The Competent Communicator Essay Example

Introduction

Competence in communication is the ability to attain your communication objectives in a way that maintains a good relationship on terms which are acceptable to the involved party. Skill or lack of competence is a judgment made by an individual based on their own set rules. These rules differ from one individual to another based on their ethnicity, culture or society (Pavitt et al. 234). A person's communication competence can be evaluated using two basic criteria. The first criteria measure how competent a person is delivering or accomplishing his or her objective or goal. The second one is about the appropriateness of the communication. Appropriateness involves the evaluation of how well the communicator maintains a good relationship with the audience. For one to be appropriate, he or she needs to be well conversant with the social norms and rules. (Pavitt et al. 234).

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Effectiveness in communication means achieving your communication goals while appropriateness is just a matter of relationship and acceptability. Given situations determine the suitability of effective communication. Therefore, the relevance should be judged based on the case and social factors. It is worth noting that social factors are not equal to norms or rules because some situation may demand the alteration of already existing rules and standards or come up with new rules altogether. Thus, there is a certain degree of flexibility inappropriateness which can cover a wide variety of relations between the communicator and their environment.

QUALITIES OF A GOOD COMMUNICATOR

A competent communicator can use the language well, to articulate his or her opinions feelings and thoughts openly. This means more than the ability to get the message across. It also means more than to listen well although this plays an important role too (Shin et al. 7). There are three main things which makes one a great and a competent communicator which include:

i. Understanding that we all possess different skills and styles of communication. Our various forms of communication affect all the things that we hear and speak. We must realize that this difference in our communication styles can cause misunderstandings. It means that in the long run, we have to develop and expand our techniques so that we can quickly and fluidly communicate with each other.

ii. Understanding and escaping the pitfalls. There many pitfalls and traps which lie in wait when we are processing and passing information. Understanding this can help an individual change the way they communicate since they are conscious of their words.

iii. Following a set of ground principles which permit us, either as two people or a group of individuals. This means acknowledging those laid down rules as rules of the road to avoid colliding with one another during communication. Essentially, communication competence means we have to challenge and change the way we listen to one another or talk to them (Shin et al. 7).

Social needs: One of the social needs is that control. People always want to feel powerful and influence what happens in their lives. The need for love and more attention is as called affection. The need to be associated and involved with the others is known as inclusion. The need to feel respected by other people others and self-esteem is called respect. Identity is all about the need for self-development and maintains self of oneself (Wright 85). Social needs are needs in different amounts by different people in such a way that no two people have the same social needs. The significance of social obligations is subject to change depending on the relationship or situation. For example, a person need for power and control in a certain setting may bring about a stronger need for want of inclusion.

Social needs are what makes people unique, yet they are the same. Everybody tries to make their needs met.

Relationship Between Social Needs and Communication Competence: Any competent communicator acknowledges that behaving and acting appropriately can increase the probability of achieving their communication objectives and goals. Scholars have designed the theoretical bases of appropriate and effective communication. These four ingredients of communication competence include:

i. Grammatical competence which is the complete knowledge of vocabulary, phonology, orthography, phrases formation and sentence formation.

ii. Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of the socionatural rules of application and use. It entails the ability of a learner to handle for example different communicative functions, settings, and topics in varying sociolinguistic contexts. On the other hand, it deals with the application and usage of adequate and appropriate grammatical forms for differing communicative functions in different backgrounds.

iii. Discourse competence includes the mastery of understanding and production of texts regarding listening, writing, speaking and reading. It is associated with coherence and cohesion in different text types.

iv. Strategic competence addresses the issue of compensatory strategies in case of sociolinguistic, grammatical or discourse challenges, such as the use of reference materials, lexical and grammatical phrases, repetition, slower speech, clarification or problems in addressing strangers when you are not sure of their social status (Wright 85). Besides, it is also concerned with some performance factors, for example, coping with the disturbance of background noise or usage of gap fillers.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A COMPETENT COMMUNICATOR

Adaptability: effective and competent communicators can investigate the environment surrounding them and decide what is going to be appropriate and effective in each setting and change or modify their actions and behaviors accordingly. This impressive ability is vital since what works in one situation might not work in another. To deliver a good speech, the speaker should be able to learn his or her audience and adjust his or her behaviors accordingly. An excellent communicator will speak in a different way when addressing the senior employees of a firm that he would address a group of recruits or new hires to the same firm. The reason is that what works for once group would most likely not work with another group (Eagly et al. 96).

Cognitive complexity: this is the ability to consider a variety of different explanations and to have knowledge of a given situation in several ways. Cognitive complexity is an essential skill since it keeps individuals from making wrong judgments and respond inappropriately. A person who does not possess a cognitive complexity might feel hurt during a conversation and is likely to ignore a person the next time they bump into each other. Contrary, another person with a high cognitive complexity capacity would acknowledge that behaviors do not necessarily mean what we think they say. Such a person would be more considerate and open minded bearing in mind several possibilities in interpreting someone else's actions.

Empathy: effective communicators can put themselves in another person's shoes or preferably they are other-oriented which makes them understand people's feelings and thoughts. Being empathetic is an excellent skill since people often behave, feel and think differently about the same situation than you do. People who lack this skill tend to believe that everyone feels and figures as they do, and this more often creates problems the assumptions made are not accurate (Eagly et al. 96).

Ethics: ethics are concerned in deciding whether something is morally right or wrong. Excellent and competent communicators possess ethics in their communication and behaviors. Therefore, they are ethical communicators. Generally, the ethical discussion is all about treating people fairly, avoiding unethical and immoral practices and being honest in your communication. Maintaining communication ethics is most of the times easier said than done because most people have different perspectives when it comes to what is wrong or right.

Self-awareness: competent communicators are well aware of their behaviors and their effects on other people. Scholar describes this self-awareness as self-monitoring since people who possess this trait usually evaluate themselves in a context before they can make a form of communication (Eagly et al. 96). Self-monitoring is an essential feature of an excellent communicator since it helps him, or she knows how their behaviors are suitable or do not suit a particular situation. Also, self-monitored people have a high level of intelligence both socially and emotionally which helps them to observe and understand people's social behaviors, feelings and emotions accurately (Kim 330).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the way we communicate is vital. Excellent and effective communication forms the basis of everything that we do, what we are who the people perceive us to be. Asking a question when communicating is a sign of communication competence. (Kim 33).

Works Cited

Eagly, Alice H., and Shelly Chaiken. "An attribution analysis of the effect of communicator characteristics on opinion change: The case of communicator attractiveness." Journal of personality and social psychology 32.1 (1975): 136.

Kim, Young Yun. "Achieving synchrony: A foundational dimension of intercultural communication competence." International Journal of Intercultural Relations 48 (2015): 27-37.

Pavitt, Charles, and Larry Haight. "The "competent communicator" as a cognitive prototype." Human communication research 12.2 (1985): 225-241.

Shin, YoungJu, and Michael L. Hecht. "Communication Theory of Identity." The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (2017): 1-9.

Wright, Marc. "What Makes a Competent Communicator? by Sue Dewhurst and Liam FitzPatrick." Gower Handbook of Internal Communication. Routledge, 2016. 73-90.