PowerPoint Presentation

Topic 1. Foundation of Interpersonal Communication.

[Audio] Greetings to all. Lecture for this chapter is continued to the principles of interpersonal communication.

[Audio] In this lecture, you will learn about the eight principles of interpersonal communication as you can read in the slide..

[Audio] Mindfulness is a state of mental awareness. In communication you are you are conscious of your reasons for thinking or communicating in a particular way, uniqueness of the situations and choices for interacting. – You are aware of your choices; act with an awareness of your available choices. For example, when you speak to your lecturer mindfully, you are polite, attentive, and use respectful language such as, "Excuse me, Madam, may I ask for clarification about the assignment?" You are aware of the formal context and adjusts communication appropriately. In contrast to mindfulness is mindlessness. It is a state when you lack of awareness about your thinking or communicating. For example, you might say "Hey, what's this question about?" without realizing that such casual language may sound disrespectful in a formal academic setting when talking to your lecturer. In communication be mindful of unique communication situation you are in, availability of communication choices and reasons why one choice is better than other. For example, think before you speak or act. Let say you are giving feedback to a friend. You can choose between being direct or gentle. A mindful communicator will consider the context — the friend's feelings, the setting, and the purpose of the message — and decide that a gentle, supportive tone is more appropriate. Mindfulness improves scores on verbal reasoning tests, increase short-term memory, and decrease mind wondering , reduce depression in adolescents and improve nonverbal communication. a mindful speaker can think more clearly and give logical, well-structured responses, showing improved verbal reasoning. By paying full attention during a discussion, a person can also remember details more accurately, reflecting stronger short-term memory. Mindfulness reduces mind-wandering by allowing individuals to stay engaged in conversations instead of being distracted by unrelated thoughts. Among adolescents, mindfulness helps manage emotions and reduces depression by promoting calmness and self-awareness. It also improves nonverbal communication, as mindful individuals are more conscious of their eye contact, facial expressions, and gestures, leading to more attentive and empathetic interactions..

[Audio] Here are the guidelines to improve mindfulness. First, Create and re-create categories. means learning to see people, events, and situations from multiple perspectives instead of labeling them in only one fixed way. Avoid storing in memory an image of a person with only one specific label; if you do, you'll find it difficult to re-categorize the person later. By viewing a person in various roles, you become more open-minded and flexible in your communication. Suppose you see your classmate only as a "competitor" because you both aim for top grades. If you re-create categories, you might also see them as a "teammate" in group projects, a "friend" who shares similar interests, or a "future colleague" in your career field. This broader view helps you interact with them more positively and fairly, reducing misunderstandings or unnecessary tension. . Second, Be open to new information and points of view even when these contradict your most firmly held stereotypes. Allow yourself to listen, learn, and reconsider your beliefs when presented with perspectives that differ from your own. You might believe that older people are not interested in using technology. However, when you meet an elderly neighbor who uses social media and online banking actively, this new information challenges your stereotype. Instead of holding onto your old belief, you adjust your thinking and become more understanding of individual differences. being open to new information helps you replace outdated judgments with more accurate and respectful views of others. Be open to new information helps you replace outdated judgments with more accurate and respectful views of others and be mindful. Thirdly, Beware of relying too heavily on first impression. Prepare to revise, reject, or accept initial impressions. First impressions are often based on limited information and may be influenced by mood, appearance, or context. For example, when you first meet a new coworker who seems quiet and distant, you might assume they are unfriendly. However, after spending more time with them, you learn they are simply shy and take time to open up. By not holding too strongly to your first impression, you allow yourself to see their true personality and build a positive working relationship. Fourth, Be aware of possible misinterpretations in the message. Make sure it's interpreted correctly. To ensure accurate understanding, you can restate or rephrase your message or ask the listener to repeat what they understood. This process helps confirm that the meaning received matches what you meant to say. Mindful communicators think before they speak, ensuring that their message is clear and appropriate to the context Finally, Identify and evaluate your communication choices. It is a matter of being mindful of how you choose to express yourself, especially in sensitive or emotional situations. For example, you feel angry because your friend forgot to include you in a group project discussion. A mindful communicator will take a moment to calm down and think before responding. You might decide to talk to your friend privately and say, "I felt left out when I wasn't informed about the meeting—can we plan better next time?" instead of sending an angry message in the group chat. By identifying and evaluating your communication choices, you choose a response that expresses your feelings clearly without damaging the relationship. Mindfulness allows you to communicate thoughtfully by considering the impact of your message before expressing it..

[Audio] Interpersonal communication exists on a continuum. The continuum ranges from impersonal to highly personal, where at impersonal you have conversation with people who you don't really know, for example, asking direction to stranger at the bus stop, to highly personal, you communicate with people who are intimately interconnected, for example, communicate with your parent. There are three characteristics distinguish the impersonal from personal form of communication. Social role versus personal information – at impersonal level, individual likely to responds to each other according to the roles they play. Example -cab driver and passenger Societal versus personal rules – you interact according to the social rules defining your interaction (server great customers, give menu) Social versus personal messages – you exchange messages in a narrow range of topics, little personal information exchange, little emotion and self disclosure (customer only talk about related topic).

[Audio] Interpersonal communication is a transactional process. It is a process with elements are interdependent and participants who are mutually influential. What it mean by interpersonal communication is a process? It is ever-changing and circular process. People and environment are changing, and these changes can go unnoticed and sometimes it is obvious. Interpersonal communication also circular process because one person's message serves as the stimulus for another's message & so on. Each person serves simultaneously as source and receiver mutually. The circular process is relating more in face-to-face communication because you have to response in some way, as compares to communication where people can simply ignore the message. Elements of communication are interdependent because each part are connected to each other. Due to this, change in any of these elements will bring changes in others. For example, changes in channel will influence the messages sent to the receiver. In interpersonal communication, each individual influences the other. What you say will influences what the other persons says and so on..

[Audio] The diagram in the slide shows the differences of communication process from linear to transactional view. The first diagram represent linear view of communication in which the speaker speaks and the listener listens. The second diagram, represent a transactional view, in which each person serves simultaneously as speaker and listener; at the same time that you send messages, you also receive messages from your own communications as well as from the reactions of the other persons..

[Audio] Interpersonal communication is purposeful. It serve the purpose to learn, relate, influence, play and help. Reading about your friends post in social media allows you to learn about their life. Listening to the lecture in tutorial session makes you learn about the information about the topic discussed. Most importantly, interpersonal communication not only helps you to learn about external world around you, but also helps you to lean about yourself, as you can gain feedback on your feelings, behaviour and thought and even learn about who like or dislike you. Interpersonal communication helps you relate with other people. It helps us to establish and maintain close relationship with other. By relating with other it helps us to alleviate loneliness, depression, and make us feel positive. Apart of that, interpersonal communication influence the attitudes and behaviors of others in your interpersonal encounters, for example, influence your froends to believe in your ideas or in making decision that is favorable to you. Interpersonal communication also serve the purpose to play. It mean interpersonal communication give you necessary balance in life and give your mind a break from seriousness around us. Besides, interpersonal communication also serve the purpose to help, where we communicate to offers guidance, consoling people, offer advices, and helping others. This can happen both in face-to-face and online communication..

[Audio] Interpersonal communication is ambiguous. An ambiguous message is a message that can be interpreted as having more than one meaning. For example, the using of word "later". Some people may interpret the word later as sooner, in a short time or some may interpret as after some time, which take longer. Ambiguity occurs when people use words that can be interpreted differently. All messages are ambiguous to some degree because when we communicate ideas for example, we never communicate exactly and totally, but we just communicate what we meant with some reasonable accuracy so that the other person will have clear idea about what we said. However, sometime listener might get wrong idea because we can be less accurate than what we thought. Because of this, it is important to resist jumping to conclusion about a motive of a speaker as meaning created in person, but not the words. A different kind of ambiguity called strategic ambiguity is used when we want to be ambiguous. It is a deliberate ambiguity used to achieve specific purpose. For example, an interviewer who compliment you may be strategically acting ambiguous to keep you interested in the company, or an interviewer who compliment you but saying we will contact you later, might be purposely saying ambiguously to signal that you might or might not be offered with the job, just to leave the possibilities of to offer or not to offer the job..

[Audio] Interpersonal communication refers to content and relationship. Content messages refers to real world, like events occurs, or the objects that you see, while relationship is refers to the relationship between the people who are communicating. In any two communication, content dimension may be the same, but the relationship aspect may be different OR, the relationship aspect may be the same, but content dimension may be different. For example, a lecturer could say to his or her student "You had better see me immediately in my office", or "Would you please come to my office?". In this case, the content is the same, that is, the lecturer wanted the student to see him or her at the office. However, in term of relationship is quite different, because the 1st message signify superior-inferior relationship between lecturer and student, while the second is more on equal and cordial relationship between the two. There are also times where the relationship is the same, but the content is different. Take an example of a situation at workplace. "Boss, I would like to apply for a leave next week", and "Boss, can I use company's car for site visit?". In term of content, it has two different ideas or meaning, however, in term of relationship, it is the same, that is between superior and inferior, between the boss and the staff. Argument about the content dimension are relatively easy to resolve, while argument on the relationship level are much more difficult to resolve. If you failed to recognized between these dimensions, it will cause problem. Based on research finding, man are generally focus more on content, while women focus more on relationship..

[Audio] Interpersonal communication is a series of punctuated events. Communication events are continuous transaction where there is no clear-cut beginning and ending. Thus, we label the communication into segment of stimuli and response. Stimuli a cause while response is the effects out of the stimuli received. Punctuation refers to the tendency to divide communication transactions into sequences of stimuli and responses. Everyone separates communication sequences into stimuli & responses for convenience. Understanding how another person interprets a situation or how he/she punctuates is a crucial step in interpersonal understanding..

[Audio] Interpersonal communication is inevitable, irreversible and unrepeatable. Inevitable mean communication cannot be precented. In any situation, you are communicating even though you might think you are not. This is because, not only the verbal can communicate, but all behavior are also potentially communicate if the behavior is noticeable by others. Let say you are in examination hall, and unable to think of the answer, and sitting lazily while flipping you pen. You are sending a message to the invigilator that you are unable to answer the paper and just waiting for the examination period to end. You are actually want to communicate but your behavior is noticeable by the invigilator, and your behavior did send a message. Irreversibility mean communication cannot be reversed. It mean what you have communicated remain communicated, you cannot uncommunicated. Malay proverb has clearly describe this principle as "Terlajak perahu boleh diundur, terlajak kata buruk padahnya". As in computer-mediated communication, like online media, what you have communicated is often permanent, you need to be cautious when you make your posting or email to others. Electronic messages are virtually impossible to destroy and can easily be made public and it also can be used against you. Unrepeatability, mean communication cannot be repeated. Why communication cannot be repeated? Bacause everything and everyone is constantly changing. We can repeat the behaviour or word, but we cannot recapture the exact feeling or moment..

End of part 4.