Communication Styles

Communication Styles

I think good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness. Understanding your personal style of communicating will go a long way toward helping you to create good and lasting impressions on others. By becoming more aware of how others perceive you, you can adapt more readily to their styles of communicating. This does not mean you have to be a chameleon, changing with every personality you meet. Instead, you can make another person more comfortable with you by selecting and emphasizing certain behaviors that fit within your personality and resonate with another.

There are four basic styles of communication:

·         Aggressive: By aggressive communication individuals express their feelings and opinions and advocate for their needs in a way that violates the rights of others

·         Passive:  It is a communication style in which individuals have developed a pattern of avoiding expressing their opinions or feelings, protecting their rights, and identifying and meeting their needs.

·         Assertive: In this style of communication individuals clearly state their opinions and feelings, and firmly advocate for their rights and needs without violating the rights of others. In contrast to the previous style of communication the assertive communication is born of high self-esteem.

·         Passive-Aggressive: is a communication style in which individuals appear passive on the surface but are really acting out anger in a subtle, indirect, or behind-the-scenes way. So they usually feel powerless, stuck and resentful.

Elements of a Conscious Communication

Elements of a Conscious Communication

Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another.

Conscious Communication implies first and foremost that a level of 'consciousness' is present. There are 4 elements of conscious communication, which are shown below:

·         Observations: By observations, we express how we are to another person.

·         Feelings: The second element of conscious communication is how we express our feelings as a result of our observations.

·         Needs: The third element is how we understand the needs of us and the person we are talking to. To find a middle way of communication we should realize what our needs are and what the person’s needs are

·         Requests: When our needs are not fulfilled, we should ask for actions that would fulfill our needs.

Although many of us believe ourselves to be good communicators, life frequently provides us with challenges that test our ability to deliver our messages in a positive fashion. Developing an effective communication style is an art that requires practice, practice and more practice. It is not an innate gift, as many of us believe. I think that people have healthier relationships (i.e., family, social and professional) when they master the art of communication. Ironically, many people insist that their communication style does not contribute to their relational problems, even though they are not getting what they need from their relationships. So we communicate for one reason: to get what we need!