MAKING COMMUNICATION EFFECTIVELY SIMPLE

Across the years, we at REINVENT have observed that thousands of articles, journals, researches and books have been published on how to improve communication. What is interesting is that in the end, they all point to roughly two most important basic skills: learning to listen, and learning to express oneself.

Advancements in technology have also been quite concentrated on how to make communication faster and more accurate. From Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, to Marconi's telegraph, and in this day and age, the cellular phone and the internet - being able to get our message across in a millisecond across the globe has worked wonders for all of us.

The irony in all of this, however, is that communication continues to remain as one of the biggest problem at work and at home.

This book is not about how to change people so that they could communicate better. Tons of literature are available on the bookshelf. Instead, I thought of writing a book that centers not only communication but how how three most important human dynamics can become avenues for better relationships in life.

My title of Taking People As They Come: The Three Cs at Work in Our Lives is about how we can just accept the reality that people are different, people with the strangest personalities exist, and instead of stressing ourselves to change them, we can get to accept that for this moment in our own life history, they happen to be in our sphere. If we understand how they affect us, and how we affect them, we may come to a better understanding on how to engage them in a spirit of cooperation, and handle them when we face conflict with them.

And who knows, perhaps by sheer understanding of one another, we may change each other and grow for the better.

Common Sense Knowledge About People


Communication, Cooperation and Conflict ... the three most important dynamics in developing interpersonal effectiveness.

Communication is a process which involves a reciprocal exchange or sharing of ideas, thoughts, feelings, needs, desires, opinions, information and other types of content people wish to express to others.

However, we should note the word RECIPROCAL, which to my mind, involves an actual give and take. Hence, when we have a condition where one person shares something and others do not respond, or decide to not say anything, we already sense there is a communication gap. Some behavioral scientists would label this as one-way communication.

Hence, when we have a case of a boss who autocratically tells their people that they need to "follow the new policy, no questions asked"' and everyone present becomes tight-lipped with their mouths zipped and their eyebrows meeting each other, we have the brewing of a communication problem.

Cooperation, on the other hand, is a process which involves a positive chemistry of two or more people working together towards a shared purpose or goal. We have often observed in our thirty years of working with people and groups that cooperation is also partly synonymous to teamwork. People are placed together to become a team focused on achieving something which they share. However, there is also the angle of their positive chemistry, or compatibility. The positive chemistry is the spirit or blend of personalities that truly complement each other. In families, for instance, even if it is one partner aiming for a career advancement, the spouse who may not be aiming for it however may still render emotional support, and back the partner all the way.

When it comes to Conflict, the picture is altered. This is a situation where we have a struggle or a rift because two or more parties do not agree on something. This something can be a goal, a value, an opinion, an ideology. To make matters worse, there may also be a case of wrong or bad chemistry wherein even without a clear or logical focus of disagreement, the parties simply cannot stand each other's personalities.

COMMUNICATION - THE GOLDEN KEY TO THE TWO Cs

Ordinarily, cooperation and conflict often reside in any social interaction which involve pursuing a task, or getting something accomplished.

In the middle of these two is COMMUNICATION, which we believe is the golden key to encouraging Cooperation or team spirit, or the culprit responsible for destroying teamwork and therefore results in Conflict.

In explaining our point about being the golden key to a better relationship, we have come up with four Essentials of Effective Communication.