AJAY KUMAR GARG INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

MBA Program | Semester: 1

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Effective Oral Communication
(UNIT 2)
By

Dr. Namita Nath Kumar

Reflection and Empathy: Two Sides
of effective oral Communication

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 Reflecting
Reflecting is the process of paraphrasing and restating both
the feelings and words of the speaker. The purposes of
reflecting are:

• To allow the speaker to ‘hear’ their own thoughts and to

focus on what they say and feel.
• To show the speaker that you are trying to perceive the
world as they see it and that you are doing your best to
understand their messages.
• To encourage them to continue talking.

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Reflecting does not involve you asking questions,
introducing a new topic or leading the conversation in
another direction. Speakers are helped through
reflecting as it not only allows them to feel understood,
but it also gives them the opportunity to focus their
ideas. This in turn helps them to direct their thoughts
and further encourages them to continue speaking.

Two Main Techniques of Reflecting:

 Mirroring
 Paraphrasing

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 Mirroring
Mirroring is a simple form of reflecting and involves
repeating almost exactly what the speaker says.

Mirroring should be short and simple. It is usually enough

to just repeat key words or the last few words spoken.
This shows you are trying to understand the speakers
terms of reference and acts as a prompt for him or her to
continue. Be aware not to over mirror as this can
become irritating and therefore a distraction from the
message.

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 Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing involves using other words to reflect what the speaker has said.
Paraphrasing shows not only that you are listening, but that you are
attempting to understand what the speaker is saying.

It is often the case that people ‘hear what they expect to hear’ due to
assumptions, stereotyping or prejudices. When paraphrasing, it is of utmost
importance that you do not introduce your own ideas or question the
speakers thoughts, feelings or actions. Your responses should be non-
directive and non-judgemental.

It is very difficult to resist the temptation to ask questions and when this
technique is first used, reflecting can seem very stilted and unnatural. You
need to practice this skill in order to feel comfortable.
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 Reflecting Content, Feeling

The most immediate part of a speaker’s message is the content, in other

words those aspects dealing with information, actions, events and
experience, as verbalised by them.

Reflecting content helps to give focus to the situation but, at the same time, it
is also essential to reflect the feelings and emotions expressed in order to
more fully understand the message.

This helps the speaker to own and accept their own feelings, for quite often a
speaker may talk about them as though they belong to someone else, for
example using “you feel guilty” rather than “I feel guilty.”

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A skilled listener will be able to reflect a speaker’s feelings from body cues
(non-verbal) as well as verbal messages. It is sometimes not appropriate to
ask such direct questions as “How does that make you feel?” Strong
emotions such as love and hate are easy to identify, whereas feelings such
as affection, guilt and confusion are much more subtle. The listener must
have the ability to identify such feelings both from the words and the non-
verbal cues, for example body language, tone of voice, etc.

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 Empathy

Simply stated, empathy is defined as the ability to identify and understand

another’s situation, feelings, and motives.

There seems to be no coincidence that empathy can be directly associated with

the ‘hard skill’ of Customer Knowledge, as it applies to taking a customer-
centric approach, understanding the needs of the customers, and tailoring
products and services to fulfill them.

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Developing an empathetic approach:
1. Develop Your Self-Awareness: Communicating with others in a way that
reflects more empathy requires to have a heightened level of self-awareness.
What is your natural disposition, and how does that translate to others during
interactions? How you are perceived, oft times determines how you are
received; thus, having a thorough understanding of ‘where’ you are mentally
and emotionally during interactions, is vital.
2. Smile and Greet Others With Genuine Enthusiasm: It is one of the most
powerful forms of non-verbal communication! Smiling and greeting others
with genuine enthusiasm will contribute to you appearing to be more
approachable and open by other’s that wish to share their ideas or concerns
with you. Research has shown that the act of smiling is contagious!

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3. Lead the Way: Take the lead during initial conversations with prospective
connections, clients, colleagues, etc., and communicate with confidence,
professionalism, and an awareness for the setting, that you might properly
adjust your tone, and style of your approach.
4. Listen, and Show Sincere Interest: Actively listen in conversations, and ask
thoughtful, open-ended questions to provoke thought, and generate good
dialog. Great initial conversations can be inspirational, and plant the seed of a
long-term business interest. Take time to listen to customers, employees,
managers and stakeholders; quite often, it is their ideas that develop the
pathways to future success. Additionally, as you are conversing with others,
take note of their body language; much of what we communicate with one
another is non-verbal. Signs of irritation, offense, and disinterest are
sometimes subtle, but rarely undetectable, as are signs of interest, curiosity,
and excitement.
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5. Advocate for Other’s Needs: This is an area in which I feel that having an
empathetic disposition truly makes a difference! From a service provider
perspective, we are called upon to fulfill the wants, needs and desires of our
customers, but the true value of our service is hidden within their ‘customer
experience!’ How does the customer feel, when they are in receipt of our
services, and what impression are they left with in conclusion? How they feel
can sometimes be the determining factor of their decision to do business with
us again; therefore, we should continually strive to focus on providing,
dynamic, flexible, solution-based services to our customers, that not only
fulfills their requirements, but demonstrates an understanding of the
challenges or exposures they may be experiencing.

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6. Find Common Ground: Connecting with others on a personal level, possibly
through a shared interest, hobby, or personal anecdote, may ultimately
contribute to a deeper connection. It is amazing to watch how others truly
unfold when they begin to speak about the things that they are truly
passionate about, including family, friends, travel, dreams, or life-long
aspirations.
7. Withhold Judgment: Reserve your judgment, and cultivate healthy respect for
the diversity found within the thoughts, views, and opinions of others. Resist
the urge to let your personal biases cloud your professional judgment, or
cause you to dismiss the value of another’s perspective/contribution. We all
have something unique to offer.

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8 Provide Encouragement: In the professional realm, we can positively contribute
to each other’s growth and well-being through encouragement, and
constructive feedback. These important contributions need not only be
reserved for times of low morale, discipline or correction; this method of
sharing can be applied liberally, generating an exponential return on
investment!
9. Share Professional Resources: Sharing the professional resources may involve
sharing a contact, providing a referral, facilitating an introduction, becoming a
mentor, or simply sharing the gift of one’s insight with someone. Sharing the
resources also communicates the traits of humility, and generosity; never forgo
the opportunity to exercise these two very important traits!

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 Effective Listening

Listening effectively takes skill, self-motivation, and practice.

Effective listening means concentrating on what the speaker says

rather than on how it is said. Lack of attention and respectful
listening can be costly - leading to mistakes, poor service,
misaligned goals, wasted time and lack of teamwork.

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Reasons for Effective Listening
Listening is an important aspect of business communication. It
stands third after writing and speaking. A business communicator
has to listen to various customer, employees, officer, suppliers,
financiers etc. Obviously, it is an unavoidable task for a business
person. Some of the important reasons as to why a business
communicator should develop listening skills are enumerated as
follows:

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1. To Gain New Information and Ideas
2. To Question, Test Evidence and Assumptions
3. To be Inspired and Motivated
4. To Improve Overall Communication

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Listening is of various types depending upon the speaker
1. Discriminative Listening: When the listener differentiates between different
parts of the speaker messages.
2. Evaluative Listening: Listening is said to be evaluative when the listener
evaluates the evidence and reaches a conclusion.
3. Appreciative Listening: Here the listener shows by words or his body
language that he likes some part of a speech and agrees with the speaker.
4. Empathic Listening: When the listener puts himself in the place of the
position of the speaker it is called Empathic Listening.
5. Active Listening: When the listener genuinely interested in understanding
what the other person is thinking, feeling, wanting or what the message
means, and active in checking out our understanding it is called active
listening.
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Listening Process
Listening is a seven stage process of:
1. Hearing
2. Selecting
3. Attending
4. Understanding
5. Evaluating
6. Remembering
7. Responding actively with feedback
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The Four Steps of Listening are:
1. Hearing is the first step in the process. At this stage, Listener has to pay
attention to make sure that he heard the message.
2. The second step is interpretation. Failure to interpret the speaker's words
correctly frequently leads to misunderstanding. People sometimes interpret
words differently because of varying experience, knowledge, vocabulary,
culture, background, and attitudes.
3. A good speaker uses tone of voice, facial expressions, and mannerisms to
help make the message clear to the listener. During the third step, evaluation,
Listener has to decide what to do with the information he has received. The
judgments made in the evaluation stage are a crucial part of the listening
process.
4. The final step is to respond. This is a verbal or visual response that lets the
speaker know whether Listener has gotten the message and what his reaction
is.
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Importance of Listening
1. It helps us to understand the people and the world around us.
2. In our society, listening is essential to the development and survival of the individual.
3. Relationships depends more on listening skills than on speaking skills.
4. A good listener is always in a better position to deal with his problems and relationships.
5. It helps a person to grow in his career.
6. It keeps a person well informed
7. It helps an organization to meet its objectives.
8. Being listened to spells the difference between feeling accepted and feeing isolated.
9. A good listener rarely involves himself in controversies and misunderstanding.
10. Listening skills are critical to effective leadership.
11. Good listeners are often the best speakers because they have taken the time to find out what
people are truly interested in.

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Guidelines for Effective Listening
1. Preparation before listening
2. Listening to understand, not to refute
3. Focusing the attention
4. Concentration on context
5. Taking notes
6. Curbing the impulse to interrupt
7. Asking questions
8. Summary & evaluation
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 Non – verbal communication

Non-verbal communication occurs without using any oral or

written word. Instead of written or oral words, it relies on
various non-verbal cues like physical movements, tasks, colors,
signs, symbols, signals charts etc. to express feelings, attitudes
or information. Although no word is used in non-verbal
communication, it can effectively communicate many human
feelings more accurately than verbal methods of
communication.

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Types of Nonverbal Communication
Eye contact is an important channel of interpersonal
communication, helps regulate the flow of communication.
And it signals interest in others. Furthermore, Eye contact
with audiences increases the speaker’s credibility.
Facial expressions

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Gestures If you fail to gesture while speaking, you may be
perceived as boring, stiff and un-animated. Gestures are
movements of the arms, legs, hands, and head. Some authors
opine that gesture is the deliberate body movement as because
they express specific and intentional meaning.
Posture and body orientation
You communicate numerous messages by the way you walk, talk,
stand and sit. Standing erect, but not rigid, and leaning slightly
forward communicates to students that you are approachable,
receptive and friendly.
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Body Language
Body language is another widely recognized form of non-
verbal communication. Body movements can convey meanings
and message. Body language may take two forms of
unconscious movements and consciously controlled
movements. For example;
When a person is bored, he may gaze around the room rather
than look at the speaker or he may shift positions frequently.
When a person is nervous, he may bite his nails or mash hair.
These are usually made unconsciously.
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Space and Distance
Space and distance are significant non-verbal tools in the case of
organizational communication. A spacious and well-decorated
room indicates a person’s position in the organization hierarchy
and external people gets a message about his importance and
authority only by visiting his room. Distance is another
communication tool, which expresses the degree of intimacy and
individual acceptance.

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Proximity
Cultural norms dictate a comfortable distance for interaction
with others. You should look for signals of discomfort caused by
invading others’ space. Some of these are:
 Rocking
 Leg swinging
 Tapping
 Gaze aversion

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Para-linguistic
This facet of nonverbal communication includes such vocal elements as:
 Tone
 Pitch
 Rhythm
 Timbre (resonance)
 Loudness
 Inflection
For maximum communication effectiveness, learn to vary these six
elements of the voice. One of the major criticisms is of instructors who
speak in a monotone. Listeners perceive these instructors as boring and
dull.

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Humor
Humor is often overlooked as a communication tool and mostly
not encouraged at professional level. It fosters a friendly
environment that facilitates ease of communicating. Obviously,
adequate knowledge of the subject matter is crucial to the success
of communcation; however, it’s not the only crucial element.
Creating a climate that facilitates learning and retention demands
good nonverbal and verbal skills.

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Touch
Touch is a widely used form of non-verbal communication tool.
By touching, one can express a wide range of emotions.
However, the accepted modes of touch vary depending on the
gender, age, relative status, intimacy and cultural background of
the persons.

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Silence
Silence is a powerful tool for communication. It may have a
positive or negative meaning. Silence indicates that the receiver
is listening carefully and attentively. In the same way, through
silence one can communicate his lack of interest or a failure to
understand.
For example, silence often indicates that a person receiving
instruction does not understand the action required or sometimes
silence indicates consent.

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Personal Appearance
Appearance is also an important non-verbal communication tool.
Appearance includes dress, hair, jewelry, makeup, belt buckles
and so on. Appearance indicates the degree of importance or
interest a person conveys to an occasion. In an organization, one’s
dress is keenly observed to see whether it conforms to accepted
standards of appearance.

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Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity
or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to
communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a
symbol for “stop”.
On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite.
Numerals are symbols for numbers. Personal names are symbols
representing individuals.

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Visual Communication
When communication occurs by means of any visual aids, it is
known as visual communication. Thus, communication that
occurs through facial expression, personal appearance, gesture,
posture, printed picture, sign, signal, symbol, map, poster, slide,
chart, diagram, graph etc. is called visual communication.

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Importance of Nonverbal Communication
Some important points expressing the importance, necessity,
advantages or functions of non-verbal communication are
discussed below:
 Well Expression of the Speaker’s Attitude
 Providing Information Regarding the Sender of The Written
Message
 Expressing the Attitude of the Listener and Receiver
 Gaining Knowledge about a Class of People

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 Gaining Knowledge about the Status of a Person
 Communicating Common Message to All People
 Communicating with the Handicapped People
 Conveying Message to the Illiterate People
 Quick Expression of Message
 Presenting Information Precisely

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THANK YOU

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