Importance of soft skills for real estate - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Importance of soft skills for real estate. Answer: Introduction Business communication is about sharing information between people inside and outside the organisation. For a business person, communication is an important aspect and the individuals must know their strengths and weaknesses of communication. Business communications are various, face-to-face communication, listening, telephonic conversation and emails (Thatcher Eva, 2017). This study helps will assist me to identify two of my communication issues. In the initial sections, five diagnostic tools have been explained identifying two major issues of communication. In the following section, a literature review is done to underpin the concept in theoretical perspective. In the final section, an action plan is given to improve my communication issue. Diagnosis and reflection Five diagnostic tools Workplace communication is important as it provides the organisation to run effectively and have productivity. The employees can communicate efficiently in right way that can increase the employees morale. Five diagnostic tools in communication are: Soft-skills test Verbal communication test Non-verbal communication test Self-perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC) test Confidence level during presentation test Soft-skills test In each types of job requirement, soft skill is required and it impacts on the success of the employees. In management or leadership role, employees need soft skills to lead the subordinate in the workplace. In working within the team, soft-skills help the employees to communicate effectively to achieve the objectives. As stated by Ganguly (2017), soft skills can be defined as the combination of social, people and communication skills that shape the traits, career attributes, attitudes and social intelligence quotients that enable the employees within the workplace to navigate the environment. This soft-skills test has 16 statements and the users have to answer it according to the choice. For each of the statement, people have to colour the button that described them. When people are finished with this test, they can calculate the test. Verbal communication test Effective verbal communication is dependent on various factors and it cannot be isolated from the interpersonal communication skills. Verbal communication in workplace is also associated to non-verbal communication, clarification and listening skills. In verbal communication in workplace, employees must follow clarity of speech, being polite and remain calm while communicating verbally. In opening up the communication when starting interpersonal encounters, people need to show the encouragement and show warmth and openness (Adsnan et al., 2017). In Verbal communication tool questionnaire, there are 20 questions for self assessment. In this questionnaire, there is Likert scale (1-7) and participants of the test need to choose among the seven points. Non-verbal communication test Non-verbal communication is associated with body-language of the employees and human communication is associated with 90% of the non-verbal communication. In communication process, human beings use facial expression and eyes contact to make the listeners understanding of what the opposite person is trying to convey (Kanpp, Vangelisti Caughlin, 2014). While communicating face-to-face, body gesture is important to make the words clearer. In communication, if verbal communication is the heart of communication, non-verbal communication is surely the soul of it. In non-verbal self assessment test, there are 8 questions in MCQ types. Participants of the test need to answer the preferred choice and the score will be generated after the test gets over. Self-perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC) test People have different ability to communicate in a situation and in better way than others. In workplace, employees have to communicate effectively showing the of communication in critical situation. SPCC communication test illuminates the competency of the people in variety of communication context. This test generates self-report that can measure the competence of the participants of the test. There are twelve questions in this test and participants of the test have to give them numbers from 0 to100 based on the communication competency. In order to compute the sub-score, the participants need to add the percentage for the items indicated and they need to divide the total. Confidence level during presentation test Presenting own views in front of others during a meeting or in a conference is not easy. The people need to be confident, relaxed and they should perform well to impact on the audience. Delivering the presentation is part of the business and efficient leaders can do this efficiently (Shockley-Zalabak, 2014). It is associated with tonal quality, voice graph, throwing speech and process to interact with the listeners. Employees can learn to deliver the presentation in front of others by learning some of the skills. There are 14 statements containing in this test and participants have to choose according to their preference. Participants can colour the preference that suitably describes. In each answering, numbers will be generated through it. When, the participants finished, they can calculate the total. Findings of the tools Soft-skills test Soft-skills test had 16 questions and this test assisted me to make out my understanding to manage the people at workplace. This test is important for me as through this I could understand the job at managerial level. This test score ranges from 16-80 and my score was 56. This means that I recognise the working process well with fellow employees in the workplace. This communication flow is very important and I always try to work in collaborative process rather than single-handedly. It also shows that collaborative process of working may not avoid my needs and I believe that there is room for improvement from my side. During the time of stress and pressure, I cannot work properly and I need to make a plan for myself so that the communication may come out from natural basis. Verbal communication test Verbal communication test assumes the level at which I can depend on my fellow workers for performing task effectively. Verbal communication is very important to perform a task within a team and this test can show me how I am prepared to perform within a team in the workplace. This tests score ranges from 20-over 110. There are four slabs in the result and each slabs describes the potentially of the participants of the test. I fell into the category of 81-100 as I score 94. This score signifies that I am perfectly at ease in the workplace to build the interpersonal relationship within the team. I have already possessed the communication skills that are necessary for verbal communication and I have to refine the skills to enrich this for responses. Non-verbal communication test Non-verbal communication test is important to show my body gesture and positive feeling when I communicate with others. After conducting the test, I got the score between 35 and 40 pts and it shows that I am an excellent communicator in non-verbal communication. According to me face is the most expressive part of the body and in face-to-face interaction, my hands and upper-body movement are important. It is not correct that crossing the arm over the chest as it is the sign of boredom and defiance. Self-perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC) test SPCC test shows the different characteristics of the human beings and the individuals need to calculate each of the factors. These factors of characteristics are meeting, public, dyad, group, stranger, acquaintance and friend. I calculated each of the factors and I scored 85 in public speaking. In addition, my scores in meeting (75), Group (83.3), Dyad (90), Stranger (73.3), Acquaintance (86) and Friend (90) show that I have medium competency in communicating self-perception. Higher level of competency shows that self-perceived communication is strong; however, my self-perceived communication is medium. Confidence level during presentation test There were 14 statements to answer the test in understanding the presentation skills. Presentation is an important aspect in business communication field as business meetings are conducted using presentation. This tests result ranges from 14-70 and I scored 55. This result shows that I have excellent presentation capability. My presentation skills are interesting and audience love my presentation. I am eloquent and my presentation leaves an impact to the audience. I always take time to prepare my presentation before I present it to the audiences. Two communication issues From the above test, I found out that I have issue in communicating soft skills. I don't have this ability to be respectful and diplomatic even when there are disagreements. I cannot keep calm when someone continuously blaming me without any reason. This skill is required to maintain good professional tone even if the individuals are frustrated. Emotional intelligence should be good enough to cope up with the situation. Moreover, I found out that I have problem regarding the interpersonal communication. I have issues in understanding misinterpreted body language and thinking about the message. Interruption during the communication is problematic for me as I likely to remember the whole conversation in interpersonal communication. I face emotional barriers in interpersonal communication as I face lack of attention and different perception. Reflect on two recent professional interactions In my previous workplace, I had to manage clients and sales. Last month, I had to handle one such client and the client was arrogant. During the conversation with the client I faced the issue of lack of soft skills in communication. Managing people is not an easy and being diplomatic in all types of conversations is not also possible. This client was continuously behaving rude with me and I broke my calmness. I also started shouting to him breaking the organisational composure. In another situation, in my previous workplace, I had to work within a team. Our team leader was good and he tried always to make a solid bonding among all team members. In a project, we had to work as a team to submit the work within deadline. Our team leader was absent for two days. During that period, I faced that I could not communicate with my team members proactively. I was facing interpersonal communication issue as I lack the assertiveness. Literature review Two issues in communication Soft skills communication Soft skills in communication are encompassed to social skills and people skills with their social intelligence, characters traits and emotional intelligence. In other words of McQuail Windahl (2015), soft skills are related to people's managing skills to navigate the communication in a workplace environment. Soft skills are necessary for workplace to perform well in the workplace to achieve the goals of the organisation. In the workplace, people face the issue of negative feedback from fellow workers and people are insincere to give positive feedback also. Managers and leaders in the workplace need soft skills of managing the employees and they need to take appropriate way to communicate with employees. As suggested by Liu Fraustino (2014), preparation when communicating anything is very important. Soft skills are associated to the team working, critical observation to employees, conflict resolution and adaptability. Interpersonal communication As opined by Jensen (2014), interpersonal communication can be defined as the process to exchange people's information, meaning through non-verbal and verbal messages and feelings. Interpersonal communication is done through mainly face-to-face communication and in the workplace, interpersonal communication is very important as people exchange their thoughts beliefs, feelings, attitudes and thoughts. In interpersonal communication, people are unconscious about the motive of communication from others' perspective. Hybels (2014) mentioned that individuals face the issue in encoding the motive correctly. In addition, employees in the workplace face the issue of inaccurate interpersonal perception as receivers can face issue to understand the message and it creates a hindrance. Emotion is regarded as one such interpersonal element of communication and both parties' emotion need to match. Theoretical perspective of communication Mechanistic: In this perspective of communication, the transformation of a message is done from one party to another. The first party is termed as the sender and another party is termed receiver. Psychological: In this communication, the transformation of a message is not just the communication between sender and receiver. It is considered as a flow of feelings that shares between recipients and senders (Fussel Kreuz, 2014). Social: Social communication happens when interpersonal communication between receiver and senders conducts properly. In social communication, content is mainly important to communicate. Systematic: In this communication, the message of communication is being prepared by many individuals through their own set of perspectives. Each of the individuals interprets their perspective in their own way. Models of communication Schramms Model This communication model was conceptualised by Wilbur Schramm in the year 1954 and stated that communication is a two-way process. Both senders and receivers are responsible to receive and send the message. The message needs to send after encoding, therefore, the sender of the message is called as Encoder. The encoded message needs to decode through the receiver, therefore, the receiver is called Decoder (Petersons Khalimzoda, 2016). There are different components of this model and sender is the individual who sends the communication and this individual can be called transmitter as well. The encoder is the individual who converts the communication to be sent and decoder gets the message. The decoder converts the language of the message to a basic understanding. The role of the interpreter is significant as the individual tries to make out and analyse the message. Interpreter and receiver is the same person. Encoding assumes to be a critical part of beginning the procedure of communi cation and converting the message into information is difficult (McQuail Windahl, 2015). Schramms model shows how the message is transferred to a group when interpersonal communication happens and this model runs communication as a never-ending process. Berlos model of communication Shannon Weaver's Model is the backbone of David Berlo's model of communication. Berlo described some factors that affect the person's components in the communication that makes the communication more efficient. Four components of the communication are the sender (S), the message (M), channel (C) and receiver (R). According to Patton et al., (2017), the sender sends the message to receiver and factors like attitude, knowledge, communication skills and social systems are responsible to decode the message for the receiver. The message is the content or substance that is sent to the receiver. This message can be in any form, audio, voice, video, media or test. Key elements of the message are related to the content, code, structure and treatment. Moreover, the channel is important when the message is sent and technical machines can also be used to send the message. The five senses of human beings (hearing, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting) can also affect the communication. The rece iver is the individual who gets the message at the end and all the factors of communication must be sync so that the receiver gets the right message. If the sender and receiver do not have the same mentality, the message won't create the same effect. On the other side, as argued by Berger (2014), Berlo's model does not have a concept of feedback and it is a linear model and it does not have two-way communication. Interpersonal behaviour theory Triandis theory of interpersonal behaviour Behaviour in any condition is partly the function o intention and partly it is the response. Couldry Hepp (2013), mentioned situational constraint is there that manages the communication and behaviour. The intention of human beings is influenced mainly by effective factors of rational deliberation and social factors. One cannot be fully autonomous in the workplace and the employee has to communicate and behave according to the workplace norm and culture. Interpersonal behaviour is influenced by moral beliefs and it can impact on emotional derives and similar cognitive limitations of the human beings. In the workplace, social factors are associated with the roles, culture and self-concept. In addition, emotional responses in the workplace are associated with the rational-instrumental investigation of the situation and consequences of the emotional responses (De Vitto, 2015). In decision-making condition in difficult situation, the brain provides the instinctive behavioural reaction f or situations. In critical situation, as stated by Hybels (2014), attitudes are shaped by evaluation of outcomes and beliefs about results, whereas habits of the human beings are affected by frequency of past behaviour. Action plan My action plan for betterment of communication is set for 6 months (24 weeks), within this period; I will try to achieve my desired outcomes. Short courses to improve communication In Australia, crash-courses on communication can be done within 1 or 2 months time length. I would like to do courses on Dealing with People (2 months) and on assertiveness (1 month). I am also interested to do a course on Effective People Management course (3 months) and it will give me benefit to improve my soft-skills. These short courses will eventually develop my interpersonal communication and soft-skills that would be an effective help for me to handle people at workplace in future. Moreover, in future, I want to continue post-graduate course on Masters in Communication from Australia based university and this course helps the professional people to develop understanding on communication. This course generally follows 20-week Professional Portfolio to develop professional skills. Reading plan I would like to make a reading plan for myself to gain confidence and motivation. Reading proper books can help me to build communication. Each night, before going to bed, I would be reading a few pages of the books to enrich me with knowledge. I want to read books on self-help and it will boost me with confidence and sharpen me in communication. Active listening 101: How to turn down your volume to turn up your communication skill written by Emilia Hardman and The Power of communication skills to build trust, inspire loyalty and lead effectively written by Helio Fred Garcia. In addition, my reading list contains Active Listening: Improve Your by Michael H. Hopes and The Power of Self-Confidence by Brian Tracy. Maintaining personal journal Personal journal helps to keeping account of daily activities and it also assists to monitor the progress. In understanding the progress, I would like to keep a personal journal to write down my achievement of weekly activities. Keeping journal will consequently increase my IQ and it enhances the mindfulness. Maintaining personal journal will help me to achieve the objectives and provide a mental support for enhancing emotional intelligence as well. Identification of mentor Having a mentor is always helpful to pinpoint my fault in each activity. Mentor can provide solution for my error. In improving the communication, I want to take help from Harris Pointing, who was my private tutor during my high school life. He was a great motivator and he had a pleasing personality. He is a well-read man. Harris Pointing used to take special classes on motivation. He did PhD in Communicative English and he has experience of taking self-motivation classes for 10 years. He has his YouTube page as well where he uploads the motivational and communication related videos. I am going to join his 4 months training courses to come round my barriers of communication. Timeline of action plan Activities Week 1 Week 4 Week 8 Week 12 Week 16 Week 24 Maintaining personal journal ? Start reading books ? Doing short communication crash-courses ? Take training under a mentor ? Start implementing in this personal and professional life ? Search on communication course on Post graduation ? Table1: Gantt chart (Source: Self-developed) Conclusion This reflective analysis helped to understand the communication barriers of me and theoretical perspective of the communication issues. Five diagnostic tools helped me to analyse the five different aspects of communication of me. I have identified soft skills issue and interpersonal communication issue. In literature review section, theoretical perspective of communication and its issues have been explained. I tried to amalgamate practical issue of communication with existing theories and models. I have also prepared an action plan for communication improvement. 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