Understanding Communication, Negotiation, and Workplace Behaviour

This report delves into the critical personal and professional skills essential for effective management. It begins by exploring the significance of communication skills, emphasizing both verbal and non-verbal aspects, and analyzing their impact on workplace behavior. The report highlights how effective communication facilitates collaboration, feedback, and the exchange of information within an organization, while also addressing barriers to communication. The second part of the report focuses on negotiation and influencing skills, crucial for resolving conflicts and achieving pre-determined objectives. It examines different negotiation stages and influencing techniques, stressing the importance of building trust and understanding organizational dynamics. The report underscores the interconnectedness of these skills, concluding that a comprehensive understanding of communication, negotiation, and influencing is vital for managers to foster a positive work environment and achieve organizational goals.

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL
SKILLS FOR MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Understanding of effective communication skills and ways it can affect workplace behaviour.1
Knowledge and understanding of effective negotiation and influencing skills in order to
achieve a pre-determined objective.............................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Effective communication skills are one of the most important and desired skills that are
required by all the employees, managers and leaders (Brink and Costigan, 2015). These skills are
not only important at workplaces but they play a vital role in each and every industry as these
skills helps in understanding or delivering proper and accurate messages with others. These
communication skills are also important to understand and develop effective negotiation and
influencing skills. This reflection will lay emphasis on demonstration of understanding of
effective communication skills and ways it can affect workplace behaviour as well as on
knowledge and understanding of effective negotiation and influencing skills in order to achieve a
pre-determined objective.
MAIN BODY
Understanding of effective communication skills and ways it can affect workplace behaviour
I have learned that there are various skills that each and every professional would have
such as learning, listening, communication, negotiation, problem solving, time management etc.
communication skill is one of the most important skill which is required by every professional. It
is extremely important to understand effective communication skills as it is helps in effectively
collaborate and communicate with one’s colleagues, superiors and staff members, no matter in
which industry we work in (Katz, Lazarsfeld and Roper, 2017). I have understood that these
communication skills are specifically important for a manager as they need to ask their
employees for feedback, they need to communicate organization’s need to their employees and
employee’s perspective and their needs to the organizations. Proper communication skills help in
exchanging information, messages, signals or gestures or writing. There are various kinds of
communication that are required to be understood by professionals as different types of
communication is used for different purpose like understanding body language, outlining
objective or purpose of writing etc. Each type of communication has their own importance
(Gallagher, Tancredi and Graham, 2018). I have observed that there are two main types of
communication: first is verbal communication that helps in sharing information through words or
speech, and second is non verbal communication that occurs without using any kind of written or
oral words i.e. it relies on non-verbal features like physical movement, colours, tasks, symbol so
that feelings, information or attitude can be expressed with others.
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Various kinds of activities were carried out in class as well which helped us to understand
both the type of communication, their importance and ways in which it can help in building
effective communication and understand any kind of issues or problems. Like a wordless activity
was carried out in class in which two groups were divided and one person from a group required
to show a kind of emotion and other group members were required to understand it. This activity
also helped us to understand various kinds of emotions at work place and ways it which we can
understand such emotions (Hargie, 2016). It was also observed that many times at workplace
seniors or managers try to ignore these non-verbal emotions of other employees at work place
but I have understood that it is important to counter with these feeling in a productive manner
because if negative feeling of other employees is not tackled in a proper and efficient manner
then it can affect workplace environment and important feedback might not be provided by the
employees. It was also observed that it is not possible for the managers to block negative feeling
at workplace and there are various reasons due to which negative feelings at workplace can get
agitated but these feeling at workplace can be controlled. So it is important for every manager at
workplace to understand and know the ways or tactics using which these feeling among
employees can be controlled in order to maintain proper workplace environment and for this
managers should know both verbal and non-verbal communication as well as effective use of
both the type of communication.
Classroom activates helped me to understand and learn various kinds of skills that are
required for effective communication. Listening is one of the main skills which is required for
effective communication. Each and every individual or professional should learn to listen so that
any kind of issue faced by others or information provided by other can be heard properly.
Another important skill for effective communication is to understand and study different kinds of
non-verbal communication and more than fifty percent times non verbal communication is used
in one or the other way. These skills can also help a manager to become emotionally aware and
improve their management skills as well. So, it is important to understand these communication
skills as it can affect workplace behaviour in many ways. I have also learned that there are
various barriers to effective communication that can affect workplace behaviour and for
organizations non-effective communication can create various kinds of issues such as language
issues, cultural diversity barrier, gender differences, physical separation, status differences etc. if
these barriers Are not taken care of then it can directly/indirectly affect workplace behaviour. For
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this there are various ways in which this effectivity can be improved like listening with proper
intentions, recording our own talks or conversations, reading blogs, newspapers, fictions etc, and
by checking availability of the required information that is required (Meulenbroek, Bowers and
Turkstra, 2016).
I have also understood that workplace environment is quite different from school or
colleges environment. So, it is important for all the employees to understand to understand
workplace behaviour as it is quite different from normal human behaviour that we develop while
growing up as this professional workplace behaviour helps us to succeed in our professional life.
In order to maintain workplace behaviour, it is important for the employees to focus on various
things such as: employees should be goal oriented, they should try to build confidence and focus
on building effective communication skills. These communication skills can help in achieving
productivity and maintain work relationship simultaneously. Other than this I have also observed
that these communication skills can affect workplace behaviour is many different ways such as:
It can help in team building by communicating and collaborating with other tam members. It can
also help employees in gaining employee satisfaction where every employee can freely
communicate with others. Helps other employees to develop an innovative thinking where
employees will be able to openly communicate their innovative ideas with other team members
and lastly it helps in ensuring overall growth of an organization. These things further help in
maintaining effective workplace behaviour. So, I have also learned various ways in which
workplace behaviour can be affected in a positive manner. By defining goals and expectations
that are required to be achieved, clearly communicating our own message and choosing a proper
and effective medium so that our message can be understood properly. This can be done by
involving everyone so that every one can listen and understand our message or information
provided properly.
Knowledge and understanding of effective negotiation and influencing skills in order to achieve
a pre-determined objective
From various classroom activates and research I have learned that other than communication
skills there are two more important skills that are required to be understood and worked on at
workplace, these skills are: negotiation and influencing skills. Negotiation and influencing skills
are quite important to be understood and work on such skills so that any kind of issue can be
easily resolved (Kochan and Lipsky, 2018). For managers these are one of the most important
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skills are they need to control their workforce or employees for effective and efficient results that
can be achieved in a timely manner. Influencing or manipulating is a desired skill so that
managers can influence their employees in a positive manner for the growth and benefit of the
organizations. In order to develop these influencing skills, it is important to build trustworthy
relationship with the people to be influenced because without this trust it would become quite
difficult for the influencer to influence other people as it can affect opinions, behaviour as well
as actions of people who gets influenced. I have understood that in order to develop influencing
skills it is important for an individual to have various skills such as: manage adversity, be
trustworthy, personal credibility, create positive relationship with others, develop self-awareness,
lead with our core values in mind etc. these abilities can help in developing influencing skills.
One can influence others by: creating visibility so that they can understand what they want to
achieve, understanding organizational politics, maintaining and building personal
trustworthiness, building network or connections with others so that it becomes much easier for
influencer to influence others, being clear with our communications so that our message can be
understood and delivered in a proper manner and lastly by motivating others as it will help others
to improve their work and trust the motivator so that in future they can trust others and get
influenced (Kelly and Kaminskienė, 2016). These are few essential things that are required in
developing influencing skills. These skills can also help in achieving pre-determined objectives.
As in order to achieve a pre-determined objective it is important for team members to understand
as well as trust their managers or team leaders in an efficient manner so that they can trust them
and work on achieving their desired objective which is already predetermined.
I have also understood importance of negotiation skills as well as these skills can help a
manager or leaders to settle differences or issues of their colleagues or employees or make a
comptonizations so that a pact or agreement can be made or developed. Negotiation skills are
mainly required so that negotiation between two parties with conflicts or issues can be made.
There are various kinds of negotiation that can be done between two parties so in order to
develop negotiation skills it is important for managers or leaders to understand different kinds of
negotiation that they can make between two parties and ways in which negotiation can be made
(Kelchtermans and Vanassche, 2017). As many times these negotiation skills can also help in
achieving pre-determined objectives. I have also learned that negotiation is done in four main
stages that are: first stage is to prepare for the negotiation which can be done by listening to both
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the parties which is the second stage where information is exchanged between both the parties.
Third stage is bargaining where both the parties bargain as per their convenience and knowledge
and last is closing and commitment where both the parties reach to a conclusion and make some
negotiations according to the issue (Abramson, 2017). These negotiation skills are important for
managers to work on because if there are any kind of disagreement or issues within team
members then it becomes quite difficult for the managers to achieve pre-determined objectives.
So, it becomes first and the foremost priority of the managers to resolve issues or disagreements
between two employees and it can only be done with proper negotiation skills. Negotiation skills
require following things such as: understanding key issues, establish both the party’s objectives,
frame negotiation as a solution for both the parties, identify agreement areas, resolve
disagreement and finally summarize the issue and make an agreement (Detsimas and et.al.,
2016). But I have also observed that for this it is quite important for then negotiator to have
various skills such as: confidence in presenting our perspective, understanding other’s
perspective, present one’s own case in a proper manner etc. I have also understood that both
negotiation and influencing skills together are important to be understood and learned especially
for the managers so that they can achieve pre-determined objectives in a proper and efficient
manner.
CONCLUSION
From the above reflection it has been summarized that it is important for managers or
leaders to learn effective communication skills, negotiation skills and influencing skills as these
skills help them to understand their employees or team members in a proper and efficient
manner. These skills also help managers or leaders to maintain a proper workplace behaviour
and achieve predetermined objectives. It has also been analysed that in order to develop these
skills there are various other features that are important for the managers to develop within
themselves so that they can develop and use these skills properly.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abramson, H., (2017). Fashioning an Effective Negotiation Style: Choosing Between Good
Practices, Tactics, and Tricks. Harv. Negot. L. Rev. 23. p.319.
Brink, K.E. and Costigan, R.D., (2015). Oral communication skills: Are the priorities of the
workplace and AACSB-accredited business programs aligned?. Academy of Management
Learning & Education. 14(2). pp.205-221.
Detsimas, N., and et.al., (2016). Workplace training and generic and technical skill development
in the Australian construction industry. Journal of Management Development. 35(4).
pp.486-504.
Gallagher, A.L., Tancredi, H. and Graham, L.J., (2018). Advancing the human rights of children
with communication needs in school. International journal of speech-language
pathology. 20(1). pp.128-132.
Hargie, O., (2016). Skilled interpersonal communication: Research, theory and practice.
Routledge.
Katz, E., Lazarsfeld, P.F. and Roper, E., (2017). Personal influence: The part played by people
in the flow of mass communications. Routledge.
Kelchtermans, G. and Vanassche, E., (2017). Micropolitics in the education of teachers: Power,
negotiation, and professional development. The Sage handbook of research on teacher
education, pp.441-456.
Kelly, E.J. and Kaminskienė, N., (2016). Importance of emotional intelligence in negotiation and
mediation. International Comparative Jurisprudence. 2(1). pp.55-60.
Kochan, T.A. and Lipsky, D.B. eds., (2018). Negotiations and change: From the workplace to
society. Cornell University Press.
Meulenbroek, P., Bowers, B. and Turkstra, L.S., (2016). Characterizing common workplace
communication skills for disorders associated with traumatic brain injury: A qualitative
study. Journal of vocational rehabilitation. 44(1). pp.15-31.
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