Communication skills are one of the most important elements or factors that should be considered by every person in gaining competencies. This is due to the reason that in the current business and social scenario, communication skills determine the effectiveness of interpersonal communication between the involved stakeholders. Moreover, it should also be noted that effective communication skill will help in properly communicating the message or subject to the target audience. Thus the issues or barriers that can get emerged in the communication process will get reduced (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). Communication skill is as important for the college students also due to the reason that they are the one who will take charge in the future business state of affairs and who will be involved in the future corporate affairs. Thus, it is more important for the students to be competent in their communication skills in order to have effective communication skills to deal with different people and stakeholder in their future organizational assignments. On the other hand, in the current scenario, diversity is one of the major barriers for the effective communication process (Canale, 2014). Thus, college students should also be competent enough in dealing with the people from different cultural and social groups.
Determination of the communication skills and effectiveness is also important for me also due to the reason that I am also studying in college right now and I should also make myself competent in having effective communication skills. In order to do so, I have used a few diagnostic tools to identify my strengths and weaknesses in relation to the communication skills. These diagnostic tools helped me to identify the areas of improvement along with some major gap areas. This essay will discuss about the score that I got from these diagnostic tools and how these scores can be involved in the further stage. In this essay, it will also be discussed about the major two communication issues for me and how I can overcome these challenges.
In doing the diagnosis, I have used 5 diagnosis tools in total. Using of number of tools helped me to identify the diverse competencies and weaknesses for me. It also helped me to come up with more accurate and clear understanding of the communication competiveness of me. The first diagnosis tool that is used by me is self perceived communication scale (Croucher, 2013). This tool helped in determining the competency of mine in communicating in different situations. This tool is having number of situations give and based on the respective scored, it can be concluded that how competent I am in communicating in different situations. In this diagnosis tool, I have 55.83 that denote that I am having low score in self perceived communication scale and thus it can be concluded that I am less competent in communicating in different situations such as with the strangers. In addition, according to the scale it can also be denoted that lower score of 55.83 is denoting that I am also not comfortable to communicate in any groups.
The next diagnosis tool that I have used is the nonverbal immediacy scale self report. The core objective of this tool is to determine the positive attitude or feelings being possessed in communicating with another person (Miller et al., 2014). Thus, it helps to determine whether a particular person is having being able to carry positive behavior in the communication process or not. In this diagnosis tool, I scored 95 that can be referred as a moderate score with having slight inclination toward lower scores. Thus, in this case, it can be concluded that I am slight inclination towards not having positive attitude or feeling for the opposite stakeholder in the communication process. Thus it can also be considered as one of the major challenges for me in effectively communicating with others. According to me, the low score in this tool came due to the reason that I am become more introvert compared to what I actually am. This may cause due to the reason that I over think sometime when communicating with any new person. Lack of positive attitude and feeling towards the opposite person in the communication process is unintentional. This will also create barrier for me in the further stage due to the reason that if I cannot change this attitude and can show positive attitude in the communication process, then in the future organizational assignments, I cannot able to effectively deal with the different organizational stakeholders.
The next diagnosis tool that has been used is personal report of intercultural communication apprehension. This tool determines the level of competency in intercultural communication (Fall et at., 2013). This tool is important and relevant in the current time due to the reason that in the current era of globalization, intercultural communication is important to effectively communicate with the stakeholders from different social and cultural groups. This tool also helps to determine the fear of people in communicating with others from different groups. According to this tool, I have scored 27 that is moderate level and denote that moderate to lower level of intercultural communicational skills of mine. In this case also, my score is on the lower side of the scale and this can be concluded that I am having gaps in communicating with the people from others cultures. The more impacts for this lower score will be both short term and long term. This is due to the reason that in my college, I already have friends from different countries and thus gap in the intercultural communication will create challenge in interacting with the student from different cultures. Thus, my effectiveness in the college will get reduced and I may also become isolated due to this. On the other hand, the long term impact will be in the organizational assignment. This is due to the reason that in the current business scenario, majority of the organizations is having diversified workforce. Therefore, lack of intercultural communication of mine will cause barrier for me in interacting in the business dealings where majority of the employees will be from different social and cultural groups.
The next diagnostic tool is talkaholic scale that refers to the process of determining the level of high talkers. The more will be the score in this scale, the more will be high talker and vice versa. In the current time, this scale is having importance and relevance due to the reason that high talkers are being more preferred in the current business scenario (Malachowski, Martin & Vallade, 2013). According to this scale, I have scored 31, which denotes that I am having moderate score level and I am having control over talking in every situation. However, the score of mine is also denoting that I have the tendency of not able to control in every situation and it is difficult for me to keep quiet in every time. Thus, in this case my communication skill is more towards the positive note. This is due to the reason that my score is denoting that I am having the nature of being high talker and it will help me to lead in the future organizational roles. On the other hand, the skills of the mine in controlling talkaholic nature will also help me to not get in unwarranted situation every time.
The last diagnostic tool used by me is tolerance for disagreement. This tool helps in determining the extent to which anyone can tolerate other people who are disagreeing with them (Kassing & Kava, 2013). Thus in the current business scenario, this diagnostic tool is much relevant due to the fact that tolerance in the communication process is important to create the positive and favorable environment vibe. According to this diagnostic tool, my score is 40 that is moderate ranking. This denotes that neither I have higher tolerance towards the disagreements of the opposite person nor I have lower tolerance. However, this is also a major area of improvement for me due to the reason that I should gain more tolerance towards the opposite view in order to have effective process of communication with the involved stakeholders. The more will be my tolerance towards the opposite view, the more effectively I will be able to determine the different views in the communication process.
Thus, from the use of the different diagnostic tools and the previous analysis, it can be concluded that the major two issues in relation to the communication skills of mine are lack of public speaking ability along with having the ineffectiveness in interacting in public groups and lack of intercultural communication skills in dealing and interacting with the people from different social and cultural background. These two issues are the major barriers in relation to my communication skills. In addition, there are some incidents of mine also happened, which denotes that the identified two issues are causing different challenges for me in the real world situation. One of the major incidents happened when I along with my college team were given an assignment of presenting a report in class. However, most of the team members are new to me and the presentation was to be held in front of every student and teaching staffs of the college. In this case, the first challenge that I face is to communicate with all team members due to their cultural differences. I had not able to even create rapport to most of them and it lead to the situation where I was unable to communicate my views to them. However, still the presentation was prepared with inputs from everyone.
The last challenge that I faced is to present it in front of everyone in the audience. It was told to us to present the report to the audience but as per my one of the major communication barriers, I was not able to speak effectively in front of the audience and was also not able to communicate my view to the audience as well. This issue is mainly caused with me due to the reason that I am having low score in speaking in the public and with known people. On the other hand, communicating with my team members also became difficult due to the reason that I am having issue in intercultural communication. The emergence of these issues in turn caused the reduction in the team performance in the college. In addition, another major impact faced by me is creating the impression and I was not involved in the group activities. However, I was involved in the every group activity and participated in every meeting but not being able to communicate my views to the group members from different social and cultural groups caused unintentional non-involvement of mine in the group activities. From these recent incidents, it can be concluded that I should have to improve my communication skills especially the identified two major issues in order to evade these types of incidents in future.
There are number of authors who have the given different views and solutions in overcoming the issue of public speaking ability. Thus, reviewing the theories of these authors will help me in determining and identifying the probable solutions in mitigating my challenge of lack of public speaking ability.
According to Fauzan (2016), one of the major and most effective ways of improving public speaking ability is the conducting debate. This will be beneficial for the students due to the reason that conducting debate will help them to interact with each other more effectively and critically. In this case, having the knowledge of critical discussion will help the students to enhance the public specking ability. According to the authors, at the time of public speaking, there is higher probability of emergence of counter question from the audience and not having the control over managing the counter questions further create fear among the speakers. Thus, as per the authors, if the students are encouraged to participate in debate, they will gain the argumentative skills that will further enhance their public speaking ability.
Thus, participating more in different debates will help me in gaining argumentative skills and will also help me in having the skills about how to speak among others and how to counter questions of them.
According to Hunter, Westwick and Haleta (2014), speech problem is one of the major reasons behind difficulty in public speaking. This is mainly due to the reason that there are number of instances where students have the fear in public speaking due to the problem in speech. Thus, according to the authors, it is important to initiate speech course for the students in order to improve their speech skills that is the most important part of any public speaking program. In addition, it is also being stated by the authors that initiation of the speech course will also help to reduce the anxiety of the students in relation to the public speaking ability.
Thus, according to the above statement given by the authors, it is important for me to participate in the speech learning course. This will help me in reducing the fear and anxiety of mine regarding speaking in public.
According to Afshar and Rahimi (2016), it is recommended to the students that they should practice reflective thinking in order to have effective skills of public speaking. This is important due to the reason that in order to initiate the skills of public speaking, students should first determine and identify their strengths and weaknesses in relation to their public speaking. Identification of the positive and negative factors of them will help the students to prepare themselves in public speaking. In addition, it is also being stated by the authors that practicing reflective writing will help the students to gain the expertise in how to speak and communicate and express them. This is due to the reason that in the case of the public speaking program, speakers should have the ability to express in order to communicate effectively to the audience. On the other hand, the authors have also stated that emotional intelligence will also help and enable the students to improve their public speaking skills. This is due to the reason that emotional intelligence will help the students to determine the mindset of the audience and communicate accordingly.
According to Han (2013), cross cultural communication is one of the major issues for the students due to the reason that they are not comfortable with the languages of other cultures. Thus, according to the author, differences in language may cause difficulty by changing the meaning of the subject. It is suggested by the author that students should have the knowledge about the meanings of different languages in order to improve their intercultural communication skills. It is also being stated by the authors that in different cases, the major miscommunication generates when the meaning of the subject communicate by one get changed to another due to the differences of meaning in languages. This also tends to de-motivate the students to take part in the intercultural communication process. Thus, according to the authors, improving the language and vocabulary skills of the students will help in improving the entire process of communication between the stakeholders from different social and cultural groups.
Thus, having the basic and brief knowledge about the language of other cultures will help me in improving my skills in intercultural communication. This will also enable me in determining the ways about how to use language in different cases in order to effectively communicate to the audience.
According to Tyagi (2013), one of the major challenges being faced in the process of intercultural communication is the lack of listening skills. This is due to the reason that students from different cultures tend to have less interest to listen to others from other cultures. Thus, lacking in the listening skills causes the barriers in the transmission process. According to the author, it is important for the students to first improve their listening skills in order to improve their skills of intercultural communication. This will enable the students to the effectively evaluate what the others want to say. The authors have also stated that the more effective will be the listening skills, the more effectively they will able to evaluate the views of others. It will provide them more time to analyze and accordingly they can revert. Thus, the chance or probability of miscommunication in the intercultural process will get reduced with the initiation of the listening skills of the students.
Thus, I should also improve my listening skills in order to reduce the challenge in intercultural communication. It is true that I am lacking in listening skills that may creating the issues of intercultural communication for me. For now on, I will be more concentrated on properly listening to my peers in the communication process.
In the above section, I have identified two major issues or shortcomings of mine in relation to my communication skills. Thus it is important for me to create an action plan about what, how and when to initiate different programs and strategies in order to overcome the identified issues. I will first with enrolling myself in speech learning courses (Kuo et al., 2014). There are number of speech training and improvement courses available in Australia. Thus availability is high and favorable and also it will help in improving the speech skills of mine. There are number of crash courses available in Australia for speech improvement training that will further help me to correct my speech and will also help in building confidence during the public speaking program (Hunter, Westwick & Haleta, 2014). It is also being identified that there are number of master degree courses available in Australia for speech linguistics and functional behavior (Harris, 2014). Enrolling in these master degree courses will help me in enhancing my expertise further and will also enable me to have more knowledge, understanding and confidence in public speaking (Chen et al., 2014). In addition enrolling in the master degrees in relation to the speech and language program will help me to become an expert in the public speaking activity (Shochet et al., 2013).
It is also planned by me that I will maintain a journal book in order to track my improvement by involving myself in different activities. I will maintain the journal entries in such a way that it will carry a proper view of what I have done in improving my communication skills and what types of advantages being gained by me from different activities (Bays et al., 2014). Thus, in the further stage, this will help in identifying the shortcomings in my improvement plan and can rectify myself accordingly. On the other hand, I will start to read more books for improving my skills in intercultural communication (House, 2014). Books such as “Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior” by Kate Fox will one of the most effective readings for me due to the reason that it will help me in gaining more expertise about how to communicate more effectively with other through the use of English (Siegel, 2014). This book will be given the major concentration by me due to the reason that English is the common language for all and thus having expertise in English will help to reduce the difficulties of different language and meanings (de Jong, Harper & Coady, 2013).
In the entire improvement process, I will also allot some time for practicing self reflection by myself. This process will be initiated at the very end of the action plan due to the reason that I will practice the self reflection only after the entire process of involving in different activities (Lin et al., 2014). This self reflection will help me in determining the exact change that I should have after completing different training and vocational courses (Bennett-Levy & Lee, 2014). I also decided to interact more in the college with different students in order to create the comfort zone with them. In addition, continuous interaction with different students will help me to understand practical aspects in the intercultural communication process (Abry et al., 2013).
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Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that there are major two communicational challenges for me identified in this essay. In addition, using of different diagnostic tools further helped me to identify different positive and negate factors of mine in relation to my communication skills. Analyzing the outcome of these diagnostic tools further helped me to identify the different aspects in the communication process. This essay also discussed about some of the views given by different authors in relation to the identified issues of mine. This also helped in determining the probable solutions that will help in mitigating the identified issues. An action plan for 6 months is also being discussed in this essay that involved different activities to be initiated by me in the span of next 6 months. Number of activities is being discussed in the action plan along with discussing their respective advantages.
Reference
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