Managerial Communication-6

Module-6
Interpersonal Communication
Nonverbal Communication
The word "Non Verbal Communication" means Communication not involving speech or
words. By non-verbal communication, we mean all communication that involves neither
written nor spoken words but occurs without the use of words. Thus, this is the wordless
message received through the medium of gestures, signs, body movements, facial
expressions, tone of voice, colour, time, space, style of writing and choice of words.
Characteristics of Nonverbal Communication
1) It is instinctive in nature: Non Verbal Communication is quite instinctive in nature, that is,
it indicates the attitude, instincts and feelings of the speaker.
2) It is less conscious: Words are spoken after due thinking and with conscious effort.
Depending on the situation we have to make a more or less conscious effort in these/choice
of words. The nonverbal part of communication, on the other hand, is less deliberate and
conscious as most of the expressions, gestures, etc included in Non Verbal Communication
are mostly unconsciously expressed, as the speaker may not even be aware of these signs.
3) It is subtle in nature: Spoken and written words are quite obvious and easy to see, listen
and understand, whereas, Non Verbal Communication is very subtle, and needs skill to be
understood and expressed.
4) It is complimentary to Verbal Communication: Non Verbal Communication does not
stand alone on its own and neither does it completely substitute Communication with
words; it complements Verbal Communication and makes it more effective.
5) It forms the larger part of the overall communication activity: On scientific analysis it has
been found that the different aspects of communication account for percentages stated
below
 55 percent -Facial expression, body position, gestures
 7 percent- Words
 38 percent -Tone of voice and inflection
Functions of Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal communication serves five primary functions.
1. Nonverbal communication provides information by repeating, substituting for,
emphasizing, or contradicting our verbal messages.
2. Nonverbal communication regulates interaction as conversations are managed
through nonverbal cues.
3. Nonverbal communication expresses or hides emotion and affect, since one is able
to show nonverbally how one feels about another person, or one may mask true
feelings through nonverbal behaviors.
4. Nonverbal communication presents an image, because much of impression
management occurs through the nonverbal channel.
5. Nonverbal communication expresses status, power, and control, since many
nonverbal behaviors are signs of dominance and one can convey power and status
through nonverbal behavior.
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Types of Nonverbal Communication

There are multiple categories of nonverbal communication.
1) Kinesics/Body Language: Body language is nonverbal communication through body
motions, also known as kinesics, the study of body language.
a) Eye contact is how and how much we look at the people with whom we are
communicating.
b) Facial expression is the arrangement of facial muscles to communicate emotional
states or reactions to messages; emoticons are typed or graphic symbols that convey
emotional aspects of online messages.
c) Gesture is a movement of hands, arms, and fingers to describe or to emphasize.
d) Posture is the position and movement of the whole body; body orientation refers to
posture in relation to another person.
e) Touch, formally known as haptics, is putting part of the body in contact with
something.
2) Paralanguage: Paralanguage is communication through nonverbal sounds; it is comprised
of five vocal characteristics, including pitch, volume, rate, quality, and intonation, which can
complement or contradict meaning, while vocal interferences can disrupt messages.
a) Pitch is the highness or lowness of a person’s vocal tone.
b) Volume is the loudness or softness of a person’s vocal tone.
c) Rate is the speed at which a person speaks.
d) Quality is the sound of a person’s voice.
e) Intonation is the variety, melody, or inflection of a person’s voice.
f) Vocal interferences are extraneous words or sounds that interrupt fluent speech.
3) Spatial usage: The third category of nonverbal communication is spatial usage, which is
nonverbal communication through the use of the space and objects around us.
a) Personal space is the space around the place a person occupies at a given time; and
proxemics is the study of personal space.
b) Territory is the space over which we claim ownership.
c) Artifacts are the possessions we use to decorate our territory and communicate
about our space.
4) Self-presentation cues: Nonverbal communication includes self-presentation cues, which
are presented to others and are based on physical appearance, use of time, and use of
smells and scents.
a) Physical appearance includes gender, race, body type, and facial features, as well as
clothing, grooming, and body decorations.
b) Use of time is how people view and structure their time.
c) Olfactory communication is nonverbal communication through smells and scents.

Improving Nonverbal Communication Skills

Improving nonverbal communication skills can be achieved by following some suggestions:
1) When sending messages, be aware of the following guidelines.
a) Be mindful of the nonverbal behavior you are displaying.
b) Adapt nonverbal behaviors to your purpose.
c) Adapt nonverbal cues to the situation.
d) Align nonverbal and verbal cues.
e) Eliminate nonverbal behaviors that distract from the verbal message.
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2) When interpreting others’ nonverbal cues, be mindful of the following

a) Be mindful that most nonverbal cues are not emblems.
b) Consider cultural, gender, and individual influences when interpreting
nonverbal cues.
c) Pay attention to all nonverbal communication cues and their relationship to
verbal communication.
d) Use perception checking.
Advantages of Non-verbal communication
 Control: Nonverbal cues may also be used to control the behaviors of other. Silence
controls by refocusing attention. A finger placed against the mouth is a cue for
silence.
 Complement: Nonverbal communication can also be used as a complement of verbal
communication.
 Substitute: The major importance of nonverbal communication is that it may be used
as the substitute of verbal message.
 Instant Effect: All nonverbal cues have almost instant effect as the receivers perceive
them quickly.
 Aid to Verbal Communication: Non-verbal methods are extremely useful as an aid to
verbal communication. Maps, charts and graphs are absolutely necessary for
conveying ideas related to geography, locations, data and most of the sciences.
 Sign or Marks of Identity: Nonverbal communication also functions as the sign or
marks of identity for some objects or people.
 Color as a Powerful Means of Communication: Color is a very important and
powerful means of communication. It is a part and parcel of our daily life.
 Pictorial Presentation of Mass Communication: Pictorial presentations are best for
mass communication.
 Arousing Stronger Response: All human beings respond more powerfully to pictures,
colors and plain sounds than to language.
 Contradict: Sometimes, nonverbal behaviors can be also used to show contradiction
to verbal communication.
 Restate or Emphasize: Gestures and facial expressions may be used to restate or
emphasize a particular point.
 For Illiterate People: For the illiterate people, the only method of conveying
important information is by nonverbal symbols.
Disadvantages of Non-verbal communication
 Incomplete Communication: In most of the case nonverbal communication is used
as complement to verbal communication.
 Problem in Feedback: Nonverbal communication can produce different feedback if
the receiver does not understand the message or misinterprets the meaning of the
message.
 Quite Inactive in some Areas: Nonverbal communication is not effective in some
areas like telephone conversations, hide talking and so on.
 No or Less Effect after the Occurrence: Nonverbal communication has strong instant
and inherent effect but lacks in producing after effect as it cannot be read or heard
repeatedly.
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 Lack of Flexibility: Lack of flexibility is another important drawback of nonverbal

communication. There is no scope of changing the meaning of message sent by
nonverbal cues because here in most of the cases nonverbal cues disappear as soon
as communication ends.
 Grater Possibility of exchanging Fraudulent Message: In nonverbal communication,
people can easily mislead others by using some symbols that don’t match with their
mental status.
 Encoding and Decoding problem: Communication produces best result if the sender
encodes the message considering the receiver and receiver decodes the message
exactly as sent by the sender.
 Differences in Nonverbal Cues across Culture: Most of the nonverbal cusses
produce different meanings in different cultures.
Listening as a Communication Skill
"Listening" is receiving language through the ears. Listening involves identifying the sounds
of speech and processing them into words and sentences. When we listen, we use our ears
to receive individual sounds (letters, stress, rhythm and pauses) and we use our brain to
convert these into messages that mean something to us.
Listening in any language requires focus and attention. It is a skill that some people need to
work at harder than others. People who have difficulty concentrating are typically poor
listeners. Listening in a second language requires even greater focus.
Listening is the absorption of the meanings of words and sentences by the brain. Listening
leads to the understanding of facts and ideas. But listening takes attention, or sticking to the
task at hand in spite of distractions. It requires concentration, which is the focusing of your
thoughts upon one particular problem. A person who incorporates listening with
concentration is actively listening.
Some of the important facts of listening are as follows:
• Ff the time spent communicating each day, 45% is devoted to listening.
• Usually a person only remembers about 50% of what is said to them.
• After eight hours they forget another 1/2 to 1/3 of what was originally grasped.
• So that means you typically forget about 75% of what you hear.
Fallacies/Mistakes about Listening
Among the great hindrances to effective listening are the fallacies that people hold about
listening. These false ideas often cause people to have inflated opinions of their own
listening performance. Believing that they have no problem with listening, they make no
effort to improve.
Fallacy #1: Listening Is Not My Problem!: People generally believe they are better listeners
than those around them. It is the people they work for, the ones who work with or for them,
their family members, and their friends who have a problem in listening effectively—not
them.
Fallacy #2: Listening and Hearing Are the Same: Simply having good hearing does not make
one a good listener. In fact, many people who have perfectly good hearing are not good
listeners. Having good hearing does facilitate one’s perception of sound; but good listeners
don’t simply hear words—they focus on the meaning.
Fallacy #3: Good Readers Are Good Listeners: This statement is often untrue, even though
both reading and listening depend on the translation of words into meaning. Because of the
shared translation function, there is obviously some kind of relationship between reading
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and listening; the problem is, many people mistakenly believe that all good readers are
necessarily good listeners.
Fallacy #4: Smarter People Are Better Listeners: Obviously, intelligence plays a role in a
person’s capacity to listen. Persons with limited intelligence will be limited in their capacity
to process the information contained in messages they receive. Conversely, those having
high intelligence levels will possess a greater processing capacity. Yet, the belief that
“smarter people are better listeners” is often false. In fact, evidence suggests that the
reverse is often true.
Fallacy #5: Listening Improves with Age: Certainly, the capacity or ability to listen and
attach appropriate meaning to messages improves with age and experience—at least in the
early years and at least to some point. But although listening ability increases, listening
performance generally declines at some point. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Fallacy #6: Listening Skills Are Difficult to Learn: Actually, the skills themselves are not all
that difficult—and initial progress is rapid. But learning to apply the skills consistently does
take hard work. And becoming really proficient takes much time and practice—a lifetime to
be exact. But the effort is definitely worthwhile.
The Stages/Process of Listening

The process of listening occur in five stages. They are hearing, understanding,
remembering, evaluating, and responding.
1) Hearing: It is referred to the response caused by sound waves stimulating the sensory
receptors of the ear; it is physical response; hearing is perception of sound waves; you must
hear to listen, but you need not listen to hear (perception necessary for listening depends
on attention). Brain screens stimuli and permits only a select few to come into focus- these
selective perception is known as attention, an important requirement for effective listening.
2) Understanding: This step helps to understand symbols we have seen and heard, we must
analyze the meaning of the stimuli we have perceived; symbolic stimuli are not only words
but also sounds like applause… and sights like blue uniform…that have symbolic meanings as
well; the meanings attached to these symbols are a function of our past associations and of
the context in which the symbols occur. For successful interpersonal communication, the
listener must understand the intended meaning and the context assumed by the sender.
3) Remembering: Remembering is important listening process because it means that an
individual has not only received and interpreted a message but has also added it to the
mind’s storage bank. In Listening our attention is selective, so too is our memory- what is
remembered may be quite different from what was originally seen or heard.
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4) Evaluating: Only active listeners participate at this stage in Listening. At this point the
active listener weighs evidence, sorts fact from opinion, and determines the presence or
absence of bias or prejudice in a message; the effective listener makes sure that he or she
doesn’t begin this activity too soon; beginning this stage of the process before a message is
completed requires that we no longer hear and attend to the incoming message-as a result,
the listening process ceases
5) Responding: This stage requires that the receiver complete the process through verbal
and/or nonverbal feedback; because the speaker has no other way to determine if a
message has been received, this stage becomes the only overt means by which the sender
may determine the degree of success in transmitting the message.
Types of Listening
Based on objective and manner in which the Listener takes and rspond to the process of
Listening, different types of Listening are:
1) Informational Listening: This is simple, straightforward listening. The speaker intends to
get a message across, and the listener's goal should be to understand that message as
completely as possible. The listener might need to ask questions or request clarification to
get the full message.
2) Relationship Listening: The purpose of this type of listening is to improve the relationship
between two or more people. It also plays a big part of friendships and family relationships.
In this type of listening, the speaker expresses her feelings, and the listener's job is to
process the information before responding.
3) Sympathetic Listening: This could be considered the most challenging type of listening
because the listener's role is often not to respond at all. The speaker who seeks sympathetic
listening might have suffered a tragedy or needs someone to listen to a series of complex
thoughts..
4) Appreciative Listening: Looking for ways to accept and appreciate the other person
through what they say. Seeking opportunity to praise.
5) Critical Listening: Listening in order to evaluate, criticize or otherwise pass judgment on
what someone else says.
6) Discriminative listening: Discriminative listening is the most basic type of listening,
whereby the difference between different sounds is identified. If you cannot hear
differences, then you cannot make sense of the meaning that is expressed by such
differences.
7) Biased listening: Listening through the filter of personal bias i.e the person hears only
what they want to listen.
8) Deep listening: Seeking to understand the person, their personality and their real and
unspoken meanings and motivators.
9) Evaluative listening: Listening in order to evaluate, criticize or otherwise pass judgment
on what someone else says.
10) Judgmental listening: Listening in order to evaluate, criticize or otherwise pass
judgment on what someone else says.
Principles/ the Ten Commandments of listening-Keith Davis
1. Stop talking. Obvious, but not easy.
2. Put the speaker at ease. Create a permissive, supportive climate in which the
speaker will feel free to express himself or herself.
3. Show a desire to listen. Act interested and mean it.
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4. Remove distractions. External preoccupation is less likely if nothing external is

present to preoccupy you.
5. Empathize. Try to experience to some degree the feelings the speaker is
experiencing.
6. Be patient. Give the speaker time to finish; don't interrupt.
7. Hold your temper. Don't let your emotions obstruct your thoughts.
8. Go easy on argument and criticism. Suspend judgment.
9. Ask questions. If things are still unclear when a speaker has finished, ask questions
which serve to clarify the intended meanings.
10. Stop talking. In case you missed the first commandment.