Essay on Active Listening in Effective Communication

Listening is a skill that requires active, rather than passive, participation to advance shared understanding and minimise misinterpretation. Lang, Floyd and Beine (2000) describe active listening as a skill that ‘focuses on attending to patients’ clues, ie, utterances and/or behaviors that are not explicit but may have special meaning and suggest unshared ideas, concerns, and expectations’. This essay will discuss how active listening strategies such as analysing and displaying non-verbal body language, clarifying meaning and accuracy, expressing understanding for the speaker’s feelings through empathy and silence contribute to effective communication by encouraging the speaker to convey his or her thoughts, building trust and†¦show more content†¦As the speaker continues more information is given. The listener is then able to collect the verbal and non-verbal data to gain a better understanding of what is being communicated (Eunson 2008: 310). In addition to non-verbal body language, clarify meaning and accuracy assists the listener to gain an understanding of what is being said and also helps to minimise misinterpretation. Misinterpretation occurs when a message is not understood as the sender had intended (Duck McMahan 2009: 18). Carl Rogers advises that ‘a good rule of thumb is to assume that you never really understand until you can communicate this understanding to the others satisfaction’ (1987). Clarifying meaning and accuracy can be achieved in numerous ways including asking questions and paraphrasing. Paraphrasing allows the listener to check the accuracy of their interpretation of the speaker’s meaning by restating what has been said in their own words (Turner West 2009: 208 and DeVito 2011: 66). This can also help the listener gain the full picture as paraphrasing often encourages the speaker to extend on what has already been said (DeVito 2011: 66). Asking questions also adds to under standing and minimises misinterpretation (DeVito 2011: 66 and Eunson 2008: 320). Eunson (2008: 319,321) states that asking questions such as what, how or when for clarity, understanding and accuracy helps to discover what has been left unsaid by others. Eunson goes on to argue thatShow MoreRelatedActive Listening and Strategies of Effective Communication712 Words   |  3 PagesActive Listening and Strategies of Effective Communication Active Listening and Strategies of Effective Communication Active listening is an attentive and interactive form of listening. One of the primary objectives of active listening is establishing and achieving empathy among all parties engaged in communication together. The words a person uses during communication are important, yet active listening includes listening to a persons words as well as interpreting and intuiting what a personRead MoreEssay about Active Listening Strategies within Effective Communication1070 Words   |  5 PagesListening is a skill that requires active, rather than passive, participation to advance shared understanding and minimise misinterpretation. Active listening strategies such as analysing and displaying non-verbal body language, clarifying meaning and accuracy, expressing understanding for the speaker’s feelings through empathy and moments of silence contribute to effective communication. These methods encourage the speaker to convey his or her thoughts and minimises misinterpretation between sende rRead MoreThe Importance of Listening Skills in the Workplace Essay1115 Words   |  5 PagesGiven that listening accounts for 45 per cent of time spent on communication (Eunson 2012:310), argue the importance of listening skills in the workplace. Your analysis should identify three specific listening behaviors and provide examples to demonstrate how these skills promote communication and understanding. Support your analysis with relevant communication theory and evidence from appropriate academic sources. Listening skills play a significant role in evaluating communication capabilitiesRead MoreEssay on Analyzing Communication Skills1740 Words   |  7 Pagesbeing an effective educator. We communicate with others both verbally and nonverbal by eye to eye contact, gestures, body languages, and posture. Many problems arise because of poor communication among leaders. 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Essay on Latin American Veins are Still Open and Wounded

Martina Brauer October 4, 2013 Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent Book Review Latin American Veins are Still Open and Wounded Open Veins of Latin America is the book to remember. Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano is responsible for the creation of this relevant and controversial masterpiece, which follows the history of Latin America and the Caribbean through centuries of struggle against poverty and those imperial powers who abused of Latin American resources and created inequality. With a leftist political point of view, magic realism and historical events, Galeano epitomizes a Latin America craving redemption and progress. He illustrates his ideas by laying out the story from 1492†¦show more content†¦Galeano portrays this moment in Latin American history as the instant U.S investors took control over the industries. He details the dangers they went through when producing one item to export for the benefit of foreigners, and how they later imported the processed goods from those same foreign countries, injecting money only overseas. The fact that Latin America needed imports to survive initiated the imperial link the U.S has upon it. As stated by Galeano, â€Å"The growing dependence on foreign supplies produces the growing identification of the interest of U.S. capitalists operating in Latin America with U.S. national security†11, bluntly showing the relationship between the United States and Latin America. â€Å"With petroleum, as with coffee or meat, rich countries profit more from the work of consuming it than do poor countries from the work of producing it†12. Because profit was not being retained in the Latin American countries, nationalization of the industries became of importance. 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Subcultures in an Organization free essay sample

Might an organization be better considered as consisting of many subcultures which are conceptually different, rather than one major culture? The topic concerning this essay is if consider an organization as a whole of subcultures or as a single culture. First of all, it is necessary to explain what a culture is and how it influences in the company environment. Upon this, subcultures and their types are explained.TO finalize, it is analyses the convenience of consider a whole of subcultures or a major culture. 1. Introduction Executive managers in a company should ask continually themselves which elements are important for them business. The main aim is not only getting profits, but how to make them without harming the society or the employees of the organization. This does not mean that the economic view has to be inattentive; on the contrary, a good practices implementation in the company can lead it into an earnings improvement, for instance, due to the good image perceived by customers. We will write a custom essay sample on Subcultures in an Organization or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Ethics helps to strengthen the social responsibility objectives formulated and focused on the relationships management between the company and the stakeholders: customers, suppliers, public administration, financial institutions Thus, we find a corporate ethics, belonging to the organization like a whole but we also find a personal or professional ethics which is individual. Obviously, both of them interact and complement each other. The ethics of the company is reflected in its culture.Individual behaviors turn towards social or common behaviors for every member of the organization. Without values neither ethics nor corporate culture does not exist. 2. Corporate culture and subcultures. Corporate culture is the total sum of values, symbols and rituals shared by all the members of company. It describes the way how the things are done in order to solve internal and external problems related with customers, suppliers and the environment. The culture has a common and qualitative character and it is shared by everybody in the organization.It is important to explain some of the elements which make up the corporate culture: History: Conducts and facts happened previously in the company, like the structural evolution of the company, the performance of the managers or the rotguts evolution. * Myths, legends and anecdotes: Events which nearer traditional or historical ideals than true. They give employees reasons for satisfaction and proud. * Beliefs and values: Values say how and what to do in the company if the employee wants its behavior pattern to be considered satisfactory.These are rules about how to act. Having widely shared values make the corporate culture strong. * Rituals: Rituals are common practices obeying some rules and formal and informal procedures. They are considered as a benchmark. * Material symbols: Like dress code, buildings, facial cars, furniture, decoration, facilities * Immaterial symbols: How to call employees, informal contacts, given privileges, the approach of the Coos. .. * Communication: How the vertical and horizontal communication works.One important point talking about culture is the relationship between corporate culture and the companys strategy. An optimum culture for all the companies does not exist, so it is suitable to identify all the culture aspects which make stronger the strategies. If they are not in concordance, it would be suitable to think about changing the Strategy or trying to change the ultra, even it is more difficult to change the corporate culture because it involves the behavior of all the staff. Analyzing the corporate culture, it is not possible to refuse the existence of many subcultures in a company. They appear when there is a group of people who does not take part in the whole values of the company. This phenomenon happens frequently, for example in a merge, inside of some departments which are leaded by a charismatic person who does not like the companys values or inside of departments strongly focused in a specific aspect. These subcultures set their bases, evolve their beliefs and create their own behavior pattern, but it is possible that this does not happen according to the corporate culture.From this point Of view, a company should be aware of the subcultures present inside of itself in order to eliminate them if they do not accord with the corporate culture. The main problem dealing with subcultures is that it cannot be allowed that two or more elements of the organization are governed by two or more different cultures. Allowing a subculture to exist is a function delegation. It is possible that some elements of the organization are acting in other way efferent from whic h they came from. Subcultures are less frequent in young companies or in small ones.The bigger the company is, the higher possibility of having subcultures. In this case, human resources departments play an important role being aware of the behaviors in the company and not allowing the creation of sub-cultures contraries to the corporative culture. However, allowing certain types of subcultures to emerge in strong culture organizations can be one way to become agile without losing their basis of strength. Subcultures can permit an organization to generate varied espouses to the environment without necessarily destroying its internal coherence.These subcultures may provide the flexibility and responsiveness that a unitary culture may limit. On the other hand, as said before, subcultures use to be rejected in strong organizational cultures. Thus, we could state that only some types of subcultures are profitable to the company. In this way, we can differentiate between negative and positive subcultures which concern in a different way to the general culture. Talking about the positive ones, they often emerge in response of new demands and an be useful as a way to allow employees expressing their conflicts when they appear.Formally, researchers have developed a classification of corporate subcultures which includes enhancing, orthogonal and countercultures. Enhancing subcultures support the prevailing culture; orthogonal subcultures hold independent elements but do not interfere with the prevailing culture and countercultures are the ones that have objectives in opposition to main aspects of the prevailing culture. Fitting to the question we discuss, we are going to focus on the cultures conceptually different: the countercultures.Countercultures can serves some useful functions for the dominant culture, such as question ing old values and providing safe haven for the development of innovative ideas. A counterculture may be tolerated by the organization as long as it is bringing in results and contributing positively to the effectiveness of the organization. Some core values of the countercultures can become a challenge to the corporate culture, but they still being a threat to the company. These subcultures cause misunderstandings, confrontations, problems, discussions, wrong done actions and wasted opportunities.Thus, organizational culture must stop counterculture activity using the human resources department in order to pay attention to the leader of this counterculture and trying to get him or her back into the correct culture position. It is important to be aware of the existence of this counterculture, because it will be easier to stop it if it detected rapidly. Going against the counterculture requires spending resources. Thus, once defined culture and subculture terms and explained the different types of subcultures we can affirm that every company, with a relevant size , will have a culture surrounded of some subcultures. These subcultures can affect positively or not to the dominant culture. When they do not support the corporate culture, it will cause problems on the mid or long time. For that reason, the company should spend its resources in order to avoid the more as possible these countercultures to be expanded. Two or more kinds of different values, beliefs and behaviors in a company can cause problems of communication, discussions disagreements and other kind of problems which can result in a decline of the productivity, profits and the corporate image. 3. Conclusions: Many subcultures or a major culture?TO Sure up, what should be clear now is that in a company with a considerable size, subcultures cannot be avoided but can be controlled. Indeed, controlled subcultures can offer some positive aspects to the corporate culture even if they are countercultures. However, an organization should hold its own personality and culture. In order to achieve this, a major culture should be defined and accepted by the company environment. The human resources department must wholly aware of the existence of these countercultures. Sources will be expended in order to control them and to try hem not to damage the corporate culture and the business.Thus, an organization cannot be considered only as a unique culture but neither as a whole of subcultures. However, considering the dichotomy of this issue, it is preferable to consider a company with a major corporate culture in order to hold its personality and authority as a unique whole. The reality is that a strong company should have a strong culture complemented with some subcultures emerged by the daily activity among the years. Nevertheless, these subcultures should agree, as much as possible; with the dominant report culture, its beliefs, values, rituals, symbols and history.