Thursday, January 28, 2010

Post #2 - Principles of intercultural/interpersonal communication

There is this very engaging presenter, and the topic he is discussing is a very interesting topic. We would have imagined that whatever he was trying to present, is going to be well understood by the listeners. But what if the listener wasn’t paying any attention?? (He/she was busy drawing squiggles on his/her notes) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squiggle)

                   http://selfmademinds.com
 I'm Not Listening!

What I just talked about was a recap of last week. In my opinion, it is directly relevant to what we are supposed to discuss this week.

In our tutorials, we covered on the methods we can reduce conflicts/disagreements in our everyday intercultural/interpersonal communication. (such as possessing good EQ skills)
Similar to effective communications, I feel that the responsibility of reducing conflicts does not solely rest on the shoulders of the communicator. True enough, if the communicator is able to show empathy in his/her actions, putting him/herself into the shoes of his/her listeners, conflicts could be avoided. However, the listeners also have the responsibility to tolerate, and forgive/forget whatever harsh abuse that is being thrown towards them.

I remembered having a many different neighbours from different cultural backgrounds back when I was very young. As children, we played around, had fun, and eventually fought as well. Surprisingly, memories of fun times were more vividly remembered than quarrels. This goes to show that very young children have this ability to forgive/forget bad things that happen.

 http://www.tressugar.com/

Young children are in general, naive, and think that the entire world out there is filled with goodness. (They believed that the soles of their shoes are made of chocolate.) This is precisely what we lost as we grew up; we started losing our naivety, we lose faith in the outside world, and we stopped thinking our soles are made of chocolate. What we used to be able to tolerate back when we were still young children, we find it difficult to accept now as adults.

Forgive, forget and tolerate, are additional elements for fluid communication and relationships. Of course, it meant to be applied in moderation. Try not to overdo it.

**off topic
After reading through various blogs, I realized the content is pretty much more or less the same. Hence I decided to post ideas not shown in tutorials... Okay I admit, it’s just an excuse for running out of ideas to write. (My mind continued being blank even after reading the question 3 times.) Once again, comments and harsh words are always welcome, and thank you for reading this post.

5 comments:

  1. Hello once again, Zhen Yong!

    Another interesting blog post! I agree listening is not all about just staying awake and looking at the speaker (I'm guilty of that at times). It takes effort to actually take in the information and process.

    Speaking of children arguing in the past. An image of me telling my "friend", "I don't friend you anymore!" came to my mind all of a sudden. I agree that we tend to forgive and forget easier in the past, holding no grudges against our "enemies". However, I don't fully concur with the point of us losing our faith in the outside world. Pardon me. The loss of naivety is just people growing older, growing more mature to face the harsh world out there. As some might say "nice guys finish last". I wonder how true that is in the world that awaits us after our university lives.

    All in all, I believe the listener has a part to play in making the connection between him and the speaker successful, which you brought up early in your post. May we all be good listeners and good speakers after this module!

    Cheers
    Qinxian

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  2. Hi Zhen Yong,

    It was good to read your post. What I really liked about your blog post was how you have through your past experience tried to show the intercultural relations. I too agree with you that as a child we were more forgetful and forgiving. As children we were more giving than we are today be it forgiveness or any other thing we had then.

    The elements to effective communication that you have discussed in your post, if used up in day to day life can definitely yield good results. Sorry to say but the fact that we have grown intolerant as we have grown older is not what I agree too. I believe that all we need is some good communication skills in order to both understand and make people of other culture understand us well.

    Mentioning the role of a listener and a speaker makes this blog post an interesting one to read and helps me understand the role I should play as both a listener and a speaker in any effective intercultural/interpersonal communication in life (especially in group discussions in our class) which I guess is very important as a student.

    All in all it was a fun to read your blog and learn from it.


    Cheers,
    Saurabh Arora

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  3. Hi Zhen Yong,

    Although a sender of a message has the responsibility of ensuring that careful acts are carried out to avoid any misunderstanding in the intercultural context, I agree that the sender should not be the only one aware and careful in doing so. If something wrong happens, it is best to understand the reason behind it.

    Most of the time, in the inter-cultural scenario, gestures, comments and words used that caused to offend the other party are unintentional. Sometimes, they are inadvertently overlooked by the sender or the sender of the message is completely unaware and ignorant of it.

    In view of this, I also believe in forgiving and forgetting. The receiver, himself, has to understand that both of them are subject to the social adjustments that an intercultural scenario requires. It could be difficult sometimes for both parties to completely comprehend and practice all actions that will not cross the boundary of culture.

    When something undesirable happens, it is best to forgive, learn from mistake and focus to move on. No grudges kept; no hard feelings. Everyone will be happy and everyone can have a healthy emotional state.

    Regards,
    Paul

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  4. Hi Zhen Yong,

    The way you have presented your post is nice. You have very well used your personal experience to illustrate the importance of intercultural communication. It’s nice to hear that you have been using intercultural communication childhood. I was not gifted like you but I started to use intercultural communication after I came to nus.

    Being in multi-lingual country like Singapore, we need to implement these skills and these skills become more important for our upcoming projects.Apart from it, we also need skills to resolve conflicts. As conflict between team members occur very common, members have to analyze rather than going against. Intercultural communication is the one which is responsible for breaking the barrier and strengthening the relationship between people from different culture and race. Moreover, the most important thing we should keep in mind is that we shouldn’t assume the people from different culture to see things in the way you see it as it might break the communication between the members.

    Since people from different culture have different accent, it will be difficult for the listener to understand fully. I think feedback comes to rescue and becomes more important as it helps in enhancing the communication between sender and receiver/listener. So it’s the duty of listener/receiver to provide feedback regularly so as to enhance the communication between them.

    It is a pleasure to read your blog and I have enjoyed a lot by reading it.

    Regards,
    Santhosh

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    ReplyDelete