Interpersonal Communications 04.12.2003

Why are the companies seeking ‘effective communication’? According to the

BT Forum Report Communication (cited in Cameron, 2000) 1 “good communicators lead

happier lives […]; making the effort to communicate is the key to happy relationships with people […]; the best way to resolve a disagreement between two people is to get them talking

[…] and many arguments would be resolved if people communicated better.”

Despite these clear positive effects in an organisation, the definition of the

concept of communication appears to be less obvious. According to Cameron (2000) 2 this concept is “’Verbal’, ‘vocal’ and ‘visual’. ‘Verbal’ means the actual words; ‘vocal’ means is

linguists’ terms, prosodic and paralinguistic features; and ‘visual’ means gaze, postured and other aspects of body language.” A priori, an effective communication may appear to be only

depending on the good will of each member of the organisation to communicate with others.

However, this analysis will examine four major factors influencing the quality of

communication. The first variable is the personality and perception of individuals, which is closely linked with the knowledge and judgment that people have about their congeners. The

second variable is the particular skills of individuals that allow them to reduce communication’s barriers and noises in order to improve the quality of the communication. Finally the two last variables are the level of motivation that an individual needs in order to

transmit a message to the audience, and the impact of the respective cultural background of the interlocutors.

1 Cameron, D. (2000) Good to Talk? London, SAGE Publications Ltd, pp. 149

2 Cameron, D. (2000) Good to Talk? London, SAGE Publications Ltd, pp. 40

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Interpersonal Communications 04.12.2003

2. Four Factors influencing the quality of Communication

2.1 Better Self-Knowledge leads to more effective Communication.

Ludlow and Panton (1992) 3 argue that “People are different and we need to understand the nature of those differences and try to modify our interpersonal behaviour to cope with them. […] Two of the basic differences between people are personality and perception. These differences cause people to behave differently towards others in different

situations, and cause communication problems.” In addition, Ludlow and Panton (1992) 4 claim that the personality of individuals, which does not change significantly when the

individual has reached a level of psychological maturity, is shaped as a result of the inherited genes, experience and physical environments. This issue implies that the personality is not a variable, which may be easily adapted and controlled by the individual in different situations.

In fact personality is strongly influenced by the individual perception.

According to Ludlow and Panton (1992) 5 , the reason is that perception is a process, by which the person selects, organise and interpret sensory stimuli and information in consistent terms

with the framework and reference of their personality. Therefore by interacting with people the exchanged information may have a lack of details, which implies that the individual draws a wrong profile of the interlocutor’s personality. In this case, the individual interprets the

elements, which have been received and despite the little information, will predict the behaviour of the interlocutor. As a result, the person will anticipate the behaviour of the

interlocutor by adapting his behaviour and his way of communicating. The problem appears that the fragment of information gathered at the beginning may lead to misunderstanding when the interlocutor behaves in an unexpected way. In this situation, the knock on effect is

the confusion in the mind of the receptor of the message, due to interpersonal communication problems which are linked with the knowledge that people have about others and themselves.

3 Ludlow, R. and Panton, F. (1992) The essence of effective communication. Hemel Hempsted, Prentice Hall

International, pp. 5

4 Ludlow, R. and Panton, F. (1992) The essence of effective communication. Hemel Hempsted, Prentice Hall

International,pp. 6

5 Ludlow, R. and Panton, F. (1992) The essence of effective communication. Hemel Hempsted, Prentice Hall

International, pp. 6

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Interpersonal Communications 04.12.2003

The Johari Window theory (cf. Annexe 1) contributes to improve the

effectiveness of the communication between people. Ludlow and Panton (1992) 6 argue that this concept is useful, because it reduces the perceptual bias in interpersonal perception, by increasing the objectivity and knowledge of themselves about others and themselves. Boje

(2003) adds that in order ‘to shrink the Blind’, the individual should ask the feedback from

other colleagues. In fact, Hayes (2002) 7 claims that this technique helps to limit incorrect perceptions, because it improves the self-knowledge and helps to develop alternative

perspective on problems. The result is that learning more from others at work, reduces the proportion of unknown about the individual and leads to effective communication in

organisations.

Similarly to reduce the Hidden Part, the best way is for example that each

member of the group speaks openly to the other members, exchanges his conception of group working and explains his personal objectives to make succeed the group project.

An illustration of this model is when students have the first meeting with a group; members tend to not reveal much about them – at this stage open area is small. By

working together the size of the open area of members increases. The result is the effect of two actions: Firstly self-disclosure, which consists in giving more information about their

own personalities. Secondly the ‘reception’ of feedback from other members reduces the Blind area by providing information about the person itself. This process leads a group to communicate more effectively, allowing each member to anticipate and understand the

behaviour of others.

6 Ludlow, R. and Panton, F. (1992) The essence of effective communication. Hemel Hempsted, Prentice Hall

International, pp. 7

7 Hayes, J. (2002) Interpersonal Skills at Work. New York, Routeledge, pp.185

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2.2 Better Knowledge about Interlocutors leads to more effective

Communication.

Cameron (2000) 8 considers that “communication is by definition interactive, the idea behind a lot of training is that by making the correct choices about what to say and how the skilled communicator can control the response of the person s/he is interacting with them. This control is enhanced […] by understanding that there are different kinds of people.”

Therefore, among the different kind of classification of people’s profiles, Dr Katherine Benzinger has developed a model (BTSA: Benzinger Thinking Styles Assessment) for assessing the different personalities. This model explains that communication becomes very poor in orga nisations “when people adapt their natural thinking and working styles to fit expectations of others, normally created by work and career, tension and stress results.” (Chapman, 2001)

Dr Benzinger research shows that the brain has four specialised areas and each one is responsible for different brain functions called ‘modes’ (which are categorised according to their strengths, behaviour and thinking style) (cf. Annexe 2). In addition, Dr Benzinger supports that each person has one part of the brain naturally more efficient, which implies that people are more specialised in certain areas rather than in others. As a result, some typical profiles can be drawn according to the way people use their brain. For example, some people use more their frontal le ft part of the braining, which implies a tendency to be more analytic, objective and critic than individuals using one of the three other part of the brain.

At a communication level, this theory has three main implications. Firstly, it gives the opportunity to employees to improve their understanding of people’s behaviour by knowing their mode preferences. Secondly, this model helps to select thoroughly people for a group project. In order to maximise their complementarities (different modes preferences) and the harmony in the organisation the model assists the manager by putting together people with similar brain profiles. In this way, the adequate balance of personalities and skills in the group is attained, so that collaborators communicate and work together more effectively and

8 Cameron, D. (2000) Good to Talk? London, SAGE Publications Ltd, pp.42

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