improved relationship between employer and employees, diminishing the scope of conflict. Improved relationship at the workplace, along with motivation will yield high productivity.

Communication is about exchanging information whether it’s verbally, non-verbally or written. Communication is a process where people exchange opinions, and it is critical in holding the society together. The ability to communicate allows people to get their idea across and get work done, it also allows then to express their feeling and emotions which further helps to form and maintain relationship both at personal and professional level. During the class room sessions I also came across the face that communication is not just about exchanging information it is also about how you exchange it, which mean the style of communication. Different style of communication serves completely different purposes. These styles serve the goal of decision making, influencing others, managing the knowledge, motivating, self-realisation any many more.

Communication style is more of the behavioural pattern that can observed by the others. Each and every individual has their own unique communication style. Communication is not only about sending the message across it’s about understanding the person to whom the message is been sent and delivering the message accordingly for the effective delivery of the message or idea. Good communication also requires a very high level of self-awareness, which further helps in understanding the person’s style of communication in return it helps in building a good and lasting effect on others. By realising and understanding that how others perceive and what is their level of knowledge and understanding, helps to adopt a style of communication which is effective for that particular group of people. Many researched have been conducted over the style of communication to see what style is most suited for what type of people, community or society. Adapting a style of communication which makes the audience feel more comfortable is the best and has the most productive result as compared to other styles.

WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION

Communication is one of the most important aspect of the workplace, which aids to co-ordinate work activities, decision-making, management and productivity. Communication can be either impersonal or interpersonal, where impersonal communication refers to the process one way communication that is the interest is only in sending the message across for example memos, letters, manuals, instructions and so on. Impersonal communication is considered to be the convenient way of communication as in this no feedback is required. Whereas in interpersonal communication which is also considered as the most effective way of communication, feedback is essential and must. The interpersonal communication would include interviews, meetings, phone calls and it can be oral, written or nonverbal. According to Christopher L. Heffner there are three interpersonal communication styles.

Aggressive Interpersonal Style: It arises when people stand up for their rights, but at the same time violates the rights of other people. Also they possess the habit of pointing out other.

Passive Interpersonal Style: According to this style people put the rights of others before their own rights, hence minimizing one’s own self-worth. They think that their feelings are not of much importance. They are the people who apologise most of the time and have low self-esteem which result in the irritation and feel angry at themselves.

Assertive Interpersonal Style: It arises when people stand for their own rights while maintaining respect and taking care of the rights of the others too. People possessing assertive interpersonal style have high self-esteem. They have a very relaxed posture and varied but balanced rate of speech. They are the ones who are active listeners and action-oriented. They are the ones with flexibility and high level of confidence, also they feel motivated.

EXPERIENCE

I have worked at several places and I have mixed experiences of the workplaces. Now I can understand and make out the mistakes that I have done at my previous job after going through the course of human relations. In my workplace, I used have a passive interpersonal style, which really made the situation hard for me to face. When it used to come to decision making I always used to look at others for their opinions and suggestion, even at time I never used to feel confident of the decisions taken by me which further demotivated me and I started to feel like ‘square peg in a round hole’. I joined at the junior level, so being a new employee I used to think of other senior employees as people of far great knowledge and experience as compared to me, which at the very initial stage made me realize that I minimized my self-worth, which resulted in putting up others interest first and always taking a back seat. Being from different culture and from different background I always found it difficult to understand the humour and the jargons used, which further pushed me to opt for the passive interpersonal style.

Self-realization and self-analysis became critically important to me. I realised that the type of nature I was carrying was not at all helpful in achieving success and growth in my workplace. I decided to work towards the passive interpersonal style so that I could change it, also to develop my communication style. I started to read about the culture and the lifestyle of the people I was working with. I started making friends with further helped to enhanced my understanding for their culture and their language. I learned about the gestures and the body languages. I shared my ideas, views and opinions with my work colleagues and friends and explained them about my religion, culture and beliefs, which made them understand me better. After knowing and understanding all the details of theirs and them knowing mine, they knew that if I behaved in certain manner it could because of the customs and traditions that I follow. For an example India is a high context country so it is understood that the higher the position the more respect they gain from their employees and I used to follow the same trend here at my workplace, which used to make my managers feel awkward.

When I learned about the high context and low context I understood the difference, which again helped me to explain my behaviour to my managers. By knowing this fact it helped me to adapt to the new culture and communication style and it helped me in developing good relations at my workplace and I earned good rapport with the customers as well. Though this process of understanding the differences and adapting myself according to it did take time but it made me realised it importance and benefits in the long run and years to come in the growth and development of my professional and personal life. By learning each day and communicating with others helped me to gain the assertiveness which was lacking. It also helps me to convey my ideas, view and feelings across in much efficient and effective way to others. It improved my self-confidence and gained self-motivation for achieving respect and success at my workplace.

MOTIVATION

The job of the manager of the manager is not only to manage the tasks at work or to get things done through employee but also to take the responsibility of the employees and to maintain a healthy and pleasant environment for the employees to work. To do this manager should be able to influence and motivate employees. Though it seems easier to motivate and influence employee but it is a real tough task to perform. Different people have their different needs and requirement and accordingly their factors of motivation vary. There are people who get motivated by the hike in pay rise at the same time there are people who are not interested in money at all. Some will find themselves motivated by power and some get motivated by position.

During our class room session we learned that motivation is of two dimensions that is, Internal and External. Internal dimension of motivation explains that it occurs when work done is self-rewarding, which would be the kind of work that one enjoys or likes to do. Whereas external motivation as the name itself explains is initiated by others to perform a task. Internal and external dimension can be further explained by the following example “There are time when a person performs a task because he/she wants to do it or feels that they are interested in doing it, which is an internal motivation. But there are times when a person perform a task because someone else wants it to be get done or there is a reward in performing that task, this is external motivation.

According to the research conducted by the university, a survey questionnaire was developed, which was supposed to collect data for the study. Data which was composed in the form of the questionnaires were given to the partakers, in which the factors which motivates them were to be selected. When the researchers got their questionnaires back and the results were accumulated, the factors motivating people were ranked accordingly:

Interesting work

Good wages

Full appreciation of work done

Job security

Good working conditions

Promotions and growth in the organization

Feeling of being in on things

Personal loyalty to employees

Tactful discipline and

Sympathetic help with personal problems.

The accumulated result clearly showed that money is not the sole motivating factor, which is always been the stereotype for motivating others. Other factors including good working conditions, job security, appreciation also motivates people for the task to be performed. That is the reason now a days organizations are preferring as well as adopting “the total person approach” when it comes to their employees. My experience at work can be clearly related to the sentence mentioned above. I have worked for Mcdonalds for a period of one year and there I have closely observed that investments and efforts were made to keep on motivating the employees in one way or the other, programs like employee of the month, customer service representative of the month etc are conducted on the monthly basis, which not only helped in motivating the employees but also helped in increasing the productivity and efficiency of the store. Rewards and awards are also given to the achievers which helped them to keep up with the same pace they are working and also motivated other to achieve the same. Recognition for the task performed, outstanding service provided and promotion policies are the part of the motivation practice which I have observed at my workplace.

This motivation does not limit to the junior level or just at the crew level. Even the managers get rewarded and awarded for their performance and for the performance of their team and store and in return managers put up their best efforts to maintain and to increase the productivity and efficiency by motivating their crew and store employees.

CONCLUSION

In the conclusion, it is been well understood that communication is the key driving force for a good and positive work environment. Communication and motivation are valuable to each and every person to relate and to function in an effective and efficient manner. It seems to be impossible to gain productivity and efficiency without effective communication and productive motivation. Good communication style and skills make professional as well as personal life better and easier and motivation helps you to keep up the good work.

During the initial classes for our human relations course there a little no communication between the fellow students but at the classes progressed more and more interaction started taking place between the students regardless of the culture, age, religion, gender. Group activities including group discussions and presentations helped to break the barrier and facilitated to develop good relations among the students. In these activities also the most important factor was the communication. For me communication style and skills were really important and interesting factors. Throughout the course I learned that if one wants to understand others, then it is very important to understand ourselves first. The concept of self-disclosure and self-awareness helped to understand this in a much better way.

The concept learned was the communication style a manager should adapt as well as constantly work towards the effective communication skills so that he/she can communicate effectively with higher management as well as to their employees. Also I noticed that a manager should be an assertive communicator with their staff and superiors. It the responsibility of the manager to create a sense of belonging among its employees through motivation and also encourage them to enhance the habit of self-disclosure among themselves.

Also I understood that communication as both negative and positive aspects. Negative or miscommunication can be disastrous as it may create and widen the gap between the individuals and can cause conflicts which results in the decline of both efficiency and productivity and loss of valuable assets. Therefore to avoid or to prevent the consequences of the poor communication, one should understand the importance of the effective communication. It is inevitable fact that the poor communication not only severely bad for the individual but also it affects the entire organization.

Hence it is very important for the individuals as well as for the organizations to understand the importance of the communication and motivation accordingly takes the opportunity to educate and train themselves and the organization for the positive contribution to the organization, society and community.