<DIPLOMA IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT>

< SEMESTER 1 / YEAR 2>

< BDKO1103>

<BASIC INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION>

MATRICULATION NO: <850904135663001>

IDENTITY CARD NO. : <850904-13-5663>
TELEPHONE NO. : <016-8002213>
E-MAIL : <thug50@oum.edu.my>
LEARNING CENTRE : <SIBU LEARNING CENTER>

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TABLE OF CONTENT

1.0 INTRODUCTION 1-4

2.0 ELEMENT OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 5-8
3.0 LISTENING PROCESS 9-10
4.0 OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE LISTENING PROCESS 11-12
5.0 RECOMMEDANTION TO IMPROVE EFFECTIVE LISTENING SKILL 13-14
6.0 CONCLUSION 15-16
REFERENCES 17

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 1.0 Introduction

What is communication?
Based on study, 70 to 80 percent of our waking hours spent on various form of
communication. Form of communication available are writing, reading, speaking and
listening. According to statistics, we spent 9% of the above mentioned time in writing,
16% reading, 3% speaking and the remaining 45% listening. From here, we can notice
that listening occupied the most during communication in progress which we will
elaborate further later.

Interpersonal communication.
One of the well-known communication skill is interpersonal communication skill.
Interpersonal communication skill something similar to dyadic communication except
interpersonal does not bounded on two participators only, it accept more. Interpersonal
communication could be done through verbal and non-verbal message. For instance,
with the new advance and convenience phone data, peoples are capable to communicate
each other through messenger like Whatsapp, Wechat and ETC through verbal and non-
verbal message.

Why interpersonal communication?

Excellent interpersonal communication skills allow us to exchange information nor
knowledge and feelings with others. For instance, lecturer teaching and interacting in
class allow students to learn new knowledge. Furthermore, psychologist will able to read
from patient expression to diagnose their sickness symptom. As prescribed earlier, 80%
of our waking hours spent on communication, therefore it is important for us to be able
performing communication well.

Listening skills.
As mentioned above, listening skills occupied enormous times during process of
communication. Moreover, listening persisted in all communication context, listeners

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listen to voice from speakers and decode the content within. Moreover, listening is an
active and creative process. Beside of eligible to convey and exchange idea, listening
skills will allow a listener to comprehend the message which directed to them. In order
to become an active communicator, one would require to listen attentively and respond
accordingly. Do take notes here, listening and hearing are not equally same to be specific
hearing is one part of listening skills. Hearing can be define as physiological process
that occurs when sound waves are translated into electrical impulse and then processed
by the central nervous system (Trenholm, 2001). In another terms, hearing is an
automatic process like breathing without any efforts applied on it unless those who have
hearing problem. As for listening, it is a process through we seek to understand and
retain aural stimuli. The process involved message conveyed, perceived, recognised,
interpreted and stored for future use. In order to simplify, listening included all the
hearing process and processing by the central nervous system for understanding and
storing purpose as well.

New employment agreement briefing event.

We can further relate interpersonal communication and listening skills to the briefing
meeting that will held in National registration department Malaysia (JPNM). Recently
JPNM and Congress of unions of employee in public and civil services have bargained
into a mutual agreement to implementing new employment agreement toward employee.
The mutual agreement involved will be Flexible Working Hours (Waktu Bekerja Fleksi).
The briefing will took place in state headquarter accordingly. In our case, JPNM
Sarawak state briefing meeting will be reviewed. The venue for the briefing at Meeting
room within Bangunan Tun Datuk Patinggi Tuanku Haji Bujang. Estimated participator
around 60 head of department from different Sarawak Branch. Agenda for the briefing
meeting:-

1. Awaiting the arrival of Sarawak JPNM’s director

2. Singing for National anthem and department song
3. Speech from Sarawak JPNM’s director

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4. Introduction of new employment agreement by head of Human resource
department JPNM Sarawak
5. Tea break
6. Content of Flexible working hours and allocation of human power
7. Responsibility of branches head of department to ensure implementation of the
new employment agreement accordingly
8. Penalty for misusing the new employment rule
9. Question and answering session
10. Dismiss

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 Importance and expectation of the briefing meeting

Importance of the event

This is the first time government sector apply flexible working hours in order to promote
work-life balance. Thus, this briefing meeting will be crucial before the implementation
of new employment law. The briefing purpose are gather all the HOD come together to
acknowledge and discuss the new employment law content, to coordinate what does
necessary, to improve the communication regarding the new implementation. New
employment law will be explained during briefing to HOD how their task contribute to
overall goal. When the briefing are clear, HOD are more motivated to commit
themselves into the new implementation because they will realized their place are
importance to succeed the implementation. Apart from this, good briefing event will
expedite the success of the new employment law implementation into branches
accordingly.

Expectation of the event

The event expect to be success all the ways without any obstacles. All the speakers are
expected capable to convey all the context to participators accurately. In additional, all
the HOD that anticipate the briefing are expected to understand their own task and role to
commit and organize the new employment law. Apart from this, HOD are required to
completely equip themselves with the knowledge and rules for the employment
agreement to avoid any misconduct to their staffs after back to office.

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 2.0 Element of interpersonal communication

1. People
Interpersonal only exist with the present of two persons in exchange the role of
encoder and decoder. All the messages during the briefing must be encoded and
decoded. All the obstacle that will distract the process of transmitting should be
reduced as disturbance cannot fully eliminated. As mentioned earlier, the briefing
will be anticipated by 60 HOD from different branches. Therefore, management
prepared a big hall to accommodate all the participator to ensure all the participator
are comfortable and concentrate to the content during the briefing. In additional,
sufficient sound system will be provided during the briefing to make sure all the
participators able to hear the speaker message in consideration of the number of
participators and the size of the hall. In additional, all the participator will be
required to put their smartphone in the ‘phone box’ on their table to avoid attention
interrupted by smart phone during the briefing.

2. Messages
As per title, all the form of communication consist a message. Everything sender nor
receiver act is a way to transmitting their message. Message are available in the form
of
 Auditory (hearing)
 Visual (sight)
 Tactile (touch)
 Olfactory (smell)
 Gustatory (taste)
 In any combination above
As for National registration department Malaysia, the briefing going to be held in
combination of auditory and visual. Notes and power point slide show will provided
during the speaker delivery the context. Bahasa Malaysia will used as intermediate
language under consideration of the HOD are combination of multicultural to avoid
misinterpretation of context. Apart from this, the speaker selected to represent

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 management in the briefing event is Mr. James. The selected speaker have tons of
experience in public speaking, he is good in delivery context together with Meta
message. Management believe that speaker attached with sense of humour capable to
retain the attention of the participator and deliver the messages well.

3. Channels
Channel is the medium used to delivery message to receiver. Communication usually
take up two to four channels simultaneously.
JPNM Sarawak briefing will took place with two different channel, one are speaking
and listening – vocab channel, second slide show and briefing note – visual channel
to ensure participator able to catch up the speaker delivery speed during the process.

4. Interference
Interference can be explain as the form of disturbing the process of communication.
Form of interference could be phone ringtone, microphone volume too sharp. As
mentioned earlier, interference cannot be eliminated only can be reduced. For
instance, the sound system in the briefing hall will be tested accordingly to avoid any
technical problem that will affect the briefing. For other instance, all the
participator’s smartphone are advised switched to silent mode beforehand into ‘phone
box’.

5. Context
A context referring to communication occur in situation. It could be formal and non-
formal. For instance meeting, wedding dinner and so on. It is important to
acknowledge the communication in order to practise the correct communication
approach. There are four dimensions in the context of communication:-
A. The physical dimension
Tangible or concrete environment in which communication takes place
B. The temporal dimension
The time of day and moment in history as well as where a particular message fits
into the sequence of communication events.

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 C. The social-psychological dimension
Status relationships among the participants, norms of the society of group.
D. The cultural dimension
Context refers to the cultural beliefs and customs of the people communicating.
In order to fulfil the requirement of context element, JPNM Sarawak organize the
event in meeting hall indicating the event are official. All the participators are
required have their dress code in formal. The speaker selected are fully aware of the
participators are the combination of multicultural staffs will avoid to bring into topic
that might offense any of races.

6. Feedback
Feedback is the verbal or non-verbal signal received during the communication by the
speakers from receivers during the process. The form of feedback could a smile, a
frown, a chuckle, a sarcastic remark, or a simple silence in return to what the speaker
spoke and did. Feedback available either positive or negative. In additional,
feedback could be internal and external as in the speaker himself and listener
themselves.
One of the related example could be taken from briefing meeting is Mr James
monitoring the expression of the listeners during his presentation of the employment
agreement. For instance, listeners are quiet and not laughing after he told a particular
jokes regarding to one of the point, he will counterpart the jokes with another
sarcastic joke to make the briefing event happening.
7. Effect
Effect can be defined as communication outcomes. All the communication has
particular effects. Effects available are emotional, physical, cognitive or mixed all
above. Communication can result feeling of joy, anger or sadness (emotional).
Furthermore, communication can lead to action like fight and argue (physical). On
another hand, communication can approach new insights, extra knowledge but also
confusion (cognitive). JPNM briefing meeting could be related to cognitive effects.
The effect might be positive as if all the hod fully obtained knowledge required or
negative when hod got confused by the context conveyed. For another instance, some

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of the hod might approached to joyful effect due to they are persuading work life
balance concept.

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 3.0 Listening process

1. Being mindful
Focus in the particular situation. During being mindful does not let either work or
personal issue affected your mind at present situation. When mindful listening
practised the only thing in your mind should be the present issue or the context of
conveyed by the speaker. In additional, being quiet and not interrupting also part of
how you being mindful.

2. Physical receiving messages.

An extension from being mindful, listening process consist of physically receiving
message. During the communication undergoes, we will receive the message
physically first in order to keep us mindfulness. Physically receiving message can be
done by hearing sounds, interpreting non verbal behaviour and reading lips. Most of
us take hearing for granted but there are people who can hear might face difficulty to
receive oral message (Carl, 1998). Physical reception could be distracted if there are
disturbance exist for instance, television and chit chat.

3. Selecting and organising communication

We as human being do not perceive everything around us. In fact, we selectively
attend to some aspects of communication and chosen to ignore others. The selective
filter depended on physiological influences, expectation, cognitive structures,
membership in cultures, social roles, and social community.

We use cognitive schemata to allocate our perception during the listening process.
Furthermore, we will start the categorization of the issue and decide which the issue
most closely resemble. For instance, colleague, supervisor or a friend with problem.

Categorization will result personal constructed to access speaker personalities

whether the speaker are honest, smart or reasonable. Personal stereotypes to predict

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 what they will do and speak. Finally, an appropriate script will be generated to
interacting.

4. Interpreting
Interpretation allow us to gather and organized all the information perceived to make
sense of communication. Level of capability for interpretation is difference for
everyone, it based on one’s ability to understand others. In additional, recognizing
other’s point does not means you will need to agree with them, in fact, recognizing
others is a method to make an earnest effort to grasp what they think and feel, listen
through others, not through yourself. This is ethic of listening.

5. Remembering
Remembering usually done by note-taking or recording, further by today technology
remembering could done by photo taking to revise later. An excellent listeners should
capable to practise remembering part. Remembering also can be described as the
process of retaining what you have heard.

6. Responding
Responding in effective listening can be expressing inners, asking questions,
suggesting idea on the issue and others form of attentiveness. Responding do not
bound only when others finish speaking, it supposed to be done by interaction. For
instance, nodding head during speaker emphasis some points. Good listener should
show they always engaged during interaction period to show others you are listening.

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 4.0 Obstacles to effective listening process

Situational obstacles

1. Message overload
Message overload occurs when listener have received too many messages than can be
effective processed during listening. Overloaded messages will disallow one to be
mindful and focus on what speaker conveyed as the mind are still busying in
processing the message transmitted earlier.

2. Message complexity
Listening often distracted when highly complex, packed with details information, or
involves intricate reason message are conveyed. The more details information the
harder for listener to follow up. For instance, speaker avoid to introduce how the
working hours allocation with a lots complicated calculation with just simplify no
matter how you work just to make sure you work 8 hours per day to avoid message
complexity obstacles.

3. Environmental distractions
Communication always can be interrupt by surrounded sound. For instance, phone
ringtone, peoples talking voice and even police vehicle siren. Sounds around us can
divert our attention toward the undergoing communication. As for example, the
briefing meeting are held in a closed hall in order to reduce the distraction from the
environmental sound.

Internal obstacles

1. Preoccupation
Preoccupation caused by other thoughts within our mind that distract us from
receiving information in present meeting. Distraction from other thoughts made us
could not being mindful and focus. For instance, all the participator from difference

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 branches are hod, as we know hod are tied with heavy duties, so before the meeting
start, emcee will advise hod to free up their mind put aside office duty first to focus
the context that will be conveyed within the briefing.

2. Prejudgement
Prejudgement act to be a tendency to prejudge others. When prejudgement occurs,
we tend to assume we understand others feeling, thinking and what they will say next.
Furthermore, prejudgement will more often happen when the listeners are the higher
level in organization hierarchy than speaker. Therefore, during the briefing meeting,
director from JPNM Sarawak introduced the speaker first and advise hod to leave
their ranking outside the meeting hall to reduce prejudgement obstacles.

3. Lack of effort
Listening required hard work. We have to discipline ourselves to control ourselves
not to drift away and resist distraction. But there are exception for this to happen, for
instance listeners not feeling too well and hardly concentrate on the conversation. As
for briefing meeting, emcee will normally asked if anyone not feeling too well to
continue if yes the participator will allowed to take a rest at beside.

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 5.0 Recommendation to improve listening skills.

Effective communication skills are crucial and have huge impact on workplace. As
mentioned before, listening skills occupied majority’s time during the communication
process. Poor listening skills will cause negative impact on productivity. This scenario
will usually results conflicts and misunderstanding among members. Sad but truth,
studies show that most of us are poor listener. Fortunately, listening skills can be adapted
or learned easily. In order to improve effectiveness of listening, listener should be try to
be patience during communication. Be patience as in wait for speaker to finish the words
before you further question his point, be patience during listening the already ‘known’
issue and be patience during the long listening process.

When one be patience during communication it will allow themselves to being

mindful during communication undergoes. Most of time, after one or two sentence our
mind started to drift into things like what you want to reply later or into something
unrelated. Furthermore, according to study average speech rate around 125 and 175
words per minute while interpreting rate around 400 and 800 words per minute this is
another reason why listener easier to drifted away from the speaker’s speech. Thus,
listener should free up their mind and remind themselves of what to do now to avoid
drifted away from original path, it might be struggling from the beginning but once you
started and used to it, it is as easy as one, two, and three.

In additional, one should listen empathically by committing themselves into the

speaker’s speech, feel the speech, and inspect the vision provided with the speech. Listen
empathically will avoid one to be ‘kidnapped’ away by other matters. Furthermore, listen
empathically allow one to understand the present issue or situation much better. Once
you can understand the present issue or situation better, you have the ability to view the
issue more objectively or probably view further or beyond others see.

When one practising patience in effective listening. One should able to practise
surface and depth listening. A lots of listeners always judge the book by the cover, for

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instance, after 5 minutes of speech they feel like they already have understand the whole
story and feel uninterested to listen on. In fact, they only understand the surface meaning
or we call surface story. Making justification too early within a communication will
resulted misconducted might cause a huge negative impact afterward.

Apart from this, when one be patience in conversation. There will be no longer
faking attention issue happen due to one concentrated during the communication
undergoing. No longer have to being call from speaker just because you are the one who
are not listening.

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 6.0 Conclusion

Any form of communication consisted of encoding and delivery part lacking any
of them conversation will not persist. Most popular form of communication is
interpersonal which is a bit similar to dyadic communication except interpersonal can
accommodate more participators. Apart from this, listening skills are important part of
the communication as shown above listening occupying the majority hours of
communication.

Listening skills could be define as physical receiving (hearing) sound wave

transmitted by speaker then process by central processing unit of brain, lastly to be store
for future usage purpose. So from here, we know that listening and hearing does not
equivalent, hearing is just a part of the process during the listening process. Thus,
clarified a lots people thought hearing are the same with listening.

As mentioned above, JPNM Sarawak implementing new employment agreement

from mutual agreement from trade union. The new employment is flexible working
hours. Government sector will be the first to introduce such employment agreement
before private sector did in order to promote work life balance. The management hoping
the implementation will gain major success in the future, as government implementation
can be role model for private sector. Furthermore, the briefing event are meant to
perform details explanation to head of department of branches respectively. Expectation
from the briefing is hoping that all the head of department could collaborate with
management to succeed the new implementation.

Effective interpersonal communication should be practised with several element

within. For instance, peoples, messages, channel, interference, context, feedback and
effects. Lack of either one of them, the interpersonal communication will impacted by
barriers. Furthermore, effective interpersonal should be counterpart with effective
listening process. Effective listening should included with elements like being mindful,

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physically receiving messages, selecting and organizing communication, interpreting,
remembering and responding.

In order to elaborate more, listening process could be impacted by situational

obstacles like message overload, message complexity and environmental distraction.
Furthermore, listening process also disturbed by internal obstacles like pre-occupation,
prejudgement, lack of efforts, not recognizing diverse listening style. Obstacles would
have to eliminate during persuading effective listening.

We understand listening process is a very crucial process within the

communication process. Thus, it is important for us to improve our listening skills. As
from above, we know that majority of us are bad listener but good things are listening
skills could be improved by learning or adapting it. Generally the act of patience will
improve the listening process. Most of peoples having patience issues within the
listening process, make them rushing everything. Listening is a process that time took
time to complete cannot be rushed. Therefore, listeners are advised to learn to tolerate
from aspect like time taken, energy taken and attention paid.

Lastly, communication are something cannot be exempted from our daily life.
Human being need to communicate well no matter in workplace or family. Poor
communication skills will resulted negative impact toward workplace or family.
Practising good communication skills will improve work quality and relationship.
Moreover, excellent communication skills allow us to expedite the learning process. For
instance, students at college will gain knowledge from their lecturer faster if they
practising the excellent communication skills.

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 REFERENCES

Arlin, C. (2018, October 31). How to practice active listener. Retrieved from
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-active-listening-3024343

Julia, T. (2009). Communication mosaic: An introduction to the field of communication.

115-197. Retrieved from https://books.google.com.my/books?
id=6DscU5nk74cC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepag
e&q&f=false

Michael, W. (2006, March 6). Better communication through better listening. Retrieved
from http://sklatch.net/thoughtlets/listen.html

Neil, H. (2011). Effectiveness requires listening: How To Access and improve listening
skills. Retrieved from https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?
handle=hein.journals/fclj13&div=10&id=&page=.

Scott, W.. Listening effectively. Retrieved from

https://www.wright.edu/~scott.williams/LeaderLetter/listening.htm

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