non verbal and verbal communication

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Non verbal communication

Eye contact

As in the pie chart above, more than the messages that we say, we communicate through our non verbal skills on which eye contact is one of them. Eye contact is the reflection of what we are thinking and how we are feeling so we can easily guess people’s feelings by looking at their eyes. Some  changes in our look like frowning tells us that he/she is not agreeing with us, confused look tells that he/she haven’t understood the messages and blank look tells that he/she is depressed and not paying attention to us. Even a small change in the face especially around the eye area can be noticed by other people by which other people can make negative or positive judgment by it. So it is important to have eye contact while communicating.

Eye contact lets other people to know that we are friendly, listening, interested, and making them feel valued which has positive impact in the building relationship between service users and service providers. Having positive relation helps both of service users and service providers to deal with the problem that service user have which result in positive result. For examples we went to hospital and we are talking to receptionist and he/she have appropriate eye contact and he/she is smiling and listening us makes us feel comfortable and it let us to speak comfortably. It makes us feel valued and happy with the service he/she provided.

But on other hand, eye contact has negative impact if we are not looking at them. Other people might feel devalued because not looking at them tells that we are not paying them attention, we are not listening and we are ignoring them. And also looking with fixed stare tells that we are angry which might make other people frighten and uncomfortable. Not looking at people and staring at them will never help in building relationship instead these both will have negative impact resulting the worsen relationship. For example if we went to hospital and we are talking to receptionist but he/she is not looking at us and he/she is typing something in computer we feel awkward and uncomfortable to ask for help though he/she responds us. This makes us feel devalued and also makes us feel angry.

Though eye contact is important while communicating, it doesn’t apply for all of the people from different country having different culture. We should understand the individual differences. For examples while communicating with Japanese people we should know that only 1/3 of the communication is eye contact whereas for British people 2/3 is eye contact. In such cases, we cannot say that they are not listening to us instead we should understand their culture. We should apply care value of promoting equality and diversity.

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Tone of voice and pace

Another non verbal skill that we should apply is tone of voice. It involves the way our voice sounds as we speak. Our tone of voice is sending a message to other people. When we talk other people can pick up a small change in our tone of voice which can have negative impact on them. The way we speak can make people to have negative judgment so we should be aware that it’s not only what we say but also it depends upon the way we say it.

Tone of voice lets ...

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