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Interpersonal Communication

Communication is an important interpersonal skill for managers and team members. Effective communication involves both verbal and non-verbal elements, with tone, body language, and active listening playing major roles. The Johari Window model outlines four quadrants representing awareness between self and others: open (known to self and others), blindspot (unknown to self but known to others), facade (known to self but unknown to others), and unknown (unknown to both). As remote work has increased, interpersonal communication must adapt through more personalized communication and virtual team building to prevent loneliness and disengagement.

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Sasank Aravapalli
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63 views2 pages

Interpersonal Communication

Communication is an important interpersonal skill for managers and team members. Effective communication involves both verbal and non-verbal elements, with tone, body language, and active listening playing major roles. The Johari Window model outlines four quadrants representing awareness between self and others: open (known to self and others), blindspot (unknown to self but known to others), facade (known to self but unknown to others), and unknown (unknown to both). As remote work has increased, interpersonal communication must adapt through more personalized communication and virtual team building to prevent loneliness and disengagement.

Uploaded by

Sasank Aravapalli
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Interpersonal Communication:

Communication is one of the most important interpersonal skill required for the managers and the
team members. In fact, there is a greater need for managers to work on their interpersonal
communication than the employees. Interpersonal Communication is essentially the exchange of
information, ideas, and feelings through both verbal and non-verbal methods.

Mehrabian developed the 7-38-55 rule of communication, in which he


demonstrated that what we communicate consists of only 7% of the
literal content of the message. The use of one’s voice, such as tone,
intonation, and volume, takes up 38%, and the other 55% of the
message consists of body language. These three core elements help in
effective interpersonal communication. This ratio also expresses the
importance of Active listening for interpreting the total message as
intended.

Active Listening involves using all senses and not just hearing, it
requires recognizing and screening the barriers that interfere with one’s
communication. Since most of the communication occurs through nonverbal cues like voice tone,
gestures, eye contact and body language, which can also sometimes be inconsistent with the verbal
message, active listening helps in understanding the message better.

Active listening can be enhanced by


 Expressing empathy
 Clarifying the accuracy of your perception
 Reflecting on the emotional part of the message
 Assessing the consistency between verbal and non-verbal
 Summarizing the key points

But how do we encourage interpersonal communication in a team? The Johari Window as a tool can
be used by managers to make their team members more aware of how they perceive others and how
others may perceive them.

Joseph Luft and Harry Ingram developed the


Johari window in 1955 as a model of awareness
for group processes; this window basically has
four quadrants-
 Open Quadrant or Public self – your
traits that are known to self and others,
 Blind Quadrant or Blind Spot – Unknown
to self but known to others,
 Hidden Quadrant or Façade – Known to
you but unknown to self,
 Unknown Quadrant or Unknown–
Unknown to both self and others.

Those in hidden, blind, or undiscovered interpersonal relations should try to move toward open
relationships to resolve actual or potential conflict or enhance interpersonal communication. So
essentially, one must try to enlarge the first quadrant –
 An act of disclosure to others enlarges Quadrant 1 by decreasing Quadrant 3, the hidden arena
or facade.
 Accepting feedback from others enlarges Quadrant 1 with a resultant decrease in Quadrant 2,
the blind arena or blind spot.

Interpersonal Communication and Remote work:

As remote work has become the new normal for many organizations post pandemic, it raises many
questions about how to adapt interpersonal communications to this new normal. Remote work will
completely reshape the way employees communicate; hence managers must adopt more personalized
communication based on employees' locations, languages, titles, responsibilities, and interests.
Employees are not just physically separated; they are also not emotionally as connected as a team in
the workplace. The speed of communication is also different in a remote team, delayed responses and
missed messages can cause people to second guess their messages. It’s not a good idea for managers
to micromanage or keep watching over people’s shoulders but they can leverage one-to-one texting to
guide/support employees. A big part of effective remote working is to enable the team members and
not to bombard them with calls and emails about their work.

The biggest problem faced by remote employees perhaps will be Loneliness. It can cause
disengagement, decrease in productivity, and even increase attrition rate. To overcome this, managers
should enhance interpersonal communication in remote work by organizing more virtual team
building activities and celebrating individual achievements and team events to build personal and
social bonds between team members. For effective team management, both in workplace and remote,
the manager should possess effective leadership qualities So now, let’s see how Leadership as a trait
helps in enhancing interpersonal competencies.

References:

1. Antai-Otong, Deborah. “Communication: Active Listening at Work.” The American Journal of


Nursing, vol. 99, no. 2, 1999, pp. 24L–24P. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3471980.\

2. GARNER, ARTHUR E., and LEILA M. ACKLEN. “NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION:


What, Why, and How.” Middle School Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, 1980, pp. 6–7. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/23291290.

3. Kormanski, Luethel M. “Using the Johari Window to Study Characterization.” Journal of


Reading, vol. 32, no. 2, 1988, pp. 146–152. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40029904.

Open Blindspot

Facade Unknown

  

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