Communication Skills: Key Concepts & Definitions

What is Communication?

Communication involves exchanging messages to generate meanings.

Key Communication Concepts

Nonverbal Communication

• Body Orientation: How your body is positioned during nonverbal communication.
• Proxemics: The study of how space and distance impact communication (studied in 1969).
• Paralanguage: The way a message is spoken, including tone, pitch, and volume.
• Haptics: The study of touch as a form of communication.
• Emojis: Graphic icons that can illustrate emotions in digital communication.

Listening Skills

• Advising: Offering guidance or solutions, often considered the opposite of active listening.
• Paraphrasing: Restating a message in your own words to ensure understanding.
• Silent Listening: Paying attention and demonstrating engagement through nonverbal cues without interrupting.
• Mindless Listening: Reacting to messages automatically without much conscious thought.
• 55% of Time Listening: Research suggests we spend a significant portion of our communication time listening.

Language

• "We" Language: Implies shared responsibility and concern between the speaker and receiver.
• Euphemism: Substituting a potentially offensive word or term with a less offensive one.
• Static Evaluation: Using language that implies a fixed or unchanging state, such as "I'm bad at math."
• Convergence: Adapting one's speech style to match that of others.
• Linguistic Relativity: The idea that language both reflects and shapes our worldview.

Perception & Self-Concept

• Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: Attributing others' behavior to their personal qualities rather than situational factors.
• Narratives: Stories we use to describe our personal experiences and shape our understanding of the world.
• Interpretation Process: Attaching meaning to sensory data.
• Second-Order Reality: Assigning meaning to our interpretations of first-order sensory experiences.
• Johari Window: A model representing different aspects of self-awareness, including open, blind, hidden, and unknown areas.
• Impression Management: Strategies used to influence how others perceive us.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: When our expectations influence an outcome to align with those expectations.
• Reflected Appraisal: Internalizing others' judgments and perceptions of ourselves.
• Self-Concept: A relatively stable set of perceptions we hold about ourselves.
• Cognitive Complexity: The ability to construct a variety of frameworks for viewing an issue.

Effective Communication

Effective communication involves achieving goals in a way that is both impactful and appropriate. It requires understanding how meanings are created and shared, considering both verbal and nonverbal cues, and being mindful of the factors that can interfere with clear communication.

Noise

Noise refers to anything, internal or external, that can disrupt the communication process and hinder understanding.