Interpersonal Communication Skills Skills

Description

It is difficult to identify a skill set more important in the workplace than the ability to communicate effectively.

Interpersonal communication is the process people use to exchange information—facts, feelings, and ideas. How well this is done, and the quality of the process affects several highly important outcomes. These include, among others, the quality of work relationships, how well individuals and teams understand and meet expectations, how positive the work climate is, how engaged employees are, and the levels of employee and customer satisfaction.

It is also difficult to identify a skill set more aligned with effective leadership. Many leaders spend up to 70 percent of their work time communicating one-to-one, in a group setting, in writing, or through telephone, video, and internet connections. Unfortunately, it doesn’t follow that all, or even the majority, of these interactions reflect good interpersonal communication skills.

This competency-based workbook focuses on key concepts of the interpersonal communication process, including both sending and receiving messages, and the typical factors that lead to misunderstanding and communication breakdowns. Demonstration and practice activities will raise your awareness of the complexity and importance of interpersonal communication and help you build and reinforce your skills. After completing this workbook, you will be able to:

• Describe the process model of interpersonal communication.
• Explain the verbal and nonverbal elements of a message.
• List common barriers and challenges in interpersonal communication and ways to work around them.
• Demonstrate effective listening and questioning techniques.
• Develop ideas to improve your effectiveness in communicating with coworkers.

10 Key Concepts to Master

1. Recognize the Scope of Workplace Communication
2. Understand the Interpersonal Communication Process
3. Model Effective Verbal and Nonverbal Communication
4. Build Awareness of Perceptions and Bias
5. Identify and Respond to Barriers in Communication
6. Understand the Challenges of Listening
7. Use Active and Reflective Listening
8. Consider Differences as You Communicate
9. Know Your Communication Challenges
10. Improve Your Ability to Communicate with Others

Structured Learning

All our workbooks align with our research-based Competency Model. The model, which is rooted in work by the U.S. Department of Labor and others, gives you a framework for structured learning by helping you identify and develop specific competencies.

Competencies are sets of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that are observable and measurable. Our model has 35 competency dimensions associated with successful performance in leadership and professional roles. Competencies are clustered into five domains that may overlap.

This Improving Interpersonal Communication Skills workbook focuses on the competency areas of Oral and Written Communication, Interpersonal Skills, and Interpersonal Relationship Building. The content is primarily associated with the Professional Competence competency cluster or domain. For more information or visit: www.centrestar.com

Best of all? You can take any course:

• Online at your own pace through Centrestar and earn CEUs or PDHs: www.centrestar.com
• Select workbook materials through Amazon and conduct your own customized inhouse training
• Arrange to have any or all sessions instructor led via remote platform for your organization by the Pennsylvania College