HN1104 Personal Skills and IT

1. HN1104Personal Skills and IT Session 7 Interpersonal Skills

2. Exercise • What are interpersonal skills ? • Skillsquare # • Words in a wordsquare may appear in any direction: across, down, diagonally, forwards and backwards • This wordsquare contains 8 hidden examples of interpersonal skills • Teams of 2 - 5 • 10 min. or first team to find 8

3. Answers • Listening • Empathy • Body language • Teamwork • Communicating • Interviewing • Counselling • Assertion

4. What are Interpersonal Skills? • Do the interpersonal skills identified involve one-way or two-way processes? • Can you think of any examples of aids to effective communication that are not skills? • Who are good models of effective interpersonal skills in action. Why are they effective? What skills are they using?

5. What are Interpersonal Skills Cont. • Effective use of interpersonal skills ... • ... may require learning and practice. • … involves more than one person. • … concerns the giving and receiving of spoken and unspoken 'signals'. • … involves putting your message across clearly to other people, who may need help to clarify their understanding.

6. What are Interpersonal Skills Cont. • Effective use of interpersonal skills … • ... means understanding other people's messages, and perhaps helping them to communicate their messages more effectively. • ... means being able to find out and understand the other person' s point of view (not necessarily agreeing with it). • ... helps all participants to achieve/maintain a high level of self-esteem throughout. Reproduced from 44 Activities for Interpersonal Skills Training, Gower Publishing 1998

7. Listening

8. Listening Listening - an active activity Hearing - a passive activity Effective listening:- - active participation - the ability to weigh up information - the ability to spot inconsistencies - being able to take direct action to ensure understanding

9. Active participation 'Why am I listening to this?' 'What is in it for me?' 'What am I hoping to find out?' Sometimes we have to be more prepared to listen actively than others...

10. Problems • Write down all the things you can think of which may be a barrier to effective listening (5 min) #

11. Problems with effective listening - Rate of speech The mismatch between speakers' rates of talking and listeners' ability to process incoming sounds = a problem. When we are interested in what is being said we are not conscious of the processing gap.

12. Problems - Familiarity A further reason for the mismatch between listening and speaking rate is the fact that we are familiar with our own language... ...we can predict what is coming next It might not be that your new lecturer speaks too fast, but that he/she is using unfamiliar words and introducing new concepts.

13. Problems - Structure We process information during a natural grammatical break. If a speaker speaks slowly or pauses unduly we may abandon waiting for the grammatical break and ditch the information processing. The result:- forgetfulness; failure to understand.

14. Problems - Attention span * First 15/20 minutes:- High level concentration * Subsequently:- Rise-fall-rise pattern Variety in visual aids, speaker's pace, intonation and pitch will improve listening over the course of a one-hour lecture.

15. Problems - Memory span Short v long term memory Short = - Ltd capacity - Information is easy to forget Long = - Efficient data storage system

16. Problems - Memory span cont. Transfer from short to long:- Info is filed and cross-referenced - New info = opening a new file! * We cannot efficiently transfer information to which we have not paid adequate attention * We remember less of the middle portion of what is being said

17. Problems - Motivation - Being interested overcomes physical barriers to listening! - So...ask 'why do I listen?' and 'what is in it for me?'

18. Problems - Attitudes - Attitudes invoke 'selective' listening - i.e. Do you miss what a politician says because you are busy being annoyed, searching for a counter-argument, or thinking about something related to the prejudice?

19. Problems Fake listening / Others Fake listening * Do you 'fake nod' to avoid detection of being totally uninterested? Other distractions - Warm rooms - Noisy rooms - Sudden noises outside - Uncomfortable seats

20. Improving listening ability Practise:- * Improving concentration * Doing exercises * Retention exercises for the 'middle portion' * Ignoring rate/style of speech Techniques Cobwebs/ topic or mind maps Reflection

21. *** TO NOTE *** Improved concentration = improved listening = decline in mental / physical tiredness = improved motivation = increased attention span = increased information remembered !!!

22. EFFECTIVE LISTENING * Making a deliberate effort to understand the significance of what is being heard * It requires:- - Concentration - A desire to understand - An awareness of what is meant - Judgement about how to respond

23. Practical moves * Know and accept the power and responsibility of the listening role * Ask questions about content and feelings * Reflect back through summaries and testing * Avoid making judgements * Avoid anger and win/lose attitudes * Concentrate on him/her not on yourself * Observe carefully and maintain eye contact * Respond

24. Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) • Richard Bandler and John Grinder (1970s) • Merges psychology and linguistics • Encompasses many theories about thinking, language and behaviour • ‘How to be’ • Change your reality if your current state is less productive than you would like

25. Perception • Assumption that same culture + same language = understanding • Distortion between reality for the other person and our own reality • Decoding of information influenced by many things • Comparisons, Childhood conditioning, Our learning, experience and bias

26. Perception cont. • During conversation • Brain is decoding messages and encoding responses • Brain copes with far more data than we can communicate verbally • Our response • Internally prioritise and summarise • Decide what to leave out • Arrange material coherently

27. Perception cont. • Result • Some deletion, generalisation and distortion • Slippage between the experience and the words describing that experience • Bandler & Grinder (1975) • Produced a framework - the Meta Model • System of checking for distortions, deletions and generalisations • Copy of the simplified version in handout #

28. One aspect of MM - Language • Surface structure • Internal dialogue, what you say to other people • Tells listener how the speaker perceives his world, AND how he distorts and deletes from these perceptions with language • Deep structure • Comprises the innermost meaning of what is said • Contains information not expressed verbally or even consciously considered by the speaker • The thought or intent behind the words spoken

29. The Meta Model • Linguistic tool • To aid mutual understanding • To utilise your own and the other person’s full potential

30. Exercises • Language (What exactly do you mean) # • Concentrate on questions of clarification • Part 1 only • 15 min • Fact or fiction # • Work in pairs • 15 min

31. PARALINGUISTICS * Paralinguistics is the term used to describe all the vocal features which accompany our words, including:- - Fillers - Facial expression - Pace - Gestures - Pitch and intonation - Proxemics

32. Fillers * Fillers are usually recognisable as:- - the result of an emotion i.e. nervousness - a personal speech characteristic - the 'hang on a minute' indicator

33. Pace * Different emotional states cause biological changes to breathing and salivation * We may however, make mistakes in interpretation. It is essential to take account of other paralinguistic signals together with the context of words spoken.

34. Pitch and intonation * What we want to convey in speech may hold several meanings dependent upon how we choose to pitch and intonate what we say. * Subtle paralinguistic variations in the spoken word are conveyed through the following in the written word:-

35. Pitch and intonation cont... - punctuation i.e. exclamation marks / question marks - typographical features - descriptive phrases i.e. '...she said in disbelief' * It is easy to mistake one emotion for another when relying on paralinguistic cues in the spoken word

36. Pitch and intonation cont... * Are we too good at detecting nuances in intonation? * There is evidence to suggest that paralinguistic features lie behind many of the stereotypes we form in society * Paralinguistic features also affect our assessment of people from other countries / areas * Advertisers make use of vocal patterns to sell products

37. Facial expression/ eye contact * The way we use our eyes to regulate the flow of communication also helps the recipient interpret information. - pauses in conversation - direct or indirect eye contact - correlation between eye contact and head movements/ gestures N.B. The use of eye contact is a less universal device than facial expression

38. Gestures - The frequency of the use of gesture differs from culture to culture - Interpretations of hand gestures may also differ - Prejudice may also affect interpretation of gesture use

39. Proxemics * Proxemics is the study of all those aspects of NVC which relate to the physical distance or proximity that exists between people in communication. - Personal space - Touch - Environment - Furniture arrangement

40. Paralinguistics - conclusion Understanding the relationship between paralinguistics and the words used - not just what we say, but the way we say it - can help us adjust our own communication to make it easier for others to interpret accurately.

41. Further Reading • Body language and non-verbal communication

42. Exercise • Listening exercise # • Work in pairs • 10 min

43. Any questions?