Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 7)

Speaking for Personal Development

Speaking, the second communication skill that humans involve in mostly, is our next focus.  And we shall look at it in the light of “how” it can be used for various forms of personal development.

Speaking for Emotional Development

Self-disclosure is perhaps the most important way to use the spoken words for emotional wholeness. Tardy and Dindia (1997:213) define self-disclosure as “the process whereby people verbally reveal themselves to others”. Many people have bottled-up secrets, fears, and feelings of inadequacy which they would not share/reveal with/to someone else for fear of being rejected or dropping in such person’s esteem. And so they continue to tag along in life, wearing cheerful countenance, preferring to bear alone the agony of their challenges rather than the risk of sharing it with someone else.

Osborne (1997:9), remarking on this phenomenon, says:

Each of us is in a state of tension between the need to reveal and the need to conceal ourselves.  We have an urge to share our true feelings, but we fear that we shall become vulnerable, that we shall be rejected or criticized.  As a result, we tend to settle for commonplace discussions about the superficialities of life.

Most people are ignorant of the fact that such dammed up tensions may lead to all kinds of neurosis or outright insanity. The best way, therefore, to attain emotional healthiness is to have one or two confidante(s) among your friends whom you can unburden to regularly. The irony of self-disclosure is that the revelation that most fear would drive people away from them usually have the opposite effect, as the person entrusted with such confidence about the weaknesses and inadequacies of his friend usually ends up understanding, respecting and loving him the more. Osborne (1997:23-24) further expatiates on this:

Invisible barriers prevent us from knowing and loving each other… loneliness and sense of isolation are experienced by reluctance to reveal ourselves to others for fear of rejection… the more others learn about us, the easier it is for them to accept and love us.  No one can love a mask. As we remove our mask we find ourselves being accepted at a new level… You may never have thought of yourself as lonely, but the feeling is there just the same, unless you have broken through the barrier of your fear of rejection.  And when you can reveal your true self, however slightly, you will find yourself accepted and loved at a new level…. you will come to know yourself, while revealing yourself to others for fear of being known by others is no greater than our fear of knowing ourselves.

The second way to use speaking for emotional development is through affirmation. Affirmation is the act of stating as obvious what you want to be, even when all indications are pointing to the contrary. Fieger (2004), commenting on this concept says:

The words you speak, to yourself and others, define the quality and the content of your thoughts and beliefs, AND, they affirm your reality. Therefore, you must always talk about that which you desire to be made manifest in your life.  Why waste your breath talking about trivialities, when you can be talking about what is really important to you?

Although the concept of affirmation may sound nonsensical to some people, the truth is that it holds a great potential for personal transformation for anyone who faithfully observes it. A man who cultivates the habit of speaking positively (to himself) in terms of what he is getting or doing rather than what he does not have is sure to have a positive attitude. He will also have Providence opening his generous doors to him at every turn. While the man who incessantly bemoans his lack and inabilities may never cease experiencing difficulties. The Bible sums up this human experience thus: “The power of life and death is in the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit (Proverbs 18:21). 

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 6)

Listening for Professional Development

No doubt we spend most hours of our days on our job, and a greater percentage of those hours are spent listening to our superiors, our colleagues, our subordinates, and even our clients and customers.  If you want to be the toast of your colleagues and clients, simply listen to them. Apart from this, the habit of attentive listening enhances your personal competence and performance on the job. The man who listens well will perform better than his colleagues who are less attentive. To this effect, Hybels and Weaver (2001:70) say:

Researchers have found that there is a direct connection between good listening skills and productivity on the job. When employees were given training in listening before they received training in computer techniques, they were more productive than employees who hadn’t had the listening training.

In a related comment, Carnegie (1940:102) quotes Eliot to have said: “there is no mystery about successful business intercourse… Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is very important.  Nothing else is as flattering as that”.

The importance of attentive listening for productivity at the workplace cannot be overstressed. By listening attentively to your superiors, you will always get the details of their instructions and carry out tasks with little or no mistake; by listening empathetically to your colleagues and subordinates, you are better positioned to help and/or enhance them to perform better; by patiently listening to your clients, you are able to get the essential feedback you need to improve your product or service and this will ultimately increase your bottom line.

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 5)

Listening for Social Integration

The social aspect of man describes his relationships with the outside world. The extent to which man is accepted and esteemed by the society is dependent on the degree of his integration in the society.

No doubt every man desires to be liked and appreciated by everyone, although most will deny this. Carnegie (194:38), while summing this need of man to be liked, cites Williams James as saying that “the deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated”.

Therefore, a man who wants to be seen as friendly and sociable by his fellow men must be a good listener. The Bible also lends credence to this verity, saying the man who would have many friends must himself be friendly (Proverbs 18:24), and being friendly in this sense means being an empathetic listener. Listening is one of the ways to appreciate people. Osborne (1997:10), citing Caldwell, beautifully captures this nature of man thus:

Man does not need to go to the moon or the solar systems.  He does not require bigger and better bombs and missiles. He will not die if he does not get better housing or more vitamins…

His basic needs are few, and it takes a little to acquire them, in spite of the advertisers. He can survive on a small amount of bread and the meanest shelter… 

His real need, his most terrible need, is for someone to listen to him, not as a patient; but as a human soul.

On the other hand, anyone who continually violates this law of appreciation and always assumes the centre of all conversations, without leaving room for others to speak, will have only himself to blame when he discovers that people are beginning to avoid him like the plague. Carnegie (1940:109) offers an insight into this situation:

If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself.  If you have an idea while the other fellow is talking, don’t wait for him to finish. He isn’t as smart as you.  Why waste your time listening to his idle chatter? Burst right in and interrupt him in the middle of a sentence.

This sarcastic “recipe” underscores the need for every individual who seeks social integration to be ‘quick to listen and slow to speak’. If you want people to consider you a good company, listen to them. Its ingratiating power is amazing. 

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.

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.

Listening for Mental and Emotional Development

A good listening habit is one of the indications of good breeding. Since the mental faculty, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the body can only retain and process the message or information inputted into it - as well as be enriched by it – it behoves every individual to cultivate a good listening habit by:

§  Paying attention and showing interest in the message being transmitted

§  Indicate to the speaker if he is understanding the message or not, and

§  Showing how he is reacting to the message by non-verbal cues (Beck et al, 2002).

The first way to use the listening skill to enhance your mental faculty and ensure a wholesome being is by being selective about what you listen to.  There is no better way to keep your mind healthy than to choose what you listen to. Knowledge is the food of the soul, just as the body thrives on viands and adornments.  However, it is not all the information that one is exposed to that he should listen to, for as the saying goes, ‘garbage in, garbage out’.  What you feed your brain is what you will express in speech or behaviour.

So, the first rule for using listening to achieve mental and emotional development is to choose what you listen to.  Platitudes and other forms of debased communication do nothing good to the soul.  They must therefore not be entertained, otherwise, the mind will process them, deposit them in the mental and emotion realm, and the man will live them eventually.

Capturing this phenomenon in another words, Allen (1902:4-5), in his timeless classic, says:

‘Men themselves are makers of themselves’ by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage…(The) mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance...

As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called “spontaneous” and “unpremeditated” as to those which are deliberately executed

Another way to enhance your mental and emotional capacity through listening is by attending seminars, lectures, workshops, conferences, and other intellect-simulating fora. By so doing, you will continually cultivate your mind, widen your horizon, and school your emotion, which is at best erratic.

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 3)

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)

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

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.  

Utilising Communication Skills for Personal Development (Part 1)

Getting and Becoming

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.

 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.

 Definition of Key Terms

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).