Overview
Individuals, teams and departments in the public and private sectors and in NGOs stand or fall on their ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Effective communications are vital to the successful outcome of everything an organisation or department wishes to achieve, while good interpersonal skills help facilitate our communications at work. Well-developed interpersonal skills enable cooperation. They create unambiguous relations between individuals, clarify perceptions, and eliminate potential misunderstandings.
This course focuses on how communications and interpersonal skills in the workplace may be improved and enhanced. It identifies the six roles everyone plays as communicators at work and pinpoints the techniques that may be employed in each role to enhance communication and deepen understanding. Particular emphasis is given to the skill of listening and to the art of asking questions. These, when ably deployed, enable listeners to accurately identify the real message, while questioners may uncover deeper truths and knowledge without antagonising the other person.
Much attention is given to the role of interpersonal interactions in communications with emphasis on identifying and understanding our own communication style and how it may be integrated with the personal style of others in the workplace.
The course is centred around an interactive PowerPoint presentation; a workbook; a dramatised, professionally-produced video case study and exercise sheets. The style is open and participatory.
Course content
This highly participatory course:
- analyses a short case study on the consequences of miscommunication
- examines communication methods—what works best in what circumstances
- identifies the four main interpersonal styles of communication and assesses our own predominant style
- demonstrates how best to interact with other communication styles in the workplace
- identifies how we may improve our interpersonal skills in the six distinct roles we play as either communication deliverers or receivers when:
- writing or reading
- speaking or listening on the phone
- speaking or listening face-to-face or on a video call.
- demonstrates how we may improve our listening skills
- shows how we may employ open and closed questioning techniques to deepen our understanding and improve our knowledge
- views, discusses and analyses a professionally produced video case-study which dramatises a failure in communications in the workplace.
Course Outcomes
After completing this course, participants should be able to:
- engage in more focussed communication
- communicate their messages more effectively
- understand other peoples’ communications accurately
- know how to question and probe for clarification and deeper understanding in a thoughtful, respectful manner
- be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their own interpersonal communication style — as well as those of others within the organisation
- be more effective in maintaining smooth interpersonal relations with others in the workplace
- be better able to identify when, the words don’t go with the ‘music’
- match their required communication style to the situation
- when required, to be assertive rather than passive or aggressive
- possess a greater ability to manage demanding situations.
Benefits to your organisation
- this course may save your organisation much of the time, money, effort and frustration that arises out of poor interpersonal communications within and between departments.
- it may save senior executives having to rescue projects that are failing or missing deadlines through project-team members’ misunderstandings and poor communications skills
- it may reduce interpersonal issues between staff and reduce the need for arbitration and counselling by managers.
Benefits to you
- you are more likely to get your message across and to have it accurately understood
- you will have a better understanding and deeper feeling of where other people in your organisation are coming from
- you will be able to understand your own default communication style, as well as those of the people with whom you work
- you will know how to adapt your communication style to suit the occasion and how to adapt it to the default style of the people with whom you work
- you will have improved listening skills—including the ability to listen for what isn’t being said
- you will have improved questioning skills which will enable to use open and closed questions to gently probe significant matters and to go deeper.
