Why is communication important to me? To answer this question, I would prefer to touch on why miscommunications are bad. Miscommunications often happen in our life, no matter in the personal or working field because we are not communicating properly. Often, we got misunderstood as the idea or thoughts we want others to know, are not deciphered in the correct way. Miscommunications still happens in our personal life although the people we are communicating with have close relationships with us. This is due to problems like, not paying attention when we are listening to the other party, getting distracted or taking things for granted. This will be the time when problems occur, and some of the time the problems can be so huge that they are not easily resolved, which in the end causes you to lose someone that you cherish.
On the non personal field, when we are in school or outside working, communicating well with others is essential, due to the fact that there are many occasions where we are involved in team or group projects. Miscommunications are the last things that we want when working in a team, because they impede the progress or disrupt the team’s abilities in achieving the desirable results. Good communications will allow me to express my ideas and suggestions clearly and accurately to my team members, hence contributing to the overall group performance. It is certainly not pleasant if I have a good idea, but I cannot present it to my team accurately, in other words, the idea is useless.
Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to produce uncommon results. This is the power of good teamwork. As I mentioned earlier, good communication skill is one of the factor which drives good teamwork. Teamwork is indeed important to me because in this society now, we complete tasks not by ourselves but by working together with other people. When people come together working towards a common goal, teamwork is definitely essential and important to bring the cooperation to a higher level and achieving greater performances and results.
6 comments:
Hi Jason,
I agree with you that miscommunication is something that we all want to avoid, not only at work but in our personal life as well. In your post, you mentioned that miscommunication only occurs at the stage when the receiver is decoding the message sent. However, miscommunication can happen at all stages in the process of communication.
When communicating with someone, the sender will first encode the message with a language. It would most probably be a common language that both the sender and receiver understand. At this stage, miscommunication can occur due to differences in the understanding of the language. Then the receiver will receive and interpret the message. As you mentioned, miscommunication can occur due to distractions. It can also occur due to misinterpretation of the message sent, such as different meanings to terms used. At the next stage, the receiver will in turn encode a message and send it back to the sender. Similar to the first few stages, miscommunication can occur as well. We can see that miscommunication can occur fairly easily. Therefore, we should always seek for clarification, before jumping into conclusions.
Lastly, I agree that good communication is one of the factors that will lead to an effective team. Without communication, a team is as good as individuals working on their own. This certainly is not something that we see in effective teams that achieves good results. In conclusion, we all should learn how to communicate properly, so as to contribute better to our team.
Leonard
Hi Jason,
You have some wonderful insights regarding communication in a team, especially the part on working in teams in school and at work. I agree with you that miscommunications are usually the main reason where the progress and efficiency in a team are affected.
Most of your ideas are clear, concise and coherent. I like the way you link your ideas together and it makes reading your blog entry a pleasure.
However, there are some assumptions in your blog entry that I find it hard to agree with you. You mention that when the size of the problems faced are too big for the people involved to resolve, it will cause us to lost someone that we cherish (last sentence of the first paragraph). On the other hand, I feel that when such problems arise, we may not lose someone that we cherish. Instead, it is more likely to affect the relationship with the people you cherished. I feel that the relationship can be improved when the problems are resolved since the problems are unlikely to stay unresolved forever. In my opinion, losing someone is an overstatement of the situation.
I do not really understand what you meant by "teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to produce uncommon results". Would you mind elaborate further on this idea?
Li Hua
An insightful first posting for this blog; I believe it is a sign for better works to come.
One thing I like about this post is the first paragraph, which you have rightfully highlighted an increasingly dangerous problem in society: "not paying attention when we are listening to the other party, getting distracted or taking things for granted", minor actions that are the starting move for an underlying problem in the future. I can relate especially to what you have written, as I too had experienced losses that arose from mere miscommunication between parties that I cared for. The only relief I could find is the lesson in life learnt from this painful experiences, which I hope you too can achieve it.
One weakness in this posting is the lack in explicit use of your personal experiences. Honestly, after finishing reading your post I was left wondering if you did not heed to the requirements of this posting. Only after a second round of reading do I discovered it. In addition, knowing that you have been a sergeant in BMT during your NS tenure it is a rich source of inspiration that you can tap on, which I feel it is a pity that you did not use in this posting. Maybe for future postings you might consider making references to it to spice up your posting further.
Lastly, I like some of the phrases that you used in your posting, for example the phrase "Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to produce uncommon results". My guess is that you came up with this sentence based on your own experiences, which was one of the gems in this posting.
Hope my suggestions help you to further improve your writing. Well done!
Hi Jason,
You have raised some really great points in this post, and I really like the way you categorized your paragraphs from the micro level to the macro level; starting with your personal experience, then in the non-personal scenario, and finally the relevance of communication in teamwork.
I also like the way you presented your ideas first explaining how miscommunication can have adverse effects, rather than the conventional way of starting with how good communication is beneficial.
Some suggestions you might want to consider to better improve your post might be to add in some ideas of how communication can better avoid and solve problems that arise in team communication.
Perhaps you might also want to consider writing about a personal experience of yourself in a team, how has the team communicated, and how has that affected the relationship and ability to work together as a team.
Finally I think some of the phrases you use to explain your ideas are great, and I hope there will be more of these in future posts.
Like 'Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to produce uncommon results.' It is a very simple phrase but it holds the essence of the meaning of teamwork, and how beneficial teamwork can become if we work at it.
Hi Jason,
Your blog entry was succinct and portrayed your ideas very clearly. It was easy to understand the points you were putting forth; effective communication onto itself. I agree that communication is two-fold, i.e. that both the listener and the sender play their parts in ensuring that the information is passed accurately. However, you did not elaborate on the effect the sender may also have on the message convey, for example, was the message coded properly. A person who is not properly educated on this topic might construe that it is only the receiver’s part that will affect the communication process.
That being said, I still fully agree with you that team projects are an unavoidable part of our lives, and that miscommunication is a serious problem that should be rectified as soon as possible. In addition, the point that teamwork is a driving force in our current society is an excellent one as it highlights why one would want to learn how to work in a team. Still, it would be even more interesting if you could put in some personal anecdotes that help us to relate to how essential teamwork is.
I am already anticipating the next post.
Regards,
Kimberly
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