productive INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Effective Interpersonal Communication

Effective Interpersonal communication

Introduction

Emotional understanding "is a kind of communal understanding that involves the proficiency to supervise one's own and other ones' emotions, to distinguish amidst them, and to use the information to guide one's thinking and actions" (Mayer & Salovey, 1993). This concept has received a lot of recent attention in the field of psychology. While others first developed the theory of emotional intelligence, and a graduate student by the name of Wayne Leon Payne is credited for being the first to use the term in his dissertation in 1985, psychologist Daniel Goleman has popularized it, writing two best-selling books Emotional Intelligence (1995) and Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998) that have brought the topic into the public arena. The earliest research in this field took place in the early 1990's when two American university professors, John Mayer (U. of New Hampshire) and Peter Salovey (Yale), who were conducting investigations on the differences in people's proficiency in the area of strong feelings, discovered that some persons were better than others at things like recognising their own sentiments, recognising the feelings of others, and solving problems engaging emotional issues. Goleman has made considerable assertions about the promise of emotional intelligence. These claims are not necessarily supported by the research, however, there is little doubt that this area of intelligence has much to do with interpersonal effectiveness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals high in emotional understanding seem to be more successful in connections and in the workplace.

Interpersonal communication

Interpersonal communication is defined by Michael Cody as: the exchange of emblems utilised to achieve interpersonal goals(28). Does this definition encompass everything, or does it only encompass certain things?. When we are dealing with the issue of interpersonal communication we should recognize that people outlook it differently.

Effective Interpersonal communication

        Interpersonal communication, in my opinion, is the exchange of information verbal or non-verbal between two, no more than 5 or 6, people for the purpose of getting a feedback and sharing information. Interpersonal connection is not interpersonal if it engages too many people. When the number of persons exceeds a certain allowance it is no longer interpersonal communication,it then becomes mass communication. In my definition it is crucial that feed- back be given to the individual that is doing the communicating. When feedback is not present then the lines of communication break down and then there is no connection at all. Even if the message is seen incorrect interpersonal connection still lives as long as the feedback is given. For example: when you talk to someone that is hard of hearing and you ask them to do something and they hear you say something other than what you said there is still interpersonal communication, although it is miscommunication. If the person, however, does not here the speaker at all and does not give any feedback, then interpersonal communication has not been established according to my definition.        

Another important dimension to my definition is that the information is exchanged in order to ...