Guest Lecture - Key of Communication
It is an honour to have Mr. Erickson be our guest speaker in the seminar in business management course hosted by IBMBA. It is the first time we have Mr. Erickson here, sharing about the Key of Communication. Over 50 students in the classroom benefit from the idea with Mr. Erickson’s career examples.
To start the sharing, Mr. Erickson introduces his career life and his own company started in Taiwan. First thing first, Mr. Erickson prepare an exercise to get into the talk of today. The exercise is to let everyone ‘know thyself’. It is a logical starting point in gaining keys of communication skills. Begin by outlining some pertinent information about yourself. After finishing the exercise, Mr. Erickson encourages students to share their idea. Mr. Erickson explains the exercise also brings out some key elements of communication, it is useful when the students work with different jobs.
Job effectiveness includes three main aspects, job knowledge, technological skill, and people skill. Mr. Erickson focuses on enhancing people skills by introducing the key to communication. During the sharing, Mr. Erickson often interacts with students. Students are free to ask and share their own opinion.
The elements which cause trust. Reliability is dependable in the information they share. Acceptance, nonjudgmental of others. Openness, sharing ideas and feelings with others. Candor, say what is on their mind.
The communication goals. However, people have different goals. Mr. Erickson shared that there are four types of goals that can be observed by their signal given so that we can find a mutual goal. Security type, be correct and accurate. Relationships type, peace and harmony. Recognition type, be noticed. Achievement, get results.
The power scale. It is not about the job hierarchy, power scale is the strength to put during different communication situations. The emotion scale can be used with the power scale to project a communication style.
By the above elements, the communication styles have four styles. Supporting, promoting, analyzing, and controlling. An ideal organization should have all four styles to cooperate. Having own style is great and makes it an advantage to work on.
Trust model, combined communication style and the elements which cause trust. The model answered many students’ questions by telling them how to build trust with different people. Mr. Erickson explains the model with students’ questions and real-life examples.
Next, Mr. Erickson prepared a worksheet about interpersonal style recognition. He asked students to pair up with someone and work on the test. In 15 minutes' time, students help each other to recognize themself better. After recognizing their communication style, it is easier to find the communication way.
Another important element to successful communication is positive and flexible behaviours. Students ask about how to deal with people who do not want to communicate, Mr. Erickson answer that can be fixed by positive and flexible behaviours. There are three main points to work on, asking questions, listening, and smiling.
Back to the core of communication, listening and speaking. With different communication styles, there are different styles to listen. Speaking should be concerned with two aspects: relevance (feelings), and clarity (facts). With some speaking skills, communication can become more effective.
From the seminar, students are equipped with more efficient communication skills. Students feel more comfortable to communicate internationally and work as a group.
