Planning And Managing Effective Communication Campaigns

Johari Window

Discuss about the Planning and Managing Effective Communication Campaigns.

There are many effective tools which are often used by individuals for self-assessment in the field of effective communication. In order to estimate how I am fairing on my communication ability among my friends, acquaintances, team members, colleagues, social circle, communities, I can use 5 of the most renowned tools to assess my position among them in terms of communicative ability.

One of the tools that I can utilise in the Johari Window which was developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in the year 1955. This tool usually consists of a four-quadrant diagram. The first quadrant helps in representing things which is known by me and also those things which are known by others about me. This area is called the open area. The second area consists of things which are not known by me but others are well aware of them. This area is called the blind area. The third quadrant consists of things about me that I know myself but are not known by others. This is called the hidden area. The fourth quadrant is the things about me that neither I nor others know about me (Watson & Hill, 2015). The main reason of using this tool is to identify one’s own position in the skills of effective communication and thereby enhance the open area of the quadrants. The better the open are, better will be my position in communicative ability (Bahadori, Shiri & Mahdizade, 2015). The best ideas to recognise myself is to use the model based on two important ideas. One needs to develop a trustworthy relationship with others by disclosing information regarding him. The second is to welcoming feedback from others to meet my shortcomings and helping in developing my loopholes for effective relationship building (Saxena, 2015).                                              

Communication questionnaire is mainly proposed with the purpose of realising personal shortcomings while measuring the efficacy of communication with others in different areas of lives. This questionnaire contains 14 important attributes of effective communication. 5 important levels are mentioned in order to act as a marking criteria in each of the attributes. The five important levels used to answer each of the attribute is 5=Strongly Agree, 4=Agree 3=Neutral, 2=Disagree, 1=Strongly Disagree (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015). The fourteen important attributes are articulate (Communicating effectively with others), listening, verbal and nonverbal mismatch signals, clear, two-way communication (encouragement of feedback and questioning to ensure mutual understanding). Other attributes include openness, concise, body language, tone, safe/open (Communication is kept confidential) paraphrasing, follow up and intuitive (Gungor et al., 2013). At first the individual needs to feel it up for himself. Then it should be filled up with 5 to 6 other acquaintances to observe owns and theirs’s perception.

Communication questionnaire

From analysing the score provided by the questionnaire and individually looking at the score of attributes, I realised that I scored satisfactorily well except in the two-way communication option and in the listening option. According to the questionnaire I came to the conclusion that my feedback and questioning ability is not up to the mark. My listening activity is also criticised to be poor.

This questionnaire helps to answer a number of different life situation questions which need to answered in rather true or rather false and then a graph can be drawn showing inclination towards four important options like passive attitude(Flight), aggressive attitude (Attack), Manipulation and Harmonious assertiveness (“assertive questionnaire” 2017). A number of answers of the different questions helped me to realise that my main issue was that I avoided providing feedback to people and also avoided welcoming any feedback from the opposite person. This also made me realise that this attitude is often linked by others as an escapist attitude from different issues. As I participated less in group discussions and often responded before the completion of the opposite person’s expression, this also helped me to know that I am an impatient listener.

This model was developed by Downs and Hazen in the year 1977 which mainly acts as a diagnostic tool for the assessment of communication ability in job sectors. Employees are asked their job satisfaction level through various attributes of communication. Three tables are provided where the team members are provided the opportunity to rank their communication satisfaction items within a range of 0 to 10 with 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.. Table 2 provides information on factors that influence their level of job performance and table 3 shows demographics of the sample (Prat et al., 2014).

From the results obtained, I was able to understand my loopholes in my communication abilities with my team members and juniors. It was clearly visible that my team members and juniors were dissatisfied by my feedback producing capability and also held my introverts the main reason of their inefficient relationship building and low performance. They believed that my proper feedbacks would have helped them to succeed better. Moreover, it was clearly evident from their replies that my listening ability was not up to the mark and they believed that therefore they usually prevented themselves from providing me with their feedbacks where they thought a different plan would be more successful. I realised all these affected my organisation’s goals and objectives.

Assertive questionnaire

This tool was effectively used to measure the results of interpersonal communication ability which are based on five important characteristics. These are self-concept, ability to be a good listener, skill of expressing owns thoughts and feelings, being able to cope up with emotions, and willingness to disclose one to others (deVies et al., 2013). It helps to reply to 40 important questions to be answered in yes, no or sometimes which gives one an idea about the strengths and weaknesses of owns communication ability.           

After conducting this, I clearly understood that I have serious problems in opening up in front of colleagues and other to provide them feedback which is taken otherwise by the others as non cooperative, lack of interests in participation and others. My listening ability is also poor as I tend to interrupt more. The ability to receive feedback is also interrupted by my impatient listening skills. Some also tend to avoid feedback to me because of my introvert nature and lack of communication skills.

While evaluating myself with the technique, I realised that I am extremely week in my feedback accepting and feedback providing capability. While providing feedback, I fear that my suggestions would not be taken on a good note resulting in animosity. This attitude makes others apprehensive while providing me feedback for they think that since I do not give them feedback, I might not also welcome their feedback. This often creates a sense of discomfort while I try to communicate with my team members. I also tend to be impatient during hearing from a colleague that effect our relationship.

My experiences:

There had been two instances in my workplace where I experienced circumstances that were not in my favour. In the first interaction, I was holding a team meeting, setting each and every of my team member’s tasks for the coming week. The project was new and therefore I had to assign them with new tasks. I assigned task for everyone. Two of my juniors stood up and wanted to say me about their perspective but I cut them out thinking that they were only trying to escape their role from the project Later it came to my notice that they were not being able to perform the task as their skills were not matching with the new task. Therefore, the productivity was quite low for that week. Later I felt embarrassed in front of them as they tried to provide their feedback but my impatient listening skills failed me.

Communication Satisfaction questionnaire

While the board meetings were conducted, the presentation given by my associated partner was not been able to bring the company enough profit. However, I stopped myself from providing feedback on this even when I was offered to. Mainly my introvert nature and my fears of letting down by colleague prevented me.

I would try to develop my communication in the field of proper listening ability and providing correct feedback at the correct time to make my career successful one at the same time of making the organisation achieve its mission and reach the zenith.

Communication is a very vital activity that is very much important in the effective management of the team. It acts as a powerful weapon for establishing a trustworthy relationship that creates a bond among the team members. It has been cited by different by different authors that better the communication power of the leaders in the organisation, better is the performance observed in the associated team members who shows the best productivity (Erozkan, 2013). While maintain a team effective listening of the team members and also providing them with the correct feedback is indeed very necessary for deriving the best quality work (Brownell, 2015). The employees should be able to express themselves clearly. This helps them to feel accepted in the organisation. This feeling in turn helps them to dedicate their precious time for the organisation as they feel socially and professionally included. The leaders and the seniors should develop the skill of effective listening as their attribute (Hodge, 2016). They should also prepare themselves in order to deliver their best guidance to their staffs.

Hibbert (2013) has mentioned that the feedback provided by the leaders to their team members have many significant purposes. She has categorised feedback in terms of positive and negative feedbacks. She has examined and clearly stated that in several cases, providing positive feedback to the well performing employees help to increase their confidence. However, the process to deliver effective feedback is also explained by her to be extremely important. She has provided an example to show how the throw of the words in the feedback can alter the feelings of the employee either towards betterment or towards failure. When an employee has performed better in a particular month after struggling a lot in that month, the leader should provide a feedback as “It was indeed very challenging for you to achieve the target, however you won in the task”. This type of feedbacks develops positive vibe in the individual. However, she has also provided another feedback which provided a mixed feeling to the employee thereby affecting his emotional stability. This includes “that’s pretty good, FOR YOU, well done’.  This is obviously being termed as a positive feedback but this feedback was seen to create a mixed emotion in the employee. When she investigated, she found that the employee was first filled with pride but later experienced deflation, resentment and ultimately a lack of respect for the bus. The leader’s casual feedback delivery clearly put focus on the employee’s poor performance, and also showed the leaders’ low expectation from him. Therefore, getting over with introvert attitude with presence of confidence and self-expression, to provide feedback is not only the main criteria (Thurlings et al., 2013). Providing the correct feedback in the correct tone is also found to be important for achieving the best goals. Otherwise an altogether negative effect may take place that might have a very harmful impact on the team performance.

Interpersonal Communication Inventory

Again, when a serious issue has raised due to discrepancy, an ineffective work or lack of skilled exhibition of work, the junior or even the colleagues should be guided by a negative feedback. However while providing negative feedback, the individual should have to be cautious enough or otherwise it may lead to disastrous effect in the workplace. While providing negative feedback to juniors, seniors or even colleagues, the feedback should be constructive enough so that they are taken in good spirits by the individuals (Omer & Abdularhmin, 2017). By this way one can not only solve the issues but he can also help in the contribution to the organisation and help in development of the individuals’ skill and behaviour.

Researchers have also provided many instances to show that communication skill of the managers and the leaders act as effective measure to determine how the p[roper litening to employees and employers and gaining or giving feedback would have to be done and the degree to which the feedback provided would be successful to the employees. It has been already established that how effective feedback in communication plays a major role in establishing the performance of the employee, in building trust, bond, and a collaborative environment for effective teamwork (Cornelissen, 2014). However, it should always be remembered by each and every individual that effective feedback during communication should never be considered as option rather needs to be considered as constancy in the work place. The skill to develop the habit of feedback in a polished way is very important to make the opposite person understand one’s own hold on the subject. Before providing a feedback, the individual must first learn to listen a particular matter or complain of nay member entirely (McCroskey, 2015). He should then compartmentalise the information achieved in segment that would help in evaluating the factors and the result of the concerns. He should then strategise his feedback statements in a constructive way before spilling it out (Wooten & Ulrich, 2016). It should always be remembered that a person who stands still and fail to acknowledge, he is still communicating where he is portraying his feelings of non participation or no involvement in a discussed issue or accepting things which are said even though the inner feelings are otherwise (Morecroft, 2015). Absence of feedback thereby makes a positive difference in an effective way. Some of the barriers identified by the researchers are fear of upsetting the learner, fear of damaging the learner-mentor relationship, fear of performing more harm than good, resistance or defensiveness from the learner, lack of respect for the source of feedback, inconsistency and others (Shantz et al., 2013). All of them should be strategically overcome to reach the fixed goals.

My problems identified

From the above reflection as well as from the literature review one can easily come to an idea about the action plan that has to be developed. My main areas of weakness is my habit of impatient listening and my inability to provide correct feedback or accepting feedback from my fellow colleagues and team mates (Brock et al. 2017) as researches suggest this will help me in preparing myself as an effective leader in an organisation.

SMART	For effective listening	For feedback gain and giving
Specific	I plan to engage myself in community speaking classes in order to develop my patience for active listening allowing the opposite person to complete the statements	I should also go through several journal articles for evidence based intervention to develop effective feedback giving behaviour, moreover various models of communication that has been proposed over the century will give me a detailed idea to practise them in my workplace.
I will engage myself in several weekend workshops that mentor in effective communication strategy
Measurable	Patiently hearing until the end of the opposite person’s statement and effective communication with a positive result will measure the success rate	Proper gaining and providing feedback can be assesses by my mentor and also by my successful and effective communication with my class mates
Achievable	It can be achievable by will and zeal to develop my communication skill	It can be achieved by enthusiasm and dedication
Relevant	These would help me to enhance my listening skills helping to succeed in workplace.	These would help to develop my feedback gaining and providing ability
Timely	This would continue for about 8 months from now on	I would keep three months to go through them for studying journals Workshops will require one year

Reference:

assertive questionnaire. (2017). www.hr4free.com. Retrieved 24 January 2017, from https://www.hr4free.com/PDF_Files/Blog_EN_Management_assertiveness_assessment_questionnaire.pdf

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