It is agreed upon that teamwork are very necessary in today’s work space and communication is the basis of teamwork. I am going to write more about the relationship between teamwork and communication.
Interpersonal communication is what we need to understand others when working in teams. As the word “interpersonal” implies, it is communication “between people”. Some scholars divide interpersonal communication into direct and indirect channels. Direct channels consist of both verbal and nonverbal information that are obvious and easily recognized by the receiver. In my team, verbal channels are spoken or written words shared between people while nonverbal channels are facial expressions and body movements. Direct communication, which is controlled by IQ (intellectual intelligence) is very important since it provides information and connects teammates. In contract, indirect communication is related to EQ (emotional intelligence) and often received subconsciously. This kind of communication often reveals the true emotions of the sender. Let imagine a friend of you, who is very sociable, comes to a party. She does not say “hi” to anyone and keep silent most of the party. You may have the feeling that she must be sad or reluctant to join the party. To efficiently communicate and to successfully team up with others, we should never ignore indirect communication.
It is natural that we feel comfortable when communicating with people from similar backgrounds (nationality, race, language …). I observe that in some modules, when students are allowed to choose their team, they usually stick to whom of same nationality. It may help them communicate fluently and score better. However, they will lose the opportunity to get use to international communication which is very important in today’s working environment. The modules EG1413 tries to help us over this communication barrier by randomly grouping us. I was lucky to be grouped into a diverse team whose members come from different countries. In order to achieve the team’s common goal, we quite successfully change our styles of communicating into the most suitable one. By doing this, we help people from other cultures understand us better. In addition, I like my group since everyone is friendly and sincere.
In conclusion, interpersonal and international communication are all important for efficient teamwork. Practicing those skills will help us a lot in our careers.
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Dear Dam Long,
ReplyDeleteIt is a common thing for people to have high IQ but lack the EQ. This leads to many misunderstanding between people. They will also be labelled "introverts" - people who don't socialise with others.
This is probably due to the rise of using technology. We're increasingly using computers to do our work that previously used to be socialable. For example, many turn to lecture webcast instead of attending the traditional lecture halls where u get to socialise a bit before and after the lecture. Similarly, more meetings are going online, with platforms such as msn and google becoming increasingly popular.
What are the consequences? People are not meeting each other often, thus limiting their social skills, which in turn might affect their EQ.
Thus, it is important that we maintain a good balance of using technology and also, socialising with people so that we don't fall into this trap.
Regards,
Mohd Ferrino
Hi Dam Long,
ReplyDeleteI was unsure about the meaning of direct and indirect communication. Perhaps you could have explained it in your post. However, I’ve done a search on it and would like to double check it with you. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
An example of direct communication is “The accident occurred at 6 pm”. This is just a statement of fact and contains no hidden message. When a communication is direct, there is no implied message or purpose. The speaker’s tone is usually neutral when communicating directly. The meaning of indirect communication is then the opposite of direct communication.
With the above definitions, I would say that I do not think IQ controls direct communication. Even though IQ provides us with the ideas that we want to express, EQ is in fact prevalent in all forms of communication. EQ affects the way we interact with others. A person with terrible EQ could even change the meaning of a message by using an incorrect tone. Saying “I like your clothes” in a neutral tone is a compliment. But, saying “I like your clothes” could be taken as in insult too. Especially when stress is placed on the word “like”.
Regards,
Russell
P.S. information about direct communication is taken from http://www.phototour.minneapolis.mn.us/relationships/communication
Dear Dam Long,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Russell that EQ affects our direct communication skills more than IQ does. IQ measures the intellectual capability of a person whereas EQ measures the relationship management skills a person has. While communicating with someone, a person with high IQ may say very intelligent things, but if he does not know how to befriend a person, the other person would not be impressed. However, a person with high EQ would have the skill to befriend people just by talking to them.
I agree with you that we should look for opportunities to mingle around with people from other races. That is in fact why I chose to stay in a hall rather than PGP, because you get to interact with people from so many nationalities in a hall, as opposed to PGP, where you are usually limited to your country’s group. You may want to consider a hall in future too. Grouping with people from different nationalities in tutorials is surely a good way to get to know them.
There are small grammatical errors in your post. I suggest that you read aloud the whole post after writing it. If you read it aloud, it would be easier to catch the errors because you would be liustening to it.
Apart from that, you post is quite informative as it talks about something new, direct and indirect communication. Looking forward to your future posts.
Cheers,
Anuj
Dear Long,
ReplyDeleteIt is sometimes easy to put forward an argument rather than to summarize and generalize a phenomenon, so I like it very much the generalization you make in your second paragraph.
I’m very interested in analyses on interpersonal communication through indirect channels, because though information conveyed via indirect channels are very important in many occasions, it is often overlooked or misinterpreted since it is indirect. It is quite contradictory: if we are not sensitive enough, we may overlook it, but if we are too sensitive, we may interpret it. Moreover, such information can also be misinterpreted because the communicators are from different cultural backgrounds.
To me, I have to constantly remind myself: did I overlook any information from indirect channels or did I misinterpret any indirect information? But even so, I still feel insecure. I really want find some way out to solve this problem so as to dispel my misgivings. Maybe we can discuss it some other day.
Just a little advice, I guess that you may want to reconsider your last paragraph. I am a bit surprised when I find such a well-written post ends in this comparatively general conclusion. I’m sure for the conclusion, you can definitely make it much more concrete and impressive. But anyway, it is just a fly in the ointment.
Thank you for your informative post after all.
Regards,
Shiyan