BUSN 20017 Reflective Essay: Non-Verbal Communication & Listening

This essay is a student's reflection on the significance of non-verbal communication, listening skills, and communication competence, particularly in the context of business. The author discusses how these skills, learned from weekly modules, are essential for future career goals, emphasizing the role of non-verbal cues in conveying identity and emotions, and the importance of active listening in understanding others' perspectives. The essay incorporates a literature review, highlighting different viewpoints on verbal versus non-verbal communication and the components of active listening. Ultimately, the author concludes that mastering these interpersonal and non-verbal communication skills will be instrumental in achieving their career aspirations, such as becoming a successful manager in the telecommunications industry.

STUDENT NAME
Resident Campus
Lecturer
REFLECTIVE ESSAY-NON-VERBAL
COMMUNICATION, LISTENING AND
COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE

The paper will provide information regarding my opinion in concerning one of the practical business
communication procedure that has been discussed in the weekly modules. I have selected the second
weekly module of non-verbal and listening communication skills because according to me these
communication skills are considered as an essential aspect of communication that can help me in the
future. Furthermore, the paper will provide its importance on my performance and along with it also offer
a literature review of these communication skills. Moreover, the paper will also discuss both interpersonal
and non-verbal mode of communication skills, because, in my opinion, these skills help me to achieve my
career goals in the coming days. In other words, the paper will also discuss the importance of choosing
both these non-verbal and interpersonal communication skills for my future career goals.
After learning these all weekly modules, I have selected the non-verbal communication as well as
listening and communication competence as a significant concept of my learning ability because both this
mode of skills help me to develop my career goals in future. From this module, I have gained that non-
verbal mode of communication refers to the messages transformation using non-verbal sources. In other
words, listening, on the other hand, determines the process that includes both physiological and
psychological process of a person (Vogel, Meyer, & Harendza, 2018). From this second module, I have
learned that non-verbal message constitutes the identity message of a person which determines the
identity of an individual. Hence according to my opinion, it can help an individual to interact easily with
another individual without facing any problem. According to my view if an individual enables to provide
its thoughts to another person with non-verbal communication skills, then it became more comfortable for
the individual to demonstrate his view easily. Besides this, non-verbal communication also helps me to
define my identity in front of other people without feeling shy.
Also, this communication skills also help me to convey my feelings as well as emotions to another
individual. From this module, I have also gained that these communication skills also help to express
individual feelings through proper expression. Hence after learning this, I can say that non-verbal
communication skills help an individual to express his feelings as well as emotions in front of others.
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Therefore, this module helps me to know that non-verbal communication skills not only help me to
express my emotions in front of others but it also helps me express my identity in front of them. On the
other hand, listening defines the information that received from external worlds, its interpretation,
respond as well as attention to a sound that was coming from the outside atmosphere (Georgescu,
Kuzmanovic, Roth, Bente, & Vogeley, 2014). In other words, listening mode also me to enhance my
thinking ability on other matter or people which thereby help me to understand others opinion too. Hence
from this module, I have gained the complete idea about listening skills which states that it enhances a
person's knowledge and also help them to focus on a particular matter. Thus according to me both non-
verbal communication and listening are considered as a significant aspect of communication that helps
me to gain knowledge from others and also enhance my communication skills. Thus according to my
view among all the modules of business communication skills, these non-verbal and listening skills help
me to develop my career in the future.
From all these effective business communication model I have considered that non-verbal
communication, as well as listening skills, are the vital communication concept because both these skills
help me to achieve my career goals in the future. In the words of Berger, (2014), non-verbal
communication refers to the transportation of messages using non-verbal procedures. Besides this, the
author also suggested this as another way of communication skills that quickly demonstrates the identity
of a person without possessing any verbal mode of collaboration. Apart from this, it is noted that non-
verbal communication helps a person to make attribution as well as interpretation over certain things and
provide their view on that matter. According to the author Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydan, (2017), non-
verbal communication skills also help an individual to express their feeling and emotions in front of
others. In other words, the author stated that this communication skill is considered to be a significant
aspect of conveying messages as well as the expression by means emotion and facial expression
respectively. Also, the author suggested that both non-verbal and verbal communication procedure were
different from one another.
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As stated by Vogel et al., (2018), verbal communication was considered as a single mode of
communication process while in other words, non-verbal communication was regarded as the multiple-
channeled mode of interaction procedures. In other words, if an individual expresses his emotions or
feeling through eyes, face or by body language, then it is regarded as a non-verbal mode of interaction
whereas in the verbal mode of communication no such expression or feelings process was used by a
person (Mavridis, 2015). Besides this, with the help of unit talking procedure, both these communication
skills were also differentiated. In the opinion of Canale, (2014), non-verbal communication skills
considered as a continuous process whereas verbal communication mode was regarded as a discrete
procedure which means that a person can introduce himself through non-verbal mode whereas for official
interaction he may choose the verbal method of communication style. Another difference was that in case
of non-verbal communication a person can freely interact with others and therefore they unconscious
about their messages while in case of the verbal mode of communication the person has to conscious and
careful about their message (Walther, 2017). Therefore, it is clear that non-verbal communication skills
help a person to freely communicate with other without facing any difficulty or hesitation.
In the words of Thistle, & McNaughton, (2015), non-verbal mode of communication constitute three
sources, and they were kinesics, proxemics and vocals or paralanguage. The author stated that kinesics
was a non-verbal mode of communication with the help of facial expression as well as body language
whereas proxemics was the communication process where a person uses space and interpret while
interacting with others. In other words, by proxemics communication mode the individual expresses their
feeling through area around the body in concerning to semi-public and public places. On the other hand,
vocalist communication mode was referred through intensity, timings, frequency and fluency of an
individual using non-verbal sources. According to the author Anazi, Ismail, & Zailaini, (2018), listening
was also consider as an essential aspect of communication skills that help one person to effectively learn
something from others. In this mode of communication procedure, an individual often receives
information psychologically from the surrounding atmosphere and interpret his feelings and learn
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something from the situation. The author also suggested that listening was an ability of a person to
respond as well as evaluate their feelings on a message in concerning to that come from their surrounding
environment. In the opinion of Uhls et al., (2014), listening was considered to be a tough mode of
communication as many individual faces difficulty in listening to others messages. The author stated that
listening to others messages needs concentration and people mainly faces problem on concentrating of
other messages.
Also, as per the author active listener was one who possesses the ability to listen to others messages. The
active listener must have the ability to attend skills because this skill was considered a mode of
concentration (Uhls et al., 2014). In other words, the attending skills were denoted after watching the
body as well as an interacting posture of an individual because posture defines whether the individual was
listening or not. Hence it was clear that attending skills of an individual was also a significant aspect of
the listening mode of communication procedure. In the words of Mavridis, (2015), following skills was
also regarded as an active listening skill that helps an individual to relate the conversation using their
understanding. Following skills referred to as the listening process using appropriate manner and thus it is
also called door-opening communication prompts. Besides this, reflective responding skills was also an
active listening skill that defines the listening procedure context using conceptual and emotional content
(Gilkerson, & Southwell, 2015). Therefore, from this weekly module of effective business
communication, it is clear that both non-verbal and listening are considered as a significant aspect of
communication skills.
From all these modules of effective business communication, I considered that interpersonal and non-
verbal communication skills are useful for me in developing my career goals in the future. After learning
all these communication skills, it is cleared that non-verbal and interpersonal skills will help me to
become a successful manager of a reputed telecommunication firm in about five years. I have learned that
non-verbal communication skills will help me to interact with people using posture, body language and
appearance. Thus according to my view, this will help me to easily interact with my staff in the workplace
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without facing any problem and hesitation respectively. In other words, it also helps a person to express
his feelings and emotions through facial expression, eye contact and gesture which thereby help his staffs
to understand him easily (Bodie, Vickery, Cannava, & Jones, 2015). Besides this, as I see myself as a
manager so I have to make good communication with my staff member so that I can easily understand
their needs and problem and for this reason, interpersonal skill is considered as the best approach. Hence
this enhanced my communication skills which thereby help my employees to easily interact with me
without any hesitation they freely tell me their needs and problems respectively. In other words, non-
verbal communication skills help me to communicate easily with my seniors and juniors both. Hence
from this module, I have cleared that both these communication skills help me a lot to work well in a
team or group as both this skill is centred in understanding a person's body language. Thus I am cleared
that both this communication module will help me in future to achieve my career goals.
After reviewing all these modules, I have concluded that the non-verbal and listening mode of
communication skills are the critical aspect of communication and it will help me in future for developing
my career goals. The literature review provides me to clearly understand the uses of both non-verbal and
listening mode of communication skills. In other words, from this literature review I have gained that
non-verbal communication defines the identity of an individual whereas listening provides effective
learning outcomes to an individual. Hence both these aspects are quite crucial for effective business
communication, and it will also help me to develop my career in the future.
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References
Anazi, F. M. A., Ismail, W., & Zailaini, M. A. (2018). Non-Verbal Communication Skills Among
Schools’ Heads in Kuwait. Advanced Science Letters, 24(1), 450-454.
Berger, J. (2014). Word of mouth and interpersonal communication: A review and directions for future
research. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24(4), 586-607.
Bodie, G. D., Vickery, A. J., Cannava, K., & Jones, S. M. (2015). The role of “active listening” in
informal helping conversations: Impact on perceptions of listener helpfulness, sensitivity, and
supportiveness and discloser emotional improvement. Western Journal of Communication, 79(2),
151-173.
Canale, M. (2014). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy.
In Language and communication (pp. 14-40). Routledge.
Ellis, P., & Abbott, J. (2018). Active listening, part two: showing empathy. Journal of Kidney Care, 3(3),
193-195.
Georgescu, A. L., Kuzmanovic, B., Roth, D., Bente, G., & Vogeley, K. (2014). The use of virtual
characters to assess and train non-verbal communication in high-functioning autism. Frontiers in
human neuroscience, 8, 807.
Gilkerson, N. D., & Southwell, B. G. (2015). Interpersonal Communication and Political Campaigns. The
International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication, 1-9.
Härgestam, M., Hultin, M., Brulin, C., & Jacobsson, M. (2016). Trauma team leaders’ non-verbal
communication: video registration during trauma team training. Scandinavian journal of trauma,
resuscitation and emergency medicine, 24(1), 37.
Mavridis, N. (2015). A review of verbal and non-verbal human-robot interactive communication.
Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 63, 22-35.
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Nemec, P. B., Spagnolo, A. C., & Soydan, A. S. (2017). Can you hear me now? Teaching listening
skills. Psychiatric rehabilitation journal, 40(4), 415.
Thistle, J. J., & McNaughton, D. (2015). Teaching active listening skills to pre-service speech-language
pathologists: A first step in supporting collaboration with parents of young children who require
AAC. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 46(1), 44-55.
Uhls, Y. T., Michikyan, M., Morris, J., Garcia, D., Small, G. W., Zgourou, E., & Greenfield, P. M.
(2014). Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with
nonverbal emotion cues. Computers in Human Behavior, 39, 387-392.
Vogel, D., Meyer, M., & Harendza, S. (2018). Verbal and non-verbal communication skills including
empathy during history taking of undergraduate medical students. BMC medical education, 18(1),
157.
Walther, J. B. (2017). The merger of mass and interpersonal communication via new media: Integrating
metal constructs. Human Communication Research, 43(4), 559-572.
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