Reflection on Communication Skills and Experiences

This report reflects on the importance of communication in personal and professional relationships, the impact of listening and talking styles, and the barriers to effective communication. It also provides suggestions on how to improve communication skills through personal and work life examples.

Reflection upon your own
communication skills and
experiences using examples
from personal and work life

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
The above report of “reflection of communication skills and experience” will
comprehensively explain the role of communication in personal and professional relationships.
Also, the barriers or hurdles of communication which makes it challenging, will be explained in
detail with the help of examples of work and personal life. The impact listening and talking
styles has on others will be illustrated, further the suggestions on how communication can be
improved will be depicted in the report (Ballaro and et.al., 2020).
MAIN BODY
Communication plays a very important role in personal as well as professional life, it facilitates
the relationships, exchange of knowledge and informations with others. In personal life
communication helps in building strong interpersonal relationships. Communication helps in 5
major ways in personal life such as expressing feelings, informing, imagining, meeting social
expectations and influencing. Human communication is the most important in life, it can be said
as an effective means of building and maintaining the relationship between individuals and
groups. While exchanging information, the way we communicate has a direct impact on the
comprehension of the other party to communication (Fulk, 2021). Often while talking to
someone inability to communicate hinders the proper understanding and this leads to
misunderstanding. Well developed skills of communication helps in academic success and
academic performance. It improves the self-confidence and self presentation which are really
important in making friends and acquittance.
Further, communication holds a major importance in professional life as well. As it is the very
1st skill, which is expected of an individual in professional life. It improves the productivity and
boost the performance at the work place. It becomes easy to move up in the hierarchy if you have
good communicational skills. When a student or a professional communicate their expectations,
innovations, thoughts and ideas clearly, they become more productive, for example in school
also if a group leader communicates the task and agenda in a clear and proper manner, it
becomes well-received and makes the achievement of task becomes easy (Tripathy, 2018).
Having proper communication skills helps in effective decision-making, communication helps
people in professional life take informed decisions by building rapport, listening well and asking
proper questions. It also Helps in appearing for interviews, how one performs in interviews
depends on both knowledge and communication, just having knowledge is not enough as ability

to deliver that knowledge with proper communication techniques is important, use of hand
gestures, body language, expression, voice control is importance (Katsanika and Gotzamani,
2020). Hence, it can be said that communication is a tool which plays vital role in both personal
and professional life.
The way we listen and talk impacts others, with remote communication being the new style,
conversational skills are more important than ever. Listening depends on brain, hence it is
subjective. There are 4 types of listening styles like connective listening, reflective listening,
analytical listening. Each style has its own strengths and weaknesses. I tend to have a connective
listening style which means I focus on what the interaction means for other parties to the
communication. Being generous in listening to others and prioritizing their concerns is
connective listening. Data, facts and figures are important in this style but the flip side or
negative impact of this style is that due the high focus on the speaker, there are chances of
getting overly influenced by making eye contacts, nodding which seems like you are supporting
and agreeing (Knollman-Porter and Burshnic, 2020). Connective style helps in building
connections yet sometimes lead to a grey area of indecisiveness. For example when a teacher in
class is explaining a tough topic I tend to make eye contacts, nod which shows that I understand
his teachings, this has helped me built a nice teacher- student relationship but sometimes my
failure to understand the topic doesn't get conveyed.
The way we talk says a lot about the personality therefore style of talking is important. There are
4 types of talking styles like, assertive, passive, aggressive and passive-aggressive. I tend to have
assertive style of talking. Assertive style is where an open communication link is established and
expressing ideas, thoughts, feelings and desire becomes really easy. My way of talking involves
attitude of empathy to understand the others. It is said to be the most effective way of
communication, in corporate world or professional life such attitude is really helpful to establish
an effective communication (Rajeswari and et.al., 2019). It has a positive impact on partiers to
communication as they feel safe and comfortable talking to the person who has assertive style of
talking. Such people often grow fast at the workplace.
Communication is often disturbed and weakened by the barriers and barriers makes the entire
conversation challenging. Any parameter which limits the purpose of communication between
the receiver and transmitter is a barrier to communication. Linguistic barriers, it is the language
barrier, if there is an absence of a common language between the parties to communication, it

gets difficult to convey the message well. Even the accent of talking also affects the
understanding of the message. Sometimes even in translation the authenticity of the message gets
ruined. Phycological barriers, it is the fear of stage, phobia, speech disorder, anxiety or other
phycological issues that disrupts the communication. These factors limit the ease of
communication and makes a person unable communicate comfortably. Emotional barriers,
factors like anger, sadness, frustration, humour can negatively impact the process of
communication. An occupied state of mind affects the clarity of thoughts which needed while
communicating. Many a times in classroom because of various thoughts in head we tend to get
distracted and loose the track of teachings and this leads to compromised classroom performance
(Son and et.al., 2019). Physical barriers like poor networks, compromised visibility, wearing
masks, noise, faulty equipments hinders the effective communication. With the digitalization of
communication, ways like meeting and calls in online modes needs to have proper connection so
that an effective conversation can take place. Cultural and attitude barriers, in universities and
organizations, there are people from different backgrounds. Empathy and understanding towards
each person is important in cooperating. Attitude barriers, many people do not like to interact as
they are introverts and many people are too extrovert to handle a sane conversation. There should
be a balanced approach in communicating with no ego problems. All these barriers affect the
communication directly or indirectly and healthy communication is key to the productivity or
growth both at workplace and university.
Communication is a two-way process. It needs sender and receiver both in an active state. There
are various ways which can improve the communication. Very first is clarifying the ideas before
communicating, whatever piece of information you need to give, prepare it in advance to avoid
any mishap at the time of delivery. Have a clear state of mind and clarity of thoughts in terms of
information as this could establish a clear base of communication. Understand the receiver and
his needs and expectations from the information. For example some students in university do not
understand the english language well, so in case you start communicating without even knowing
if they are comfortable or not with the language, entire purpose of communication can go wrong
(Sousa, 2021). Therefore, knowing the receiver well in advance is important. Having a positive
body language, hand gestures and facial expressions, try to incorporate hand gestures,
expressions and body language as this helps people understand you and the depth of message
even better. This ensures an overall good communication. Also, keeping a positive voice tone

and choosing voice modulation as a part of the communication is required. Consulting other
parties, suggestions should be taken at the time of planning the information and communication,
as this can bring a collaborative working style where everyone feels inclusive. Nobody should
feel left out or not consulted with. Feedback, it is one of the most important part of an effective
communication, communication being a two-way process makes it important to have the
receiver's participation in it. It is the duty of the transmitter to take feedbacks from time to time
in order to know that audience is on the same page as the transmitter (Treem and et.al., 2020). At
last be a good listener, even if you are just suppose to convey the message, still it is important to
listen to people or parties to the communication to establish a healthy communication. Both the
receiver and sender should be a good listener as this is the essence of the communication.
Knowing the view point of each party is important as it completes the communication. If a
person really adapt all these suggested measures while communicating, an overall healthy
conversation can be easily formed.
CONCLUSION
The above report has depicted the role of communication in personal and professional life
by highlighting various importance like inducing productivity, building inter-personal
relationships etc. Report also showed the talking style and listening styles and it's impacts. For
this purpose the personal styles mentioned are assertive talking style and connective listening
style. Further, various communicational barriers like physical and emotional etc. have been
highlighted with the help of examples. And at last various recommendation or suggestions to
improve the communication has been illustrated.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Ballaro, J. M. and et.al., 2020. Organization development through effective communication,
implementation, and change process. Organization Development Journal. 38(1).
Fulk, B. M., 2021. Effective communication in collaboration and consultation. In Collaboration
(pp. 19-30). Routledge.
Katsanika, E. and Gotzamani, K., 2020. Communication Barriers and Social Capital: Improving
Information and Knowledge Flows in Public Services. In Knowledge Management
Practices in the Public Sector (pp. 76-104). IGI Global.
Knollman-Porter, K. and Burshnic, V. L., 2020. Optimizing effective communication while
wearing a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of gerontological nursing.
46(11). pp.7-11.
Rajeswari, A. R. and et.al., 2019. A trusted fuzzy based stable and secure routing algorithm for
effective communication in mobile adhoc networks. Peer-to-Peer Networking and
Applications. 12(5). pp.1076-1096.
Son, J. and et.al., 2019. Content features of tweets for effective communication during disasters:
A media synchronicity theory perspective. International Journal of Information
Management. 45. pp.56-68.
Sousa, M. N. D., 2021. Communication barriers and leadership styles leading millennials on a
multicultural organization (Doctoral dissertation).
Treem, J. W. and et.al.,2020. Computer-mediated communication in the age of communication
visibility. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 25(1). pp.44-59.
Tripathy, M., 2018. Assertiveness–A win-win approach to business communication. IUP Journal
of Soft Skills. 12(2). pp.48-56.
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