Advice for Interpersonal Communication - Term Paper Example

?Interpersonal communication and number Dear Sarah and Tim, My advice to you for a good relationship is to invest more in effective communication. Use of effective interpersonal communication among couples is not only enriching, but becomes essential in relationships by using five tools: identifying the barriers to interpersonal interactions; using emotional intelligence; developing strategies for active, empathic and critical listening; understanding strategies for managing interpersonal conflicts; and understanding the impact of culture and gender on interpersonal communications. According to Abigail (2010), while communication involves use of body language, voice tone, words and volume, effective communication occurs when the intended recipient of the message clearly understands the message’s meaning and has the capabilities of responding to the speaker and act according to that message. That communication becomes interpersonal interactions when more people take turns as being listeners and speakers. As a matter of fact, interpersonal interactions control the family’s happiness and determine the closeness as well as the success of relationships. Strategies for active, critical, predictability and empathic listening I would like to advice you, Sarah and Tim, that successful interpersonal communication in relationships is depended on openness along with willingness to communicate, feedback monitoring, predictability and active listening. Feedback monitoring requires that the speaker should seek to find similar people to interact with. In cases of engagement, the speaker must alter the marriage environment so as to evaluate the responses of the listener based on those changes. Such kinds of changes in marriage environments might be considered as comfortable social experiments the speaker performs to collect more information about their relationships. The importance of active listening in interactions is that it permits married partners to not only communicate but also acquire information about each other. Based on my personal experience, listening influences all stages of a conversation and the opinion of the intended audience. Active listening controls interaction and communication among the audience and the speakers. In addition, during interaction, the speakers should be concerned with individual self-presentations and gather cognitive resources needed for monitoring their targets’ actions. Honesty and willingness are part of strategies of interaction which involves direct interpersonal interaction among the speakers and the recipients. Willingness and openness, involve people exposing personal information assuming that the targets will also disclose their information. Predictability, on the other hand, increases more control in relationships and makes partners to feel trusted and secure. The speakers and the recipients can evaluate the veracity of the given information. The barriers to effective interpersonal interactions You should not ignore the implications of physical barriers to effective interpersonal interactions. Abigail (2010) says that effective interpersonal interactions can be prevented by physical barriers like inadequate communication devices and inaccessibility of the partner being communicated to. Additionally, there might be physical barriers, like partners shutting down doors to their speakers. The connotations of physical barriers are that they stop effective interpersonal interactions. It should also be known to you that emotional barriers to efficient interpersonal communications are aggravated by fear. This is because previous lessons gained from negative upbringing experiences can lead to unnecessary mistrust, fear and nervousness during interpersonal communication. A good example of a previous emotional barrier could be a failure to trust anyone with your feelings, thoughts or ideas because of a fear of being misjudged by others and be ridiculed after the judgment. Physical barriers are at times undesirable, resulting into emotional barriers. Folger (2008) poses that another form of communication barriers are language and cultural barriers. Communication is considered essential because partners in relationships perceive and experience life differently. Though, these fundamental differences are likely to lead to cultural barriers to successful interpersonal interactions. All cultures have their own specific customs set for communication. They include the mode of dressing before addressing their elders to spatial dissimilarities when communicating face-to-face. These differences are barriers since they sometimes prevent communication. For instance, when partners fear to offend other partners from a different culture, they might avoid speaking to them because of fear. Women and men also have varied ways of communication. This can cause recurrent misunderstandings in relationships. As a way of example, women are fond of softening their statements with qualifiers. Those qualifiers at times diminish the importance of statements to men. Correspondingly, language barriers among speakers make it difficult to converse. The language barrier is witnessed given that different languages have specific accent, vocabulary and representation of dialect. Use of semantic gaps especially for words with similar pronunciation but with many meanings badly convey message of wrong explanation and untrained assumptions. Similarly, use of inappropriate and difficult words poorly enlighten on communication leading to confusion. Another barrier is individual barriers which are caused by perceptual of individuals and personal anxiety. Even in situations where two partners in relationship experience the same occurrence their intellectual perception might not be identical thus acting as a communication barrier. Ruggs, Martinez, & Hebl (2011) states that more individual barriers include selective perception, style, halo effect, defensiveness, poor retention and attention, insufficient filtration and close mindedness. Organizational barriers preventing effective interpersonal communication are poor culture of organization, ineffective organizational stringent rules, climate, regulations, relationship, status, inadequate facilities and complexity limits opportunities for improvement and growth. The physical organizational barriers identified were poor lightening, presence of outdated equipments, staff shortage and background noise during communication. Other barriers include when some partners experience different degrees of societal anxiety. It can prevent them from connecting on interpersonal level with others. Relentless social anxiety make partners withdraw from marriage relationships as they cannot cope up with family friends, members in addition to co-workers. This separation can be noticed by some people avoiding others in hobbies and games. Emotional intelligence and its role in effective interpersonal relationships In this context, emotional intelligence can be described as the capability of controlling, perceiving and evaluating emotions in others and self. As a couple, one should know that emotional intelligence is exceptionally beneficial in marriage interpersonal interactions. Emotional intelligence is needed to remove personal emotion from the interpersonal communication process thus allowing partners to learn, listen, understand and acknowledge their partners they are engaged to. It also plays an important role in eliminating poor decision making and communication barriers. Partners with high emotional intelligence become conflict resolvers, effectual communicators and marriage builders (Folger, 2008). Strategies for managing interpersonal conflict Before resolving relationship conflicts, it is imperative to outline causes of conflicts. Conflicts arise in relationships when there is insufficient communication among married partners. Lack of effective sharing of feelings and ideas among husbands and wives makes it easier for other people to snoop around (Sanderson and Karetsky. 2002). Also there is relationship conflict when two or more people have conflicting beliefs, attitudes and expectations. Such differences lead to rigid decision making on the way of doing things. Another cause of conflicts is lack of good leadership. If there is no agreement on the person to be charge can result in conflict. For instance, when one partner in a relationship wants to be a boss and the other expects to make decisions democratically can lead to differences in family matters. One more cause of conflict is insufficient productivity together with unresolved disagreements. When the number of previous unresolved conflicts rises, a lot of partners fear to be hurt again. The first strategy is to deal with conflicts as they arise. Most partners in relationships prefer to avoid marriage conflicts. Personally I have witnessed many couples who have withdrawn from relationships instead of trying to solve their interpersonal interaction conflicts. This is a bad idea as it eventually causes feelings of guilt and regret. Besides, if partners keep on withdrawing from relationships every time interpersonal conflicts arise, they will end up quitting every relationship they have. Besides, if conflicts are avoided, they lead to more stress and unsettled feelings of hostility, anger and resentment. On the other hand, learning to control and manage communication conflict successfully makes them healthier and happier emotionally and physically. Thus become a better member of a team with good relationships and build their courage. The second strategy is to use face to face method to talk it out. Although getting together after a conflict is intimidating, it is regarded as a good way to go about it. Face-to-face interpersonal interaction is more helpful than other means because it gives more room for active information exchange. It allows partners to get an opportunity to shake hands, smile to each other, keep an eye contact and have other body language. Apart from giving a chance to partners to observe essential nonverbal cues, it is convenient in time. Thirdly, it is better to make use of a mediator where necessary. In cases of conflicts becoming troublesome or volatile and other means of solving have proved fruitless, inviting a third party is encouraged. Nevertheless, the invited mediator should stay objective, listen to conflicting parties before facilitating compromise and resolution. The fourth strategy is to apologize when necessary. Both parties of the relationship should be aware of their part in causing the conflict. If one party has done the wrong thing, it should acknowledge by saying “I am sorry”. Couples must know that at times human beings have to meet others halfway in order to get to their destinations. The last strategy is that couples must keep away from troublemakers at all cost. Troublemakers always like bringing down people that are in love. Hence partners should avoid engaging in backstabbing and must get their facts right before making conclusions. Furthermore, they should know the right time to walk off from disagreements and upsetting comments. Understanding the impact of gender and culture on interpersonal communications Culture is very crucial in conflict resolution among couples in marriages. Cultures form partners’ perceptive, judgments, attributions and ideas and those of others. Despite the fact that cultures are influential, sometimes they become unconscious, controlling conflict and trying to resolve interpersonal conflict in impeccable ways (Jiafang et al, 2011). As couples, you must understand that cultures involve a little bit more than dress code, language use as well as food customs. Cultural people might share ethnicity, race or nationality, but cultural partners also come from generation’s cleavages, sexual orientation, socioeconomics class, disability, gender, ability, religious, language, and political affiliations (Jiafang et al, 2011). People in relationships must remember two things as regards cultures: cultures are constantly changing, and they are connected with the symbolic facet where individuals are always making implication and enacting their identities. Cultural dimensions emanate from the societies we belong to and provide more information on what is important and meaningful with regard to other peoples’ identities. Culture is all about what partners in a relationship know that those people outside the relationship are not aware of. Cultures form a chain of lenses that form what couples perceive and do not observe, how people outside their relation recognize and understand and how they draw relationship boundaries. In determining people’s values, cultures restrain currencies, starting points and end points. Particularly, social desirability describes how persons report what they think other individuals would consider acceptable, instead of what usually might be the truth (Stone, 1999). In the frameworks of gender differences, this would mean women and men would report what they actually believe they could do from the perspective of social context versus the standpoint of what they could actually perform. A number of differences between men and women come from the contexts of interaction conflicts and household chores (Jiafang et al, 2011). For instance, many authors have provided the following observations concerning gender and sex differences. Firstly, female, compared to male counterparts, express more emotions in fear, sadness, love, anger and happiness. In relationships, women tend to be inclined as compared to men when it comes to disclosing their own information like their personal details or opinion or of their previous history. Unlike men, women tend to convey feelings of togetherness by use of touch. Some men confuse those feelings to be sexual in nature, but that could not be the case always (Wilmot & Hocker, 1998). Notably, women usually exercise strategies of power than their counter parts. Unlike men, women more often engage in controlling and scheming behaviors and engage in offensive and negative conflict behaviors. As a final point, women as compared to men tend to reveal their behaviors, express loyalty in relationship and to their marriage partners, and attempt to enact task-sharing as a way of maintaining their own relationships. These authors also showed that even women that hold dual-careers do more duties of childrearing and household chores. Conclusion As the study has shown, interpersonal interaction is a necessary ingredient for effective human interaction even in relationships. Effective interpersonal communication is regarded as an active interactive process involving both non-verbals together with verbal communication practices. Marriage relationships are those interpersonal relationships that are beyond the early stages of expansion, but have matured into ancient relationships. Use of effective interpersonal communication among couples is not only enriching, but becomes essential in relationships by using five tools: References Abigail, R. (2010). Managing Conflict Through Communication (4th … Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Folger, J. (2008). Working Through Conflict: Strategies for …Boston: Addison -Wesley Publishing Company. Stone, D. (1999). Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What … New York: Penguin Books. Wilmot, W. & Hocker, J. (1998). Interpersonal Conflict. New York: The McGraw-Hill. Enrica N. Ruggs, Larry R. Martinez, & Michelle R. Hebl. (2011). How Individuals and Organizations Can Reduce Interpersonal Discrimination. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Volume 5, Issue 1, p. 29–42 Catherine A. Sanderson and Kim H. Karetsky. (2002). Intimacy Goals and Strategies of Conflict Resolution in Dating Relationships: A Meditational Analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. vol. 19, 3: pp. 317-337. Jiafang et al. (2011). Developing work–family balance through conflict management. Asian journal of social psychology. Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty. Read More