Transcript the interpersonal communication process

COMMUNICATION
PROCESS
1-Interpersonal Communication Concepts, Skills,
and Contexts
By
Kathleen S. Verdeber
Rudolph F. Verdiber
2- Effective Business Communication
By
Murphy, Hilderbrandt, Jane Thomas
INTERPERSONAL
COMMUNICATION
Interpersonal Communication is defined as
the process through which people create and
manage their relationships, exercising mutual
responsibility in creating meanings.
First Interpersonal Communication is a
Process:
A process is a systematic series of behaviors
with a purpose that occurs over time.
During a, say 20 minutes phone call with your
mother to catch up on family news or during
a, say 1 hour company meeting with coworkers to resolve certain issues, a series of
behaviors is occurring. These behaviors are
purposeful. You ask your mother for your
brother’s mob number so that you may share
the cost of an anniversary present for your
father. You tell your co-workers the
background of the customer’s complaints so
that they can share and arrive at a certain
conclusion.
Second, interpersonal communication
occurs between and among the people.
For instance, when Crestine (who is trying to
get work on time) shows his impatience with
his 6 years old daughter (who is slow to
finish her breakfast) by saying Alishah,
“would you hurry up and finish your
breakfast. “ Alisha might burst into tears, or
she might say “yes daddy” and quickly
finish her breakfast.
So what has taken place between the father and
his daughter does not depend on what one of
them says, but rather depends on the meaning
that is created between them.
Third, as we communicate, we create and
manage our relationships.
Without communication your relationships
could not exist. Is the relationship more
personal or impersonal, closer or more distant,
healthy or unhealthy?
The answer to these questions depends on how
the people in the relationship talk and behave
toward the each other. Some communication
patterns move relationships to deeper, more
satisfying levels, while others lead to unhealthy
relationships.
Functions of Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal Communication serves the
following 5 functions.
1. Through interpersonal communication we
attempt to meet our social / psychological
needs.
By nature we are social animals, we need to
interact with other people just as we need
water, food and shelter.
2. Through interpersonal communication we
develop a sense of self.
Through our communication, we learn who we
are, what we are good at, and how people react
to how we behave.
3. Through interpersonal communication
we fulfill social obligations.
We use such statements as “ How are you
doing?” with a colleague, and “what is
happening?” or simply “Hi” when we pass
people we know in order to meet social
obligations. By saying, say “HI” we
acknowledge a person we recognize. By
not speaking we risk being perceived as
arrogant or insensitive.
4. Through interpersonal communication
we acquire information.
Accurately and timely information is a
key to effective communication. While
we get some information through direct
observation, some through reading, and
some through the media, we receive a
great deal of information upon which we
base our decisions and future plans
during our conversations with others.
5. Through interpersonal communication
we influence and are influenced by
others.
When what a person wants or needs
depends on the agreement or cooperation
of
other
people,
interpersonal
communication is used to influence the
ideas and behaviors of others. From
convincing your room mate to lend you a
sweater, to listening to a political candidate
who is campaigning door to door,
to persuading your children to do their home
work, to trying to convince your teacher to
change your course grade, you use
interpersonal communication to entice
others into thinking or acting as you wish
them to. And others use the same process to
try to influence you. So the primary purpose
of all communication efforts is to influence
the ideas and behaviors of others.
THE INTERPERSONAL
COMMUNICATION PROCESS
There is a methodical series of thoughts and
behaviors that you use when you communicate
with someone. These thoughts and behaviors
have become automatic. In reality, however
any IC episode is the result of both cognitions
(thinking) and behaviors (doing).
Understanding
the
elements
in
the
communication process is a crucial step in
developing our knowledge of interpersonal
communication process.
Participants Characteristics & Roles
The participants are the people who
communicate assuming the roles of senders
and receivers during the communication. As
senders, participants form messages and
attempt to communicate them to others
through verbal symbols and non verbal
behavior. As receivers, they process the
messages and behaviors that they receive and
react to them. In most IP situations participants
enact the two roles simultaneously.
In general it is easier for participants to share
meanings when they are similar and have a
common base for understanding. We more
easily identify with those with whom we share
physical characteristics. The more we perceive
ourselves as being different from one another,
the more difficult our communication tends to
be. Similarities and differences that are likely
to have the greatest effect on participants are
physical (race, age, sex),
psychological
(personality,
attitudes,
values, and levels of self confidence),
social (levels of experience in dealing with
others and with complex situations)
intellectual (knowledge, and skills), and
gender or cultural characteristics.
Components of Communication
Communication includes six components:
Context
Sender – Encoder
Message
Medium
Receiver – Decoder
feedback
Context
Every message, whether oral or written, begins
with context. Context is a broad field that
includes country, culture, organization and ,
external and internal stimuli. Every country,
every culture, and every company or
organization has its own conventions for
processing and communicating information. This
aspect of context is the playing field on which
you must plan, design, and communicate your
message successfully.
Context includes the
Physical circumstances
Social circumstances
Historical circumstances
Psychological circumstances and
Cultural circumstances
that surround a communication episode.
Physical Context:
The physical context includes its location, the
environmental
conditions
(temperature,
lighting, noise level), the distance between
communicators, seating arrangements and
time of day. Each of these factors can affect
the communication. For instance, the meaning
shared in a conversation may be affected by
whether it is held in a crowded company
cafeteria, an elegant candlelit restaurant, over
the telephone, or on the internet.
Social Context:
It is the type of relationship that may already
exist between the participants. Whether
communication takes place among family
members, friends, or work associates
influences what and how messages are
formed, shared and understood.
For instance, most people change how they
interact when talking with their parents as
compared to how they interact when talking
with their friends.
Historical Context:
It is the background provided by previous
communication
episodes
between
the
participants. It influences understandings in
the current encounter. For instance one
morning David tells Tom that he will get the
draft of the report that they had left for their
boss to read it. As Tom enters the office that
afternoon, he sees David and says , “Did you
get it?” Another person listening to the
conversation would have no idea what the “it”
is to which Tom is referring.
Yet David may well reply. “It is on my desk.”
David and Tom understood one another
because of the contents of the earlier
exchange.
Psychological Context:
It includes the moods and feelings each person
brings to the interpersonal encounter.
Cultural Context:
It includes the set of beliefs, values, attitude,
meanings, social hierarchies, and religion etc.
Another aspect is the external stimulus that
prompts us to send a message. The source of this
prompt may be a letter, email, telephone call, a
meeting or even a casual conversation. Your
response to this prompt may be oral or written.
Next internal stimuli have a complex influence
on how you translate ideas into message. When
you encode, your own view affects the choices
you make in language. Your attitude, opinions,
emotions, past experience, likes & dislikes,
education, job status & confidence in your
Communication skills all influence the way you
communicate your ideas.
Sender – Encoder
When you send a message, you are the
“Encoder", the writer or the speaker depending
on whether your message is written or oral. You
try to choose symbols- usually words, graphics
& pictures- that express your message so that the
receiver(s) will understand it and react it with the
response you desire.
After considering all the factors mentioned
above, you decide which symbols best convey
your message and which message channel will
be more effective among the oral & written
media.
Message
The message is the core idea you wish to
communicate; it consists of both verbal
(written or spoken) symbols and non verbal
(unspoken) symbols.
Your first task is to decide exactly what your
message is and what content to include.
Ultimately consider your context and
especially the receiver of your messagehow the receiver will interpret it and how it
may affect your relationship. You need to
understand meanings, symbols, encoding and
decoding and message form or organization.
Meaning: Meanings are the ideas and feelings
that exist in your mind. You may have ideas
about how to study for your next examination,
and what your career goal is; you also may
have feelings such as jealousy, anger, and
love. The meanings you have within you,
however, cannot be transferred magically
into another person’s mind.
Symbols: To share meanings, you form
messages comprising verbal symbols and
nonverbal behaviors. Symbols are words,
sounds and actions that are widely
understood to represent specific ideas &
feelings.
As you speak, you choose word symbols
to convey your meaning. At the same time
facial expressions, eye contact, gestures &
tone of voice-all symbolic nonverbal cuesaccompany your words and affect the
meanings your listener receives. As a
listener, the meaning you attribute to the
message is affected by both verbal
symbols and nonverbal cues.
Encoding & Decoding
Encoding is the cognitive thinking process the
sender uses to transform ideas and feelings
into symbols and to organize them into a
message. Decoding is the process the receiver
uses to transform the messages that are
received into the receiver’s own ideas and
feelings. Ordinarily you do not consciously
think about either the encoding or the
decoding process. Only when there is a
difficulty, you become aware of encoding and
decoding.
Form or Organization
When messages are long and meanings
complex, how well they are organized, will
affect how accurately they are understood.
Medium (Channel)
Your message channel depends on all the
contextual factors and the nature of the
message itself. Your choices include email, the
printed word, or sound.
Briefly, should you write or speak?
Like message content, the choice of medium is
influenced by the relationship between the
sender and the receiver. Some research suggest
that the urgency of a message is a primary factor
in whether to use the written or spoken medium.
You may also consider factors such as
importance, number of receivers, costs, and
amount of information.
If the message goes to an international audience,
you must also consider which medium is
preferred in the receiver’s culture.
The written channel is often preferred when the
message is long, technical or formal in nature
and when the message must be documented. The
oral channel is effective when the message is
urgent or personal or when immediate feedback
is important.
Noise
Noise is any stimulus that interferes with the
sharing of meanings. Noise can be external,
internal, or semantic.
External noise
are sights (visual distortion), sounds, and other
stimuli in the environment that draws people’s
attention away from what is being said or done.
Internal noise
are thoughts and feelings that compete for
attention and interfere with the communication
process.
Semantic noise
are unintended meanings aroused by certain
symbols that inhibit the accuracy of decoding.
For instance, if a friend describes a fifty
years old secretary as “the girl in the
office” and you think “girl” is an odd term
for a fifty years old women, you might not
even hear the rest of what your friend has to
say. Use of ethnic slurs, profanity, and
vulgar speech can have the same effect.
Receiver – Decoder
The message receiver is your reader or listener,
also known as the decoder. Many of your
messages may have more than one decoder.
Both the senders (encoders) and receivers
(decoders) are influenced by the context and by
the external or internal stimuli and by their
mental filter. They receive messages through the
eyes and ears but are also influenced by
nonverbal factors such as tough, taste, and smell.
All factors of a message are filtered through the
receiver's view and experience.
Feedback Messages
Feedback is the response to the message that
indicates to the sender whether and how that
message was heard, seen and understood. If
the verbal or nonverbal response indicates to
the sender that the intended meaning was not
shared, the originator may try to find a
different way of encoding the message. This
reencoded message is also feedback because it
is a response to the original receiver’s
response.
Feedback can be oral or written. It can also be
an action such as receiving in the mail an item
you requested (ordered). Sometimes silence is
used as feedback, though it is almost always
ineffective. Senders need feedback in order to
determine the success or failure of the
communication.
The Process in Action
So far we have discussed each of the elements in
the IC process. How the process works is now
being explained..
A person becomes a sender when there is a
thought or a feeling that he or she wants to share.
To turn the meaning into a message, the sender
draws on the vocabulary, grammar, and
communication rules of the appropriate language
and culture and encodes the thoughts and
feelings into a verbal message and behavior.
The message is transmitted by way of the
channels of sound (speech) and light (nonverbal
behavior). The message is interpreted and
assigned meanings by the receiver through the
decoding process. Upon decoding the message,
the original receiver encodes verbal and
nonverbal reactions to the original message. This
feedback message is transmitted back to the
sender through the selected channels. The sender
who receives the feedback decodes it in order to
interpret the response he or she is getting from
the receiver. The process repeats.
This communication takes place in a context
that includes the physical, social, historical,
psychological and cultural environments. The
context influences how the message is formed
and how it is understood. During the entire
transaction, external, internal and semantic
noise may be occurring at various points. This
noise affects the ability of the sender and
receiver to share meanings.
Interpersonal Communication Principles
1. IC is Purposeful
When people communicate with one another
they have a purpose for doing so- all
communication is goal directed. For example
when Mr. A calls Mr. B to ask whether he
would like to join her for lunch to discuss a
project they are working on, his purpose may
be to resolve misunderstanding or to encourage
B to work more closely with him. People may
not always be aware of their purpose.
2. IC is Continuous
Because IC can be nonverbal as verbal, we
are always sending messages from which
others may draw inferences or meanings.
Whenever two people are in each other’s
presence and awareness, communication is
occurring. Even if you are silent, another
person may infer meaning from your
silence.
3. IC Message vary in Conscious Encoding
Sharing meaning with another person
involves encoding personal meaning into
verbal messages and nonverbal symbols. This
encoding process may occur spontaneously,
may be based on a script that you have
learned or rehearsed, or may be constructed
based on your understanding of the situation
in which you find yourself.
For each of us there are times when our IC
reflects a spontaneous expression of emotion.
When this happens, our messages are
encoded without conscious thought. For
example, when you burn your finger, you
may blurt out “Ouch”. When something
goes right, you may break out in a broad
smile.
At other times, however our communication
is scripted; that is we use conversational
phrases that we have learned from past
encounters and judge to be appropriate to the
present situation.
To use scripted reactions effectively, we learn
or practice them until they become automatic.
Many of these scripts are learned in
childhood. As a result, they reflect the cultural
background of our family. For example thank
you, well come etc.
Finally messages may be carefully constructed
to meet a particular situation. Constructed
messages are those that we can consciously
encode to respond to an immediate situation
for which our known scripts are inadequate.
These messages help us communicate both
effectively and appropriately.
4. IC is Relational
In many IC settings people not only share
content but also negotiate their relationship.
For instance,
Lara says to Jenny “I have remembered to
bring the map”. She is not only reporting
information but also communicating “You can
always depend on me” or “I am superior to
you” etc.
In a complementary relationship one person
lets the other define who is to have greater
power. Thus, the communication messages
of one person may assert dominance while
the communication messages of the other
person accept the assertion.
In a symmetrical relationship people do not
agree about who is in control. When one
person asserts control, the other challenges
that assertion.
Or, as one person abdicates dominance, the
other refuses to assume it. For instance:
Manager Technical says “I think we need to
cut back expenses on foreign scholarships.”
HR Manager Responses “ No way. I need Rs
2(B) for scholars”.
5. IC is Learned
Your IC effectiveness is a direct result of
language skills and conversational scripts you
have learned. If your family spoke German,
you learned to communicate in German. If
your family believed it rude to look a person
directly in the eyes while speaking, you
learned to lower your eyes when talking.
The Ethics Of IC
Ethics is a set of moral principles that may be
held by a society, or a group, or an individual.
The words ethics & morals are often used
interchangeably.
Even
though
some
philosophers show shades of difference in the
words by holding that ethics refers to
“cultivation of character and practical decision
making” and morals refers to “the set of
practices that society holds to be right”, a
considerable overlap
is clearly recognized. Here we are
particularly interested in ethical issues. When
we communicate, we make choices with
ethical implications, so we should understand
the general ethical principles that form a basis
for ethical interpersonal communication.
1. Ethical communicators are truthful &
honest.
Truthfulness & honesty are standards that
compel us to refrain from lying and cheating,
stealing or deception.
2. Ethical communicators act with integrity.
Integrity means maintaining a consistency of
belief and action (keeping promise). A person
who has integrity is someone who has strong
moral principles and will successfully resist
the temptation to compromise
those
principles. Integrity then is the opposite of
hypocrisy.
3. Ethical communicators behave fairly.
Fairness means achieving the right balance
of interests without regard to one’s own
feelings and without showing favor to any
side in a conflict. Fairness implies
impartiality or lack of bias. To be fair to
someone is to gather all the relevant facts,
consider only circumstances relevant to the
decision at hand, and not by swayed by
prejudice or irrelevancies.
4. Ethical communicators demonstrate respect
for the ideas, opinions, and feelings of others.
Respect means showings regard or consideration
for a person and for that person’s rights. Often
we talk of respecting another as a fellow human
being.
5. Ethical communicators are responsible.
Responsibility means being accountable for
one’s actions. A responsibility is something that
one is bound to do either through promise or
obligation or because of one’s role in a group or
community.
IC & Diversity
Diversity /variations among people affect
nearly every aspect of the communication
process. We would think that just because we
all speak the English language, then using
the right words guarantees that every one
will understand what we say. But whether we
understand each other depends as much on
who we are as it does on the words we use.
Increasing IC Competence
Communication competence is the impression
that communication behavior is both effective
and appropriate in a given relationship.
Communication is effective when it achieves
its goals; it is appropriate when it conforms to
what is expected in a relationship. Specifically,
when communication is appropriate, each
person believes that the other person has
abided by the social rules of behavior that
apply to the type of relationship they have and
the conversational situation they are in.
One of your goals is in this course will be to
learn those things that will increase the
likelihood that others will view you as
competent.
As communicator motivation increases,
communicator competence increases. That
is, perceived competence depends in part on
how much a person wants to make a good
impression and communicate effectively.
As
communicator
knowledge
increases,
communicator competence increases. In addition
to being motivated, people also need knowledge
about communication to be effective. The more
people understand how to behave in a given
situation, the more likely they are to be perceived
as competent.
As communicator skills increases, communicator
competence increases. People who are motivated
to be effective and who have knowledge about
communication must still act in ways that are
consistent with their communication knowledge.
Skills are goal oriented actions that we can
master and repeat in appropriate situations. The
more skills you have, the more likely you are
to be able to structure your messages to be
effective and appropriate.
The combination of our motivation,
knowledge, and skills leads us to perform
confidently in our encounters with others.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Message-formation skills increase the
accuracy and clarity of the messages you send.
Conversational-climate skills increase the
likelihood that you and your partner will
develop a supportive relationship in which you
trust each other.
Listening-for-understanding skills increase
the likelihood that you are able to understand
the meaning of another person.
Emphatic-response skills increase the
likelihood that you are able to understand
and respond to the emotional experience of
another person.
Disclosure skills increase the likelihood
that you will share your ideas and feelings
in an honest and sensitive manners.