Communication 101

Welcome to Communication 101! Today, we focus on forms of communication, both verbal and nonverbal, and emphasize effective communication. 

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Greetings, welcome to the Inquisitor. I'm your host, Dr. Tanya Renee Lee. Today on the Inquisitor, we're going to be talking about effective communication. We're going to learn how to communicate more effectively at all facets of our lives. First, let's begin with a good working definition of communication. Communication can be defined as an ongoing transactional process. Why do we communicate? We communicate because we need to express ourselves to other human beings through interpersonal communication. How do we communicate? Well, we communicate verbally, nonverbally, through listening, through giving feedback, and sometimes in the communication process we have what is called a breakdown or a failure to communicate. People communicate without words in many ways. Let's spend some time looking at them. For example, nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication speaks without speaking. This can be, but it's not limited to our appearance, gestures, posture, eye contact, facial expressions, and vocal cues. Now I'm going to ask you: do you dress according to your mood? What clues do you think others get from your appearance? Can you make any judgments about a person based on their appearance? How a person appears or displays the human body in its apparel is sometimes called object language. Object language may indicate occupation, cultural status, group membership, etc. Your appearance is a form of communication. It is a nonverbal form of communication. So you see, appearance is important whenever we are with anybody in any company, whether it be at work, at church, at school, appearance, your appearance is communicating through nonverbal communication. Now I want to talk to you a minute about effective listening. Caring about others means that we listen to what they have to say to us and that we try to understand what they say to us as best we can. Here then we are concerned about some very basic problems. They include not bothering to tune in when someone else is talking, not bothering to try to understand what someone else is saying, not bothering to ask for clarification. For example, one might say, if they do not understand, what do you mean? Or I heard you say, is that what you meant? I we want to look a little bit at feedback. Feedback is an important part of the communication process because it allows us to ensure that what we are trying to convey is understood. Now barriers to communication include language usage and interpretation, ineffective listening, behavior and attitude, inadequate perceptions and interpretation of nonverbal cues, our perceptions of the world, of ourselves and each other are sometimes a communication breakdown. Communication breakdowns often occur when we feel that our communication is always perfect. And as I just said, to ensure that we don't have communication breakdowns, we need to provide feedback to one another. Some nuggets I want to leave with you today are that we communicate verbally and nonverbally. Nonverbal communication is just as part as verbal, is important rather as verbal communication. Effective listening is a part of communication within any facet of our lives. Communication breakdowns often fail to communicate what we originally intended. Feedback is essential for communication, and feedback provides an opportunity to ensure what we were trying to convey is understood. Thank you for tuning in today. I hope the show has been a blessing to you. And now we're from our sponsors. DSR Designs and Typesetting is the best in the publishing and printing arena. If you need any work done in that facet, be sure to call 580 483 9473. That's 580 483 9473. And tell them you heard about them on the Inquisitor with Dr. Tanya Renee Lee. God bless you and keep you as my prayer.