What is communication?
This was the question that came up during a conversation with some colleagues in our profession
Do we communicate only when we speak, or also when we are silent? Are there different ways to communicate?
Do we identify communication with words, or do you also identify it with your behavior and your gestures?
The RAE defines communication as: 1. To make a person participate in what you have. 2. tr. To discover, manifest, or let someone know something. 3. tr. to converse, to deal with someone by word or writing. U. t. c. prnl. 4. tr. To transmit signals by means of a code common to the sender and the receiver.
Words are important
So YES! Words are important, it is perhaps one of the most common tools to communicate in today’s world, in our work, in organizations, and it can be the written or spoken word.
However, communication goes beyond the words we say, because we communicate even when we are silent, when we are standing still, when we are theoretically “not doing or saying anything”
We communicate much more than what we say
We communicate with our silence; we communicate with our attitude, with our body posture; we communicate with our words, with the intonation, with the volume, with the speed with which we speak.
Hence, the importance of this “skill” or ability, because it is impossible not to communicate, we are constantly communicating, consciously and a large part unconsciously.
Whether you have a team and people in your charge or you work in a team with other colleagues, it is important to take into account the way in which you communicate with others to ensure that the message you send is the one you want to send. To do this, it is essential to know your own communication style and identify the style of your interlocutor.
The 4 Style of Communication
There are four main styles with clearly differentiated characteristics: passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive and assertive. Let’s see some peculiarities for each of them.
Passive communication style
Passive communicators find it difficult to express what they think, what they want, often leaving their needs aside and adopting a posture of adaptation to what others say, with phrases like “it’s okay what you say”, “well… it doesn’t matter, I’m fine with what you say”. They are people who avoid conflicts, they do not like to expose themselves in public and large groups. They are usually people who pass for shy and often even unnoticed.
Aggressive communication
On the other hand, people who express what they want and what they think in a “too direct” way, without taking into account the others, putting their interests above everything with a strong tone, dry and often unpleasant and can even become violent are people with an aggressive communication. They do not care about the feelings of others and tend to talk much more than all the others in conversations or meetings, leaving no room for others to give their opinion and belittling the opinions of others.
Passive-aggressive communication
Passive-aggressive people, on the other hand, have a touch of both. They are not direct but rather express what bothers them through hints. The tone is usually an unpleasant tone as are their looks or gestures but the words they use are pleasant words. There is no coherence in verbal and paraverbal communication and it depends a lot on who they are communicating with.
Assertive communication
And assertive communication, which is the most effective, is the one in which the sender of the message is able to express his opinions, feelings, ideas in a clear, concise and concrete way, taking into account the interlocutor, without hurting him or hurting him, with the respect and consideration that both deserve.
Leaders with assertive communication generate powerful teams, capable of resolving conflicts and solving problems in a climate of trust and security. At the same time, they develop and enhance interpersonal relationships by giving priority to listening and generating alternatives and options that are much more powerful than those that a single person could generate.
Assertive communication requires maturity and self-knowledge to know what you want to communicate and communicate it from calm.
Learn more about assertive communication in our specialized article.
Knowing how to communicate is one of the most demanded skills in the workplace and one of the keys to develop as a leader. That is why the support of our expert communication coaches is key in situations that require a great mastery and development of this soft skill. If you want to know more about how Mindbly can help you, request a demo.