Human beings are social creatures, with communication between individuals an essential way to not only convey ideas and information but more importantly, to build relationships. I was told that even in the workplace in order to be competent, 50% of the effort goes to building relationships – with superiors, co-workers, clients etc. whereas the remaining 50% is the actual skills and knowledge that you have. However, with the rise of technology and improvement of communicating devices (phones, smses and internet messenger), we, ironically, do not get that much practice communicating with one another on an interpersonal level. Information flow now is much faster then before but less effective because communication involves not only words but also body language, reading emotions and active listening, all of which are much harder over the phones or emails. Even worse, sometimes miscommunication happens when intended meaning is read wrongly and that would cause unnecessary troubles.
I had my fair share of miscommunications which led to plenty of awkward moments and soured relationships. Thus, I find rather important to have effective communication skills for one to deliver ideas across to a target audience accurately as we know, in this day and age where the pace of life moves so fast, one wrong or unintended idea could cause a loss of a potential client or an error in an agreement.
As someone who may be working in the technological field, I find topics offered in ES2007S like “Proposal writings” and “Building Interpersonal Communication Skills” to be particularly useful. Proposals are important in the technological field to clinch grants needed to fund projects, furthermore, interpersonal communication skills will prove valuable as people in this field usually don’t work alone, making communication of ideas of utmost importance.
The ES2007S blog 