BUS0222 Lecture 1 and 2: Communication Skills

• MSA University offers a course, BUS0222, focusing on Communication Skills.
• Lecture 1 and 2 serves as an introduction to communication skills.

Course Objectives

• Students will learn proper professional communication.
• Body language skills will be taught.
• Students will learn efficient use of different communication technologies.
• They will define and understand communication and its processes.
• The course aims to help identify and overcome communication barriers.
• Practice in active listening is a key component.
• The course provides tips to improve verbal and non-verbal communication.

Marks Distribution

• Quizzes are worth 10 marks.
• Assignments account for 15 marks.
• The midterm exam is valued at 20 marks.
• The final written exam holds the highest weight at 50 marks.
• The total marks for the course are 100.

Teaching Methods

• Includes the use of Youtube videos.
• A link to a sample video is provided.

What is Communication?

• Communication is a dynamic process.
• It is how thoughts or feelings are conveyed to someone else.
• How communication is received depends on events and stimuli someone is exposed to.
• The manner communication occurs is significant..
• It involves creating/exchanging thoughts, ideas, emotions, and understanding.
• It is essential for building and maintaining workplace connections.
• Communication happens between people.
• It involves change in behavior.
• It means to influence others.
• Expressing thoughts and emotions is achieved through words and actions.
• Communication serves as a tool for controlling and motivating people.
• Communication is identified as a social and emotional process.

Key Terms

• Active listening
• Cadence
• Clarifying
• Comforting
• De-escalation
• Empathy
• Interviewing
• Orientation phase
• Paraphrasing
• Reflecting
• Restating
• Summarizing
• Termination phase
• Therapeutic silence
• Working phase

Communication Skills

• Communication skills are the ability to use language (receptive) and express (expressive) information.
• They play a critical role in both professional and personal life.

Communication Goals

• To change behavior
• To get action
• To ensure understanding
• To persuade
• To get and give information

Common Ways

• Speaking
• Writing
• Visual Image
• Body Language

Total Communication Process

• Listening accounts for 45%
• Speaking is 30%.
• Reading is 16%
• Writing is 9%.

Levels of Communication

• Verbal communication includes intra-verbal intonation and extra-verbal semantic implication.
• Non-verbal communication includes gestures, postures, and movements.
• Symbolic communication.

Types of Communication

• Organization relationship communication can be formal or informal.
• Flow communication can be vertical, crosswise/diagonal, or horizontal.
• Expression communication can be oral, written, or gesture-based.

Communication Process

• Communication is a process of sending and receiving information.

Communication Code Scheme

• The process includes codifying, sending the message, and decoding.

Process of Communication

• Includes source, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver, feedback and context.

Components of Communication

• Involves verbal, paraverbal, and nonverbal messages.
• They facilitate clear and concise message delivery and the correct understanding of messages.

Communication Types

• Verbal includes oral, written, and mediated communication.
• Nonverbal communication.

Verbal Communication

• Oral communication happens in real time.
• Understanding is delivered via listening.
• It is applicable in face-to-face interactions, speeches, presentations, and announcements.

Oral Communication Advantages

• Time and cost savings
• It is more powerful
• Effective with immediate feedback
• More suitable and develops relationships
• Flexible and easy with error correction
• Informal and motivating
• Special applications exist
• It helps in maintaining secrecy.

Oral Communication Disadvantages

• No record and has no legal validity
• Possibility of confused speech and distortion
• Inaccuracy may occur
• It may sometimes be of less importance
• Limited use and potential lack of secrecy
• Subject to misunderstanding and probability of omitting the main subject

Written Communication

• It involves reading to understand the meaning.
• Messages are printed/handwritten that appear on a screen.
• It can be constructed over a longer period.
• It allows senders to write and receivers to read anytime.
• It is applicable in memos, proposals, emails, letters, training manuals, operating policies, and newspapers.

Written Communication Advantages

• Easy to preserve with proper information delivery
• Easy presentation of complex matters.
• Easy to verify with reduced risks
• Legal document generation providing clear understanding with wide access to all
• Permanent record with no opportunity to misinterpret
• Prevention of time and money wastage fostering confidence
• Accurate presentation serving as a reference tool
• Effective communication enhancing image.

Written Communication Disadvantages

• Complex, costly, needing time for approval with a slow delivery process
• Words and the lack of direct relation are complex.
• Illiterate persons cannot use; could risk secrecy
• Lacks flexibility and feedback causing delays with increased costs.

Mediated Communication

• Relies on information communication technology contrasted with face-to-face.
• It encompasses verbal and nonverbal aspects.
• Examples consist of WWW, webcasts, social media, TV, radio, and telephone conversations.

Mediated Communication Advantages

• Easy individual engagement with communication
• Breakdown of geographical and time barriers.
• Allows copy, edit, storage, broadcast, and exchange of written documents.
• Allows a few status and position cues, communication for disabled person
• Minimal stress with rapid relationship formation.

Mediated Communication Disadvantages

• Problems with access and need expertise, transmits fewer senses
• Time consuming and lack socio-emotional feedback with a lack of true human contact.

Nonverbal Communication

• Observation-based and understanding the meaning.
• Applicable through body language, eye contact, expressions, posture, and space.

Receiver's Message Comprehension

• 7% depends on Sender’s actual words.
• 38% is based on paralanguage(tone, pace and volume).
• 55% is based on nonverbal cues such as body language.

Nonverbal Communication Advantages

• Complementary and Easy presentation
• Accentuate messaging and substituting
• Helping illiterate and handicapped people with attractive presentation
• Quicker message expression

Nonverbal Communication Disadvantages

• Continuous, unclear, and inexact
• Inability to express where the subject will change.
• The culture dictates the message and costly presentations
• Creates multi-channel communication
• Long conversations may not be possible and difficult to understand
• Not preferred by everybody and can cause information distortion and lack formality

Sending Messages

• Effective verbal messages are brief, direct, and organized through facial expressions and postures.

Nonverbal Messages

• It communicates emotions

Para-verbal Messages

• It refers to messages transmitted through tone, pacing, and pitch of voices.

Receiving Messages

• Listening requires concentration and energy and involves a psychological connection.
• Involves desire, willingness and suspends judgment of speaker.

Good Communicator

• A good communicator needs to have clarity, adequacy, integrity, and a sense of timing.

Developing Communication

• Explores oral, written, and non-verbal skills.

Communication Tips

• Tips for effective communication which includes maintaining eye contact, body awareness, gestures and conveying thoughts and practicing good skills.