By Penny Hoffmann
According to Alvernia University, a communication style for people is “a way in which they interact and exchange information with others”.
If one understands their communication style, one then better understands their communication strengths and flaws. Once these are recognized and understood, one can then work to improve their weaknesses and maintain or improve their strengths. This will aid one in individual and group settings.
In an individual and group setting, if one identifies their own stress indicators, they can then inform others and show why they act a certain way. This helps communication because the receiver can better understand the actions of the sender.
Additionally, a team is more likely to work if there is a common goal, complementary skills, all members are productive, and there is proper communication or constructive feedback.
In order to understand our own communication style, one can investigate their emotional intelligence. According to psychologist and author of Ecological Intelligence, Daniel Goleman,”emotional intelligence refers to how well we handle ourselves and our relationships”.
Goleman states that there are four domains of emotional intelligence; namely self awareness, self management, empathy, and skilled relationship. Self awareness refers to one understanding what and why they feel an emotion, self management is knowing what and how much of an emotion should be used in a situation, empathy is understanding others emotions, and skilled relationship is combining these three and using them in relationships.
If one is self-aware, one can then understand their emotions better, for reasons such as understanding why they reacted a particular way. If one can self-manage, they can then convey these emotions to others.
If one has empathy, they can then understand responses to their own emotions from others and defend themselves or alter their reactions to better suit the responses they receive.
If one is self aware, can self manage, and has empathy, then one will communicate their thoughts and respond to others effectively and can thus work better in groups and by themselves. One can then even aid others in self-awareness, self-management, having empathy, and skilled relationships. This will make one a valuable member of a team.
