Indian Journal of Business Management & Technology, ISSN 2319-5797, Volume 8, Number 1/2 (2021): 1 - 8
© Arya PG College (College with Potential for Excellence Status by UGC) & Business Press India Publication, Delhi
http://apcjournals.com, www.aryapgcollege.ac.in

Corporate Skilled Communication Tools & Techniques

Smriti , Gurwinder Kour and Rishi Sharma
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics
Guru Nanak Khalsa College, Yamunanagar (Haryana), India
3 IT Consultant, Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), India ,
⃰ Email: choprasmriti502@gmail.com

Abstract

How good you think your listening skills are, its only the speaker or the audiance, who can tell you clearly, about your quality, as they are the person who can understand and judge you correctly. So as an extension of good listening skills, you must develop the ability to reveal words and emotions, and for that, you need to understand it correctly. It is often important to agree that you are a true representation of what you and the speaker were told what he/she understood. Reflection is the process of reproducing both the emotions of speakers and words.

Keywords: Active Listening, Characteristic, Interpersonal Communications.

Introduction

Reflection as a characteristic of interpersonal communications closely related to active listening: interest, understanding and response to other ways so as to transmit participation. There are many important characteristics of interpersonal communication. One of the common characteristics of such transaction process is its multi-dimensionality. Messages exchanged between the interactions are rarely single or discreet. In accuracy work, attention has been introduced into two separate, but it is still a relative level that people get involved with each other. Domination and management is an important aspect of relational communication that must be managed, and certain implicit or explicit labor agreements are achieved.
Interactional Style and Directness
Style can be thought of as how what is done is done, with the characteristic manner in which someone handles an interactive episode. Conversational style includes the degree of formality, elaboration, or directness adopted.
Reflection
Reflections are accordingly a type of response. They involve the interviewer striving to capture the significant message in the respondent’s previous contribution and representing this understanding. This has been described as mirroring back to the interviewee what the interviewee has just said, as grasped by the interviewer. Reflections can be contrasted with questions, for example, which often serve to lead in this sense. Reflecting, as a topic of scholarly enquiry, is bedevilled by conceptual confusion, terminological inconsistency, and definitional imprecision,. At a broad level, reflecting is operationally concerned with person A in some way grasping the significance of person B’s preceding contribution and, in the form of a statement that re-presents this key message, making person B aware of A’s understanding.
Returning to the term ‘reflecting’, we should recall that one line of thought suggests that reflections are essentially repetitions. When using this technique, ‘The interviewer repeats a word or phrase which the client has used’.
Simple repetitions have alternatively been referred to as verbatim playbacks, as reflections of content, but perhaps more frequently as restatements. Indeed, the restatement may repeat in a more selective fashion. For some, restatements are of limited utility and, at best, have more to do with indicating attempts at rudimentary hearing than with understanding.
Reflecting: Theoretical Perspective
The process of reflecting can be interpreted from at least three fundamentally different disciplinary positions. These are humanistic psychology, behaviourist psychology, and linguistics (more specifically, pragmatics). In keeping with the former, it is, in part, the communication of those attitudes and conditions promoting psychological growth and maturity. To the behaviourist, it is a means of influencing and modifying what people do and how they respond to their social environment. Finally, in keeping with pragmatics, reflecting can be thought of as part of the elaborate business of managing talk in the course of interaction.
The Humanistic Approach
When the actualizing tendency permitted to operate unimpaired, the outcome would be a person in the process of becoming self-actualized. Such individuals show an openness to experience, self-trust, the adoption of an internal locus of evaluation, and a willingness to continue the self-actualizing process. They are not dependent upon others as a source of evaluation but are confidently self-reliant in this respect. Few, unfortunately, live self-actualizing lives. The personally experienced world of the individual is called the phenomenological field and consists of everything that is, at least potentially, available to awareness. Part of this totality relates to the self; the child develops a particular self-concept. This can be thought of as a view of self together with an evaluation of it. Significant others, such as parents, have a key role to play in this process due to the individual’s need for positive regard.
This need to gain the love, respect, and esteem of others important to the person is deep felt. Such positive regard, however, is generally not provided unconditionally. Instead, certain conditions of worth are attached – the child knows that behaviour of a certain type must be displayed in order to win approval. Therefore, it becomes imperative for the child to behave not only in keeping with the actualizing tendency but to ensure that conditions of worth are not violated. Such dual standards invariably lead to conflicts and attempted compromises. The outcome is incongruence; the self-concept becomes divorced from the actual experiences of the organism. Incongruence is associated with feelings of threat and anxiety and, consequently, the falsification or indeed denial of experiences leading to the distortion of the self-concept. This is the antithesis of becoming self-actualized.
Reflecting, as a way of listening and a method of responding that imposes no external evaluative comment on client disclosures, thereby satisfies these requirements. Reflecting is, however, more commonly associated with another characteristic of the effective relationship – accurate empathic understanding.
Memories, experiences, thoughts, fantasies, sensations, and such like have equal legitimacy and should be responded to as well. Content in this sense becomes less important. The reflective statement may be cognitive, affective, or perhaps more usefully both. In offering deeper levels of empathic understanding, the reflection should move beyond the familiar to point tentatively toward experiences only faintly hinted at and less clearly grasped by the client. Although possibilities of inaccuracy are increased, such reflections have the potential to move the client forward in experiencing to greater degrees of realization.
Empathy has been cast as a multidimensional construct with cognitive, affective, and behavioural aspects. According to the latter, and for empathy to make a difference, it must be actually manifested in some way. As a piece of interpersonal behaviour, reflecting is accordingly one (but only one) of a number of possible ways of making someone aware of the fact that they are being empathically understood.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of this branch of humanistic psychology, reflecting can be thought of as facilitative communication with the potential to convey unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding, thereby pointing the way to possibilities of personal growth and maturity through enhanced self-actualisation.
The Behaviourist Approach
Reflecting has also been interpreted and investigated in keeping with behaviourist principles. Behaviourists have historically restricted psychology enquiry to behaviour, environmental happenings associated with it, and the relationship between these two types of ‘in the world’ happening. The individual’s environment is of paramount importance in shaping what individuals do and what they become. The goal of psychology is to describe, explain, predict, and control behaviour by identifying the regularities existing between it and features of the environment in which it occurs.
The environmental consequences for an organism of those actions that are carried out have a considerable bearing upon what is done subsequently. Operant behavior is behavior that is sensitive to its consequences. When operant behavior becomes more likely because of the consequences it has had, we speak of reinforcement. Some consequences produce increases in the likelihood of operant behavior, and others do not. Reflecting can be conceived of and researched in terms of operant conditioning procedures. Reflective statements by person B, acting as reinforcing stimuli on the preceding contribution by person A, will make it more likely that person A will persist with this line of talk. The process can be thought of as one of systematic selection: ‘Those responses that are selected increase in relative frequency, while most of the remainder decline’. Reinforcement can take a positive or a negative form.
Positive reinforcement is any stimulus, when presented after the occurrence of a behavior, that increases the future occurrence of the behavior. He goes on to describe it as ‘the most powerful and effective method for increasing or maintaining appropriate behavior’. Behaviour resulting in the noxious stimulus being reduced, eliminated, or avoided will become more prevalent, the sine qua non of reinforcement in action. Examples of negative reinforcement in everyday life are common. We have a headache, take feel fine analgesic, and the pain disappears, making it more likely that we will take feel fine the next time a headache strikes. Positive reinforcing stimuli can take a variety of different forms.
Primary reinforcers include such things as food, drink etc., the reinforcing potential of which does not rely upon a process of prior learning. Secondary, token, or conditioned reinforcers, on the other hand, come to be valued through prior association with primary reinforcers, money being an obvious example in contemporary society.
The implication is that various verbal and non-verbal behaviours associated with attention giving, for instance, have the ability to shape how others act in interpersonal situations through selectively acting as social reinforcers. Social reinforcers, in broad terms, are ‘stimuli whose reinforcing properties derive uniquely from the behavior of other members of the same species’. Social behaviour, by definition, presupposes the involvement of other people.
In the main, those with whom we mix and intermingle and are a powerful, though often subtle, influence on our actions also contribute the types of reinforcers that govern and shape it.
Some researchers, while remaining within an operant conditioning framework, see reflections working in a slightly different way. When a certain action succeeds only in eliciting reinforcement in the presence of particular accompanying stimuli, that piece of behaviour is said to be under stimulus control and those stimuli have become discriminating stimuli in respect of it.
They signal the availability of a reinforcer for behaving in that way. When the overall context acts in this way, contextual control is in operation. Reflections may, therefore, function more as discriminative than reinforcing stimuli. Discriminative stimuli are part of the environmental context within which the organism responds. These signal that reinforcing stimuli are available and, as such, are present at the time of responding rather than afterward (and differ from reinforcing stimuli in this respect). These cue the occasion for reinforcement but do not themselves reinforce. By reflecting feeling, for example, the interviewer may actually be signaling to the interviewee that subsequent reinforcement is available for further affective responses.
To summarise, reflecting is a method of influencing verbal behaviour by affecting the frequency of occurrence of particular types of responses. This can be accounted for in terms of the behaviourist principles of operant conditioning and behaviour analysis. As such, reflective statements act as reinforcing (and perhaps discriminative) stimuli and, by implication, promote the class of response represented in the other’s preceding line of talk.
The Linguistic Approach
A reflective statement, whatever else it may be, is part of talk and, as such, is subject to the sphere of influence of linguistics, particularly pragmatics, and amenable to techniques of conversational analysis (CA). Pragmatics explores the factors behind our choice of language, from among a range of possibilities in any given situation, and the effects of those choices on others. It therefore concentrates on language put to use by people as they live their lives..
People normally succeed in understanding one another in ordinary conversations and manage their intercourse in a well-ordered fashion. But this can never be taken for granted, and the identification of the embedded rules and principles that underpin conversational coherence is of considerable interest to scholars of language. Conversationalists constantly work at making talk run smoothly. They anticipate possible confusions and misunderstandings and take avoidance action. When problems do arise, they are identified and repair strategies implemented.
From this background, reflections could be regarded as forming part of the complex and often subtle operation of organising and orchestrating conversation. The process of formulating talk can be thought of as providing comment upon what has been said or what is taking place in the interaction.
It has been outlined as follows: A member may treat some part of the conversation as an occasion to describe. That conversation, to explain it, or characterize it, or explicate, or translate, or summarize, or furnish the gist of it, or take note of its accordance with rules, or remark on its departure from rules. That is to say, a member may use some part of the conversation as an occasion to formulate the conversation.
Reformulations may relate to something the person providing the formulation has contributed (A-issues or events), something the other participant has mentioned, or, although less frequently, to both (AB-issues or events). A further distinction is that between formulations of gist and upshot. The former involves extracting and highlighting the central events and issues featured in the immediately preceding utterance. Formulations of upshot go beyond this to frequently draw conclusions based upon assumptions that may or may not meet with the agreement of the other partner. It would seem that from this standpoint reflections could be regarded as essentially B-event or issue formulations of gist.
It has been noted that formulations of this type are often tentative proposals and require a decision from the other interactor as to their acceptability. Likewise, in the helping context, counsellors have been urged to reflect feelings in a tentative way that always leaves open the opportunity of denial or correction by the client. If the other is unwilling to agree to a particular representation of his or her position, one or more modifications are likely to be presented and worked through until agreement is forthcoming.
Adjacency pairs are a further feature of conversation that gives it structure and predictability. These are conversation sequences that are ‘two turns long, having two parts said by different speakers in adjacent turns at talk’. Furthermore, there is a rule-driven expectation that, in initiating this type of sequence, one positions the other in the role of respondent and places restrictions around what can be offered as an acceptable next speech turn. For example, questions beget answers; requests invoke refusals/acceptances; greetings initiate greetings, and so on. If reflection-confirmation/elaboration works in this way as an adjacency pair, then an obligation is
placed upon the other either to explicitly confirm/deny the reformulation or to continue to elaborate the original pronouncement.
However, it was emphasised that in order for reflections to function in this fashion, they must be delivered with a downward rather than a sustained or rising vocal intonation. The corollary of this, it could be argued, is that when reflections are used to facilitate further interviewee exploration, they need to be delivered with a sustained or rising intonation pattern. The depth of the intertwining of verbal and non-verbal modes of communication is increasingly being recognised. Additional features of contemporaneous non-verbal behaviour are also likely to be influential in determining the conversational effects of reflective statements.
Three radically different views of reflecting have been outlined in this section. According to the person-centred humanist, reflections are a means of accepting the other without condition, of empathising with the other, and helping that person become more fully self-actualising. To the behaviourist, reflections act as social reinforcers to influence the verbal performance of the other by increasing the amount of preordained talk. Lastly, reflections have been depicted as techniques, which are used in the organisation and management of conversation not only to maintain or change it but also, under certain circumstances, to bring it to an end.
Functional Perspectives
One of the more basic functions of reflecting is to show respect for conversational partners by indicating that they are being fully attended to and that active listening is taking place. Reflecting is widely discussed within the context of listening actively.
Listening demonstrates to speakers that they are sufficiently valued and accepted for another to be interested in them and prepared to become involved. Reflecting has, therefore, the potential to form the basis upon which to build a positive, facilitative relationship typified by openness, trust, respect, and empathy. Reflections are also frequently used in order to clarify. An accurate paraphrase, by condensing and crystallising what has been said, can often help interviewees to see more clearly the exigencies of their situation.
Mirroring back the core message contained in the interviewee’s previous statement enables issues that are vague and confused to be thought through more clearly and objectively. Since problems and concerns, especially of a personal nature, are things experienced, for the most part at a ‘gut’ level rather than being intellectualized or even verbalized, it often proves difficult to find the words and indeed thoughts to express them unambiguously.
In addition to acting as a means of enabling the interviewee to appreciate more clearly experienced concerns, reflecting assists the interviewer to check accuracy of understanding and obtain a clearer realization of the actualities of circumstances. By reflecting, the interviewer not only conveys a desire to get to know, but also, when it is accurate, demonstrates to the interviewee the level of understanding accomplished, despite the fact that the original message may have been inchoate and vague. Supported in this way, the interviewee is often motivated to continue to explore particular themes more deeply, concentrating upon facts, feelings, or both depending upon the content of the reflective statement.
This can be difficult to accomplish and requires tact but is very worthwhile. Some feelings are quite laudable and easily accepted, many others prompt defensive reactions and, consequently, are either consciously or subconsciously repressed and denied. As a result, people become estranged from these affective facets of their being. Through the reflection of feeling, such individuals can be put more fully in touch with these realities.
Paraphrases
When paraphrases are used contingently and focus upon factual aspects of communication, recipients’ verbal performance can be modified accordingly. In addition, paraphrasing seems to promote favourable judgements of the interviewer by both interviewees and external judges. Counselling trainees have also indicated that this is one of the skills they found most useful in conducting interviews.
Conclusion
In corporate interpersonal communication, reflection is an important tool which is closely related to active listening In offering deeper levels of empathic understanding, the reflection should move beyond the familiar to point tentatively toward experiences only faintly hinted at and less clearly grasped by the client. Although possibilities of inaccuracy are increased, such reflections have the potential to move the client forward in experiencing to greater degrees of realization. Reflecting can be thought of as part of the elaborate business of managing talk in the course of interaction.
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