Professional Communication Practice: Nonverbal & Intercultural Skills

This report examines two key aspects of professional communication: nonverbal communication in job interviews and intercultural communication in the workplace. Scenario 3 focuses on the significance of nonverbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and vocalics in job interviews, highlighting principles like repetition, substitution, contradiction, accenting, and complementing. It also debunks common myths about nonverbal communication and emphasizes the importance of intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. Scenario 4 addresses intercultural communication challenges, particularly communication barriers arising from language differences, using the example of a Swedish manager in Australia. The report suggests applying the Communication Accommodation Theory to bridge these gaps, emphasizing the need for adaptation and acculturation to foster effective workplace communication. The report uses various research papers to support the claims.

Running head: PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE
Professional Communication Practice
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Scenario 3
On a job interview, a candidate might think that he or she has all the relevant answers
for the questions the interviewer would ask and eventually he or she will get the job. In real
life getting a job is not that easy as nonverbal communication plays a big role behind getting
successful in a job interview. The candidate’s body language, intonation, facial expressions,
the attire of the candidate everything matters in a job interview. In some cases, nonverbal
communication is seen more important than verbal communication (Knapp, Hall and Horgan
2013). The interviewers observe the candidate’s nonverbal communication throughout the
interview and they will judge the candidate highly on its basis.
It can be said that, non-verbal communication is an element of the in-person
presentation that caused to be the response when the responses matter the most. There are
five principle effects that a nonverbal communication must have and those are mentioned
below.
Repetition: Non-verbal communication can easily reinforce what has been already
said.
Substitution: Non-verbal communications can easily substitute words.
Contradiction: Non-verbal communication can easily contradict the messages and
can project the speaker as a dishonest person (Irvine, Drew, and Sainsbury 2013).
Accenting: Non-verbal communications can emphasize a specific point in the
message.
Complementing: The non-verbal communication can complement most of the verbal
messages. For an example it can be said that patting on the back can be a sign of appreciation.

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These five principles are the most important factors of a nonverbal communication,
and for an interviewee, being aware of these five principles would be most beneficiary, as
these factors can expose him or his intents in front of the interviewer, in most cases who has a
huge experience of interviewing.
There are some myths about nonverbal communication in which some people think
that any kind of effective communication is 55% body language, 38% voice tone and mere
7% of the words any interviewee use at the time of interview. This statistics is nothing but an
urban myth. It is also a popular myth that one cannot hide their feelings, or people
unconsciously shows natural signs about their feelings and these all are nothing but lies.
It can also be said that some relations can be conveyed via non-verbal
communication. Nonverbal communication can signal liking or disliking, dominance or
submissiveness and at times it conveys high or low responsiveness. Nonverbal
communication can be classified into six categories, such as kinesis, proxemics, chronemics
Haptics and vocalic (Eggenberger, Heimerl and Bennett 2013). Under kinesis eye behavior
facial expression, gesture and personal appearance matter counts and these are essential for
an interviewee to take care of to get success at the job interview. Then in the proxemics
section people show how close they are with the other person via body language. This is an
important part of the nonverbal communication. After that, in chronemics section, it is seen
that chronemics is the study of time in nonverbal communication. It involves human tempos
their independent behavior (Feldman 2014). after chronemics, study of haptics is pretty
important in nonverbal communication. It is based on the human touches that pretty much
convey the messages, but sometimes misunderstandings occur due to haptics. After that
vocalics are also very important part of nonverbal communication, and in t his section voice
tones, loudness, pitch of the voice everything matters, and the candidate must be careful
about this, else wrong message would be conveyed to the interviewer and the chances of

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getting success can lower down. The interviewees must concentrate on their speaking rate
and volume and tone of their voice. They must take a gap or pause before making any
important point in front of the interviewer.
The interviewer must take special care of their vocal cues as some undesirable vocals
can show signs of incompetence, indecisiveness, aggressiveness and anxiety. Achieving
impression in front of the interviewer is another important part of the interview process and
the interviewee must show their intrapersonal skills to increase his or hers likeability and
interpersonal attractiveness (Adler, Rodman and DuPré 2016). The interviewees must try to
increase their likability, credibilities by relaxed behavior, friendly speech, maintaining high
level of eye contact, showing confidence and sometimes clothing style. Apart from this the
interviewee must take good care of his or her spontaneous behavior, seating posture and he or
she should behave in a friendly manner. These are the things that an interviewee should try to
maintain in an interview. Thus, from the discussion it is evident that nonverbal
communicating skills play a very important role in getting successful in the job interview and
maintaining a good nonverbal communication can make the interview process easier for the
candidate and in most cases the candidate gets out with a job in his or her pocket.
Scenario 4
Intercultural communication can be attributed as a discipline that deals with the
communication among the different cultures and ethnic groups spread throughout the world.
This intercultural communication can be used to portray the widespread communication
processes and issues which generally appear within a business organization or in social
context by individuals from various religious or ethnic groups. It is seen that in business

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sector issues regarding intercultural communication arise when there are some problems in
transmission of messages (Liu and Irwin 2017). Generally if two people from same cultural
background speak of something the individual of the receiving end gets the meaning
conveyed by the individual who is speaking of something. On the other hand, if the speaker
and the listener are from two different backgrounds, some problems may arise and that is due
to communicational gap (Manusov 2014). When a person does not get what the other person
is trying to say problems arise in the workplace, as in any industry, communication is the key
to get success. In this context it is seen that an individual is having some problems working
with a manager who came from Sweden and does not know English that much. The general
problem in this case is gap in communication (Pawlikowska et al. 2012). It is seen that in
most cases for an entry level managers in especially hospital industry, spend more than 80%
of his time on communicational activities with the clients and the subordinates or colleagues
(Nguyen et al. 2014). It is seen that intrapersonal skill is one of the most important skill for a
manager to have, and in this context, problems are rising because of lack of communication
between the manager and the subordinates. Both parties are trying too hard to get the best
results at the workplace, but language differences are becoming the greatest barrier in
between (Salomonson, Åberg and Allwood 2012).
In this case a model of Communication Accommodation Theory can be applied for
the betterment of the situation. This theory describes how wile communicating, individuals
adapt to each other in encounters which are totally purpose related, and in these cases,
cultural factors must be incorporated. This theory eliminates the communicative distances
between two parties from different background trying to communicate with each other.
Intercultural adaptation process includes a continuous chain of deculturation and
acculturation bringing in changes for the in strangers or immigrants in the direction of
assimilation in the highest degree of adaptation which is theoretically conceivable. This

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theory was first ever introduced and adapted by Herbert Spencer in Victorian England.
Spencer applied this theory borrowing from Francis Galton for social adjustment and for best
outcomes in wealth production. According to this theory, the individuals who are new to a
culture must undergo the process of deculturation and unlearning everything about the
language they speak. Then they must try to adapt the mainstream host culture and its beliefs,
values and behavioral modes to fit in the situation. This theory of adaptation advocates for
complete unlearning and deulturation of the individual who is facing communicational
problems in the workplace, and he has to then learn and adapt the culture and language the
majority follows and speaks. In this process, any kind of retention of language, beliefs, way
of talking can be attributed as unprofessionalism or communicational incompetency
(Remland 2016).
This is the model which can be used in this context where the manager from Sweden
is having some problems in the workplace mostly due to problems related to communication.
The Swedish person knows nothing about the culture, language of Australia and that is what
stopping him from getting success at workplace (Laugeson et al. 2012). Using the model of
Communication Accommodation Theory, he can definitely learn how to speak and how to
behave in Australia and that will give him enough confidence to taste success at his
workplace.

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References
Adler, R., Rodman, G.R. and DuPré, A., 2016. Understanding human communication.
Oxford University Press.
Eggenberger, E., Heimerl, K. and Bennett, M.I., 2013. Communication skills training in
dementia care: a systematic review of effectiveness, training content, and didactic methods in
different care settings. International Psychogeriatrics, 25(3), pp.345-358.
Feldman, R.S., 2014. Applications of nonverbal behavioral theories and research.
Psychology Press.
Irvine, A., Drew, P. and Sainsbury, R., 2013. ‘Am I not answering your questions
properly?’Clarification, adequacy and responsiveness in semi-structured telephone and face-
to-face interviews. Qualitative Research, 13(1), pp.87-106.
Knapp, M.L., Hall, J.A. and Horgan, T.G., 2013. Nonverbal communication in human
interaction. Cengage Learning.
Laugeson, E.A., Frankel, F., Gantman, A., Dillon, A.R. and Mogil, C., 2012. Evidence-based
social skills training for adolescents with autism spectrum disorders: The UCLA PEERS
program. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 42(6), pp.1025-1036.
Liu, N. and Irwin, D., 2017. Methods. In Genre Changes and Privileged Pedagogic Identity
in Teaching Contest Discourse (pp. 25-38). Springer Singapore.
Manusov, V.L. ed., 2014. The sourcebook of nonverbal measures: Going beyond words.
Psychology Press.

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Nguyen, L.S., Frauendorfer, D., Mast, M.S. and Gatica-Perez, D., 2014. Hire me:
Computational inference of hirability in employment interviews based on nonverbal
behavior. IEEE transactions on multimedia, 16(4), pp.1018-1031.
Pawlikowska, T., Zhang, W., Griffiths, F., van Dalen, J. and van der Vleuten, C., 2012.
Verbal and non-verbal behavior of doctors and patients in primary care consultations–How
this relates to patient enablement. Patient education and counseling, 86(1), pp.70-76.
Remland, M.S., 2016. Nonverbal communication in everyday life. SAGE Publications.
Salomonson, N., Åberg, A. and Allwood, J., 2012. Communicative skills that support value
creation: A study of B2B interactions between customers and customer service
representatives. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(1), pp.145-155.