Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 5)

Listening for Personal Development

The International Listening Association, cited by Hybels and Weaver (2001:64), defines listening as “the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or non-verbal messages”. Listening goes beyond being an important communication skill, it is a way of life. Most of our conscious and unconscious communication efforts are geared toward listening. A research reveals that listening takes 53% of our communication activities, reading 17%, while speaking and writing constitute 16% and 14% respectively (Hybels and Weaver, 2001:70).

However, this statistics notwithstanding, it is rather pathetic that most people have a poor listening habit. They listen without really listening. Lamenting on this anomaly, Benson (undated:155) says:

The art of listening is an essential but oft overlooked element of good communication. Genuine listening has become one of the endangered species. God gave each of us two ears and one mouth – perhaps he intended that we use them proportionally.

 The tendency common to most people is to egospeak, a term which communication experts coined to describe people’s desire to listen to themselves more than anyone else:

Egospeak is thinking of what you’re going to say next while another person is trying to talk to you.  Jumping in before, or on, the other person’s last word. Constantly trying to top the other person’s story (Benson, undated:155).

In similar vein, Beck et al (2002:12) distinguish between hearing (which is what most people really do) and listening. They note that:         

It is useful to make a distinction between hearing and listening.  Most people can hear, in that they can receive and distinguish sound within a specific frequency range. Hearing, however, is a passive activity. It is something that happens to us, rather than something that we do.  On the other hand, listening is active… ‘People hear but do not listen’. In a class or lecture it is very likely you will hear the words being spoken. You may not necessarily listen to them.

With this background on listening, let us now proceed to see how it can be utilized for personal development at different levels.

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 4)

The Social State of Man

This is the aspect of man that describes his relationship with people. Hargie (1997:10), citing Combs and Slaby, defines social skill as ‘the ability to interact with others in a given social context in specific ways that are socially acceptable or valued and at the same time personally beneficial mutually beneficial or beneficial primarily to others’.

 

The Professional/Vocational Aspect of Man

This is usually an offshoot of all the other sides of man as they affect his job or career. The professional state of man has to do with his competence and performance at work. In other words, this can be described by his competence and performance in relation to his job or tasks.

Having thus established the foregoing, let us now go on to consider how the four communication skills can be used to enhance these aspects of man to attain a maximized life style.

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 3)

What is Personal Development?
We cannot attempt a definition of the term Personal Development without first taking a look at the key word “development”. So what is development? Adesanoye (1995:4) citing Mabogunje, describes development as ‘a many sided process. At the level of the individual, it implies increased skill and capacity, greater freedom, creativity, self-discipline, responsibility and material well-being’.

Taking a cue from this, we can then define personal development as a conscious, disciplined and sustained series of investment in the self through the acquisition of knowledge and skills, as well as applying the acquired knowledge and skills for enhanced lifestyle. 

Areas of Personal Development

The development of the self is as composite an entity as the nature of man himself. It consists of various interdependent forms of human, which all work together to produce a better person when cultivated, or result in a debased existence when ignored. These different aspects of man that need cultivation for development are his:

§  Spiritual state

§  Mental state

§  Emotional state

§  Physical state

§  Social status, and his

§  Profession or vocation

Before we go ahead to consider how communication skills can be used to develop these different aspects of man, it will be appropriate to examine them briefly.

 

The Spiritual State of Man

Man is a tripartite being. He is mainly made up of a spirit, a soul, and a body. The spiritual side of man has to do with the state of his spirit in relation to God, his Maker. However, it is appropriate to state at this point that due to my subscription to the Christian faith, all my discourse on the spiritual state of man will be treated from the Christian perspective and the Christian scriptures, the Holy Bible.

 

The Mental State of Man

The Mental state of man is one of the two components of his soul. The soul, which is said to be the real man, comprises the mental faculty and the emotions. The mental faculty involves the mind (thoughts bank) as well as the intellectual state of man.

 

The Emotional State of Man

This is the second side of man’s soul. The emotion, according to Hargie (1997:38) has three main components; “the direct conscious experiences or feeling of emotion, the physiological processes that accompany emotions, and the observable behavioural actions used to express emotion”. In simple terms, emotion comprises the feelings and desires of man in their expressed and unexpressed form. 

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 2)

What is Communication?

Different scholars have proffered various definitions to describe communication. However, for the purpose of this study we will make do with Hybels’ and Weaver’s (2001:6) proposition that “Communication is any process in which people share information, ideas and feelings. It involves not only the spoken and written word but also body language, personal mannerisms, and style - anything that adds meaning to a message”.

Going ahead to stress the importance of communication in daily existence, they also say that:    

It is vital in all areas of life. You use it to persuade; to influence relationships, to inform and to share, to discover and uncover information... Communication, and how to communicate, is so important to daily life that it spawned [sic] an entire industry of books, articles, and seminar explaining how to do it better.

To live…is to communicate. To communicate effectively is to enjoy life more (2001:5-6).

Communication Skills

There are a number of skills involved in the art of communicating. Beck, Bennet and Wall (2002:125) highlight a general list of communication skills as:

§  Speaking, listening, empathizing

§  Reading and observing

§  Identifying and using sources of information

§  Planning and structuring a presentation

§  Oral presentation skills

§  Dealing with questions

§  Reviewing own performance

§  Using IT to communicate

However, in this discourse we shall focus only on the four major communication skills, which are also known as the four language arts. They are: 

§  Listening

§  Speaking

§  Reading, and

§  Writing

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 1)

Getting and Becoming

By Babatunde Oladele

Man is innately selfish in varying degrees, depending on the extent of\; hence, the focus on what I am getting as opposed to what I am giving.

should The This is an anomaly, Rohn (2005a) notes that:

What you become is far more important than what you get. The important question to ask on the job is not, “What am I getting?” Instead, you should ask, “What am I becoming?“ Getting and becoming are like Siamese twins: what you have today you have attracted by becoming the person you are today.

…. Income rarely exceeds personal development. Sometimes income takes a Iucky jump, but unless you learn to handle the responsibilities that come with it, it will usually shrink back to the amount you can handle….

It is hard to keep that which has not been obtained through personal development.

With this background on the importance of personal development as an essential requisite to enhance one’s lot in life, let us proceed to examine the inherent potentials there are in communication skills to achieve personal development; and how we as communication scholars can utilize these skills to develop ourselves and ultimately build a life worth celebrating.  The objectives of this paper therefore are:

§  The draw our attention to the sacrosanct and utilitarian nature of communication.

§  To acquaint us with the different areas of personal development there are

§  To examine how we can use communication skills to explore the various forms of personal development training to enhance ourselves.

Meanwhile, it will be apposite at this point to define some key terms that we will come across in this paper to aid our understanding.

The Importance of Self Development

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. - James Allen.

The desire to become great and a celebrity is common to all human right from the time they become conscious of self. Dale Carnegie, in his best-selling classic, describes this as the “deepest urge in human nature.”

While the majority of humankind nurse this, usually unexpressed, craving to become larger than life and be revered by fellow men, only a few individuals really choose to advance beyond desiring to pay the price required to build a great life.

The price for greatness is a disciplined and sustained investment in oneself, otherwise called personal development. Jim Rohn, a renowned business philosopher and self-development guru, once quotes his former employer and mentor to have advised him thus: “if you want to be wealthy and happy... learn to work harder on yourself than on your job.” While this may sound absurd, it is good counsel. The general practice is that most people expend their time and energy the other way round; working more and often on the job - in order to earn so much - while devoting little or no attention to improving themselves.

As normal as this may look, it is a misnomer. While it is important to be dedicated to your work and put in a good shift above the average mark, it is equally essential not to neglect the regular cultivation of your mind. Every individual who has a sense of self should have a self-development programme he or she is observing to unleash his/her potential, sharpen latent skills and bring out the champion within.

Not all of us are destined for the stage. Therefore, drawing out the champion within you does not necessarily mean that you will become a maestro with millions of followers. Your own niche may be to a few dozens of people, it doesn’t make you lesser than someone with a global fan base. The important thing is to develop yourself such that you are both useful and relevant to your world.

A personal development programme is nothing complex or far-fetched. It can be as simple as following a schedule of conscious reading, listening, speaking, and/or writing, as well as putting to practice what you are learning in the process of those exercises. It is important you are aware about your objectives for embarking on these exercises so that you can be able to track the results. You should also have a schedule for what you do, rather than merely follow your whims by doing them when you feel like it.

To Your Success!

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 5)

Some Quotes on Potentials

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence. - Eddie Robinson

The potential for greatness lives within each of us. The key to achieving greatness is found when we discover and then develop our dream. - John Maxwell

Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life - facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process, discovering our own unique potential. - John Amatt

No one fulfills his purpose, develops his potential, or consistently help others without goals. Your goals determine your priorities – and your priorities determine whether you’ll reach your goals. - John Maxwell

Nothing is more effective when it comes to reaching potential than commitment to personal growth. - John Maxwell

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential. Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British prime minister during WWII

I’d rather reach 90 percent of my potential with plenty of mistakes than reach only 10 percent with a perfect score. - John Maxwell

To keep moving to a higher level and reach your potential, you… have to be willing to… trade security for significance. - John Maxwell

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. - Ellen Goodman