Quantitative A Qualitative Characteristics -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Quantitative A Qualitative Characteristics? Answer: Introduction The aim of the report is to engage in reflective practice using range of diagnostic tools. In this report I would like to demonstrate advance knowledge in written communication and reflect on good practices in workplace communication. I would evaluate my own communication style using 4 diagnostic tools related to communication including, Nonverbal Immediacy Scale-self report (NIS-S), Talkaholic scale, Tolerance for disagreement, and Willingness to Listen Measure. The outcome of the report is to improve communication competencies by developing appropriate communication behaviours using realistic action plan. Diagnosis and reflection Nonverbal Immediacy Scale-self report (NIS-S) NIS-S is an instrument to measure the self reported non verbal immediacy. This skill is required to describe the personal feelings towards another person. This is the most up to date instrument for measuring immediacy of an individual in relation to the communication. It was developed by Albert Mehrabian in the 1970s. The rationale for choosing this instrument is its higher face validity than other instruments. It has excellent predictive validity. In this scale the self reports between male and females differ and is statistically significant. The difference in scores is the due to different manner of expressing the non-verbal immediacy The instrument comes with set of questions that are behaviours such as I use my hands and arms to gesture while talking to people. Each behaviour comes with set of options on five point scale, where Option 1- Never, 2- rarely, 3-Ocassionally, 4-Often, 5- very often. Most appropriate rate is given for each behaviour exhibited and the overall score is c alculated. There are 26 questions and the final score is calculated by adding the total score with step 1 and subtracting the step score from it. For males the high score is greater than 104 and low score is less than 83 (Richmond et al., 2003). I have evaluated my nonverbal immediacy skills using this instrument. My score was 77 which indicate poor non-verbal skills. This instrument has assisted me in learning that it is my weakness in failing to express my positive feelings towards others. On several occasions I have experienced that it was difficult for me to solve problems using hand on reasoning. This skill is an important part of interpersonal communication, instructional communication and organisational communication. For instance, folded arms may signify resistance to business ideas or eye contact may evoke interest. Therefore, I must overcome my incompetence in non verbal communication skills. Talkaholic scale This scale is a measure of compulsive communication. An individual who speaks excessively and is difficult for him or her to stay quiet is called talkaholic. This kind of behaviour is known to be ineffective communication unless the speaker utters useful and sensible information. It will affect business process as subordinates will restrict themselves in sharing ideas or lead to customer dissatisfaction. They can be effective leaders, if the communication is productive. I have chosen this scale to evaluate my skills as competent communicator. The scale comes with the set of 16 questions and each may be applicable for the user to some degree (McCroskey Richmond, 1995). The questions are like, Often do I keep quiet when I should talk. Various responses for the questionnaire includes 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = Neutral, 4= agree, 5 = strongly agree. For this scale, the score should be between 10-50. People scoring between 30-39 are referred as borderline talkholics. Indivi duals falling in this range can control talking for most of the time. However, they may fail to be quiet even it is advantageous for them. Those scoring above 40 are talkaholics. Such people are dominating and fail to accomplish corporate dealings. This instrument is reliable with strong face validity (McCroskey Richmond, 1993). I have evaluated myself using this scale and the score is 28. It means I am not compulsive communicator. This score indicates that I do not have the tendency to over communicate in a consistent manner. It may be regarded that I am competent in communication and may be inhibited by others. It can be related to my experience where I found a conflicting situation arising among my high school friends. I was quiet as my involvement would have only exaggerated others irritation. Tolerance for disagreement This instrument is used to measure the ability of an individual to communicate with others despite high chances of disagreement. It is the skill where an individual engages with other having different perspective and opinion. Such people support others rights to express their ideas and positively support the debate and prevent traumatic ordeal. It will have positive impact on the employee satisfaction. It will lead to stronger relationship with clients. Having this skill is essential for people in managerial position to express ideas and mange the seniors responses towards organisational change. The instrument comes with set of 15 questions that describe the individuals feelings and orientations. It involves items like, Disagreements are generally helpful. The reaction to the each item is rated as per five pint Likert scale. 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = Undecided, 4= agree, 5 = strongly agree. As score above 46 indicates high TFD and below 32 indicates low and between 32- 46, indicates moderate TFD (Teven et al., 1998). I have used this instrument to determine my tolerance to disagreement skills. My score is 45 that indicate moderate TFD. It means that people with moderate TFD can hide from ideas sometimes. I do not become emotional, when others present ideas that is contradictory to mine. The score highlights my moderately argumentative nature that can help me deal with the disagreement during a conflict situation. I can be an effective leader and the scores relates to my experiences during team projects. My presentation proposals were rejected at times. I dealt with it positively. I was successful in convincing my team mates with the modified version that had no loopholes. Willingness to Listen Measure This scale measures the ability of an individual to focus on listening. Listening is a vital communication skill. Some are active listeners while others claim poor listening due to ineffective communication by the speaker. Willingness to Listen Scale measures this kind of orientation. High listening skills are appreciated in business setting. It is the strength of leaders as they relate with the clients using listening skills. It aids in gaining profit from the opportunities of a global economy. This instrument contains 24 items and must be rated using the five point Likert scale, 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = Undecided, 4= agree, 5 = strongly agree. The questions include, I dislike listening to boring speakers and similar others. A score above 89 and below 59 indicates a high and low willingness to listen respectively. My score using this diagnostic is 72 that indicate moderate listening skills. I am not near to high 89 which is indicates active listening skills. I have high scope of developing this communication skill. I must improve the competence in this category as it can increase my potential to gain high distinction. I do quit listening when the lectures are boring. During problematic situations, I can better solve others issue, if I have strong grasp of their experiences. I need to develop ability to listen to the speaker even when occupied with other things on my mind. Two communication issues Based on the evaluation of personal communication skills, I have identified two communication issues that I must overcome, to excel in professional life. the two communication issues are Low non verbal immediacy Moderate willingness to listen Reflection Having identified the two communication issues from the diagnosis I would like to reflect on the interactions from past 12 months. It was 10:30 pm and I was ready to sleep. I received a call and it was my friend. I was worried, if there was any emergency. However, it turned to be casual conversation. I mentioned politely, not to contact me so late at night. I found my friend never contacted me after that day. On asking, he said that I was rude and that my tone was strict enough that he resisted himself contacting me any further. I was taken back. I realised that I have not uttered anything offensive but the pitch of voice, speed, and tone did not match my words. Upon further reflection, I have found that I occasionally look directly at people, which may indicate that I am not interested in conversation. Also I am rarely animated when talking to people. I do occasionally sit or stand close to people during interaction. On realising this I immediately apologised my friend. Not able to express my true intentions is one of my drawbacks. In addition, I fail to listen actively when the content is boring. I am bored and tired when listening to boring speaker. I had scored low in some of the management subjects as not all the topics evoked interest. Therefore, my willingness to listen was low to moderate in few lecture classes. It affected my grades as I could not prepare high distinction assignment. If only I could listen the lectures actively, even when the content was not interesting, preparing the assignments would have been easier. Later I wasted more time in taking guidance from friends in accomplishing those assignments. In other incident, I was supposed to prepare a presentation on research proposal during graduation. It was not upto market as per my classmates. I did not consider all the flaws that were mentioned by them. The same errors were also highlighted by my tutor. I realised about my moderate willingness to listen and low non verbal immediacy that was also evident from the assessment of the communication skills. Literature review A bulk of literature is available on importance of the non verbal cues in business setting. Non verbal actions such as gesture and voice tone can significantly affect the conversation. For instance, tapping the table can make a person angry. A manager at workplace may not pay attention to his non-verbal behaviours, but can control his speech. It may affect the performance of the employees. A managers attitude is conveyed by his non verbal messages, which may positively or negatively impact the employees. Irrespective of the occupation, in certain cases like sales person, doctor, and lawyer; journalists are required to communicate on a regular basis. Conveying the positive facial expressions and attitude may increase the staff morale and job satisfaction. Negative attitude depicted by inappropriate non verbal cues may affect employees emotions, attitudes and lower the morale. Non verbal skills are also known by many names including, interpersonal sensitivity, emotional intelligence, i nferential accuracy, nonverbal sensitivity, social skills, and competence. There are various functions played by the non verbal skills. It helps makes good impression on others, reach variety of interpersonal goals, development of new relationships, relationship management and detecting other malicious intentions (Burgoon et al., 2011). Non verbal skills affect the social life. Empirical studies conducted on depression and emotional disorder was found to be associated with lack of social support. Active-empathic listening is also a general social skill as evident from the bivariate and canonical correlations (Gearhart Bodie, 2011). In similar study it was mentioned that it makes more sense to focus on the nonverbal and social skills instead of focusing on the personality traits such as empathy, extraversion, and nurturance. It is because the former better helps in connecting with the people emotionally and socially. Therefore, non verbal immediacy can be developed by cultivating the emotional and social competences (Riggio, 2010). Jones Hansen (2015) studied the impact of the mindfulness on supportive communication skills. The article focused on the supportive communications which gives messages of encouragement and empathy. These emotions are indicators of how well an individual can deal with the emotions and aversive situations. The author of the article has put forward and one possible method to link the non verbal and verbal cues that conveyed the emotional support. This mechanism is called mindfulness which means having heightened awareness of current internal and external stimuli. Three exploratory studies were conducted to evaluate the theoretical model of mindfulness supportive communication. Mindfulness increases the communicative coping skills, social skills, and reappraisals. This mechanism appears to be affective in my situation. I can engage in mindfulness based activities to increase the non-verbal communication skills. It can be concluded from the above discussion that there is a need of more r esearch in the field of enhancing the non-verbal skills. A bulk of literature is available on techniques to increase the verbal communication skills than the non verbal ones. Uhls et al. (2014) conducted a field experiment to examine the improvement in the non-verbal skills through face-to face interaction. In this experiment preteen were chosen and eliminated the use of communication tool such as mobile phones and screen-based media. The results showed improvement in the nonverbal emotion cue recognition in experiment group when compared to the control group. The preteens were kept for five days in overnight nature camps. The control group retained the usual media practices. The control group were allowed to use computers, television and mobile phones. The participants were to infer the emotional states from the video tapes (verbal cues removed) and photographs for recognising the facial expressions. The result implies people to engage in similar activities to enhance non verbal immediacy. These results appear to be effective option for my situation. The author had not mentioned of any theory or model existing behind the experiment conducted. According to Jahromi et al. (2016), poor listening skills are the cause of medical error in most hospitals. Willingness to listen does not occur during hurried communications. There are strategies to build effective listening skills that include both verbal and non verbal items. It includes maintaining openness in communication, never interrupt speaker, pay attention, appropriate body movement and posture, eye contact during conversation, and stay relaxed. The listener must pay attention to each word of the speaker and relate to the persons emotions. Hospital mangers were found worst in avoiding interruptions. This skill is required for managers to demonstrate that the customers and employees are important to them. Active listening skills are vital part of effective communication process especially in business. Active listening is the most effective listening skills. According to National Institute of Health and Safety, active listening is beneficial in reducing stress and change interpersonal relationships positively (Jahromi et al., 2016). As per McCroskey (2015), listening is considered more valuable than speaking. Lacking this skill is considered a major communication issue in contemporary organisation. Alberts et al. (2015), highlighted the importance of the listening skills from the survey involving 106 managers. As per the findings poor training and development activities had led to poor productivity. In similar study by Shantz et al. (2013), a positive correlation between listening skills and success at work was found. The study highlighted general intelligence strongly associated with interpretive listening. It is due to the dysfunction communication climate, that employees are demotiv ated and do not demonstrate high willingness to listen (Funder, 2015). It can be concluded that it is important to acknowledge the role of listening. Bond (2012) suggested listening skills assignments in classroom for enhancing the listening power. This aspect is completely omitted in the classroom. In this setting there are various barriers that affect the learning. It leads to undesired outcome for both the instructor and the students. These barriers can be eliminated by tailored listening skills assignments. Assignments like listening followed by writing the content of the speech are effective in positive students learning outcomes. It also fosters the critical thinking. The study implies use of such interventions to increase willingness to listen. Learning the listening skills through internet is another interesting option that was developed by Nah, White Sussex (2008). Students can access internet using mobile phone for learning English language. As per the experiments conducted in this study the use of wireless application protocol or WAP sites for learning listening skills, is affective. A group of students in Korea who enrolled themselves for intermediate English as a Foreign LanguageListening course was recruited and the instrument for the experiment was WAP site. The results showed positive attitude from the learners in developing the listening skills. It fostered student centred and collaborative learning. This tool was affective in increasing the opportunities to learn the language skills. An active participation was observed from the learners. However, the drawback of the study is greater emphasis on learning skills than listening skills. English listening comprehension can be enhanced using video captions through hand held devices. Hsu et al. (2013) investigated the ability to listen and learn English by watching different display modes of video captions. It includes full captions, non captions and target word modes. Students language acquisition and vocabulary was evaluated on a weekly basis. Students in non-caption group outperformed that full caption and control group. There was a remarkable progress in listening comprehension using this technique. It can be concluded from the study that irrespective of learning language, one can simply use this technique to increase the willingness to listen. It is highly applicable in my situation to increase active listening skills sing online videos and learn what is being depicted without captions. There are different micro skills to enhance listening power during, conversation identified by Richards 1983. These are ability to distinguish the different sounds and target language, process speech at different rates, recognise reduced forms of words, and identify the words in stressed and unstressed positions, ability to make use of facial expressions and other clues to work out meanings and many more. There are also micro skills for listening to lectures. It includes identifying the purpose and scope of lecture, identifying topic of lecture and relationships among units within discourse, recognise markers from cohesion, knowledge from classroom conventions and deduce words from context. These skills act as guide for planning the objectives of instruction (Sabet Mahsefat, 2012). Rezaei Hashim (2013) studied the impact of listening micro skills on listening comprehension enhancement in EFL classes. In the experiment conducted by the researchers, a significant difference in improv ement was found using these micro skills between the learners in the experiment and the control group. The experiment group showed listening comprehension enhancement. However, the drawback of the study was use of only five micro skills of all mentioned by the Richardss article. Action plan Objectives Resources/Strategies Rationale Evidence of achievement Timeframe Criteria for evaluation Improve non-verbal communication skills 1. Watch online videos to learn non verbal expressions such as tone of voice and expressions. Watch interviews of businessman to learn the emotional management techniques 2.Engage in group discussions such as community programs to face audience 3.Management of stress- yoga and meditation 4.Increase emotional awareness- Online videos better help learn the correct body language, facial expressions use of physical space and proper handshake. Engaging in group discussions will increase chances to overcome negative expressions and rectify the same. Stress leads to putting off non verbal signals (Shantz et al., 2013). Having emotional awareness prevents being overwhelmed by stress and negative attitude (Erozkan, 2013) 1.Ability to send non verbal signal that match the words 2.Have accurate eye contact, positive tone of voice, proper use of physical space, 3. Proper timing of non verbal responses 4. Able to communicate feelings successfully without nay miscommunication 5. Posture relaxed and positive body language when speaking in public 6 months Collect feedback from peers, mentors and family on improvement in the non verbal skills- every week Evaluation would be based on intensity of the eye contact, expressiveness on face, if the tone of voice is strained or blocked, posture was relaxed or not, timing of non verbal responses, if the sound of voice demonstrate care or anger- Every two weeks Evaluate the improvement through online tests or NIS-S- every month Increase willingness to listen 1.Watch and listen online video clips and answer the set of questions 2. Engage in group discussions and debate sessions to be open mind 3.Active listening exercise- listen and contribute towards the main issue in team meeting 4. Enrolment in soft skills classes of six months duration 5. Regularly visit the business parties with my parents to learn the listening traits and attend seminars Watching and answering the online questions will increase vocabulary and concentration as one focuses on the words. Group discussions and active listening exercises are effective in improving the focus on words and other peoples ideas. Debates are excellent way to open up to others opinions and respect the differences (Baines et al., 2016) Team meetings have an agenda that demand contribution from all the members. It implies one to have high willingness to listen. This exercise forces one to stay focussed throughout activity (Bens, 2017). Training helps fast learning (Omer Abdularhim, 2017) According to social learning theory direct observation helps in quick learning (Funder, 2015) Seminars take place in long hours that will increase patience Smiling often when listening, asking questions in middle of the conversation indicates high willingness to listen Other signs of development of this skills is having high curiosity and open mindedness Demonstrating listening for long time without interruptions 6 months Evaluation includes taking online examination such as willingness to listen scale every one month. Taking and giving feedback every week, is powerful exercise- It helps overcomes drawbacks in listening skill of a person. Self evaluation every two weeks-from percentage of right answers obtained from online video examinations Keep the track of scores obtained in every training class Conclusion I feel satisfied on accomplishing this assignment, as it has provided an opportunity to engage in reflective practice using different communication diagnosis tools. It helped me identify two of the communication issues and design an action plan based on the existing literature. I am confident to overcome my drawbacks by executing the plan of action. In future I expect to demonstrate high non verbal immediacy and high willingness to listen References Alberts, J. K., Nakayama, T. K., Martin, J. N. (2015).Human communication in society. Pearson. Baines, E., Blatchford, P., Kutnick, P. (2016).Promoting effective group work in the primary classroom: A handbook for teachers and practitioners. Routledge. Bens, I. 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