Communication and Interpersonal Skills
The process
Communication is the transfer and understanding of meaning: sender, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver, with feedback and noise throughout. Answers must stress understanding, not mere transmission. Direction: downward (instructions, appraisals), upward (reports, grievances), lateral (peer coordination), diagonal. Formal channels follow the structure; the informal grapevine is fast and often accurate but incomplete - manage it rather than deny it.
Channels and barriers
Channel choice trades richness against reach: face-to-face carries tone and gesture; email is precise but cold; noticeboards reach many but only one way. Rich channels suit ambiguous or emotional messages. Barriers: semantic (jargon, ambiguity), psychological (filtering, defensiveness, halo effects), organisational (status, overload, unclear hierarchy), physical (distance, noise, poor equipment).
Interpersonal tools
Active listening: attention, paraphrase, reflect feeling, question, summarise. Johari window: open, blind, hidden, unknown, reduced by disclosure and feedback. Transactional analysis: Parent, Adult and Child ego states; crossed transactions breed conflict; Adult-to-Adult is the aim. Thomas–Kilmann conflict modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, accommodating - collaborate where the issue matters and time permits.
Worked example
A memo announcing new overtime rules produces complaints. Diagnosis: a one-way written channel was chosen for a message with emotional and contractual weight; the text was heavy with jargon about 'restructured shift differentials'; no feedback loop existed; status silenced questions. Reasoning: switch to a briefing with the staff representative, in plain language, with a question-and-answer window. The fault is channel–message misfit, not staff attitude.
Traps
- Defining communication as transmission without understanding.
- Treating noise as only physical sound.
- Assuming the grapevine is always destructive.
- Recommending email for bad news or disciplinary matters.