By Caitlyn Pray
Student Reporter
You hear it whispered and shouted as the key to success in a variety of situations: relationships, sports, work projects and just in about any position, but yet sometimes it seems the message is thrown in one ear, but tossed out the other. You know what I mean?
I’m sure many of you can relate to more than one of these situations: a superior being upset with you because you didn’t do a project correctly (though they didn’t specify the guidelines and their expectations), a boyfriend or girlfriend randomly blowing up over something small you did or didn’t do (though it’s a result of them not telling you how they felt the first time you did it), a coach screaming at you as the buzzer goes off to a losing game because your teammates weren’t in the right spots (though you didn’t set out the game plan before you hit the court) or a group of peers glaring at you after a project because you didn’t do your part (though they never asked you to do a certain part or job).
In some of these examples, you probably should be in trouble because it doesn’t take a genius to take a hint. If you’re working in a group project and everyone is busy and has a job and you don’t, odds are that you need to step it up. If you texted your girlfriend “good morning” a hundred billion times before she answered in a less-than-sunny attitude six hours later, most likely you shouldn’t do that again. Sometimes things aren’t so black and white though, and it is in those times we need communication from the workplace to the playing field to the date.
“Employers consider oral communication another skill vital for those in entry-level jobs,” a featured article from Cengage Learning reported.
“Defined as the ability to articulate thoughts and ideas effectively and to possess public speaking skills, oral communication was the No. 1 applied skill that 95 percent of employers labeled “very important” among graduates of four-year institutions. For graduates of two-year colleges, 82 percent of employers said oral communication was “very important.” But only 3 percent of two-year college students and about 25 percent of four-year college graduates were found to possess excellent oral communication skills.”
The above quote might be summed up to say: sometimes “k” just doesn’t cut it. Although the report might be kind of harsh and truthfully a bit skewed depending on who the organization interviewed, it doesn’t really come as a surprise to see that strong communication is something people look for and sometimes we don’t really exercise it like we should.
The same truth applies to relationships.
“I just think that in relationship symbols like marriage or dating or even friendships it’s so good to have that open communication,” Brooke Fuller, former director of assessment, said. “I’ve been in friendships or relationships where communication just isn’t very open and it’s very hard because you don’t know what’s going on in the other person’s mind. Sometimes it’s hard, but I think it’s important to, even in the hard situations, be vulnerable and tell them what your thoughts are, because how can they fix or solve issues going on unless you communicate?”
The same truth applies to the playing field.
“Communication is obviously very, very important, in any setting, but especially in a team setting.” Shane Hansen, instructor of health and sports science, said.
In my interview with Hansen, I must admit that I was expecting a sort of team spirit or sports-centered perspective of why communication is important among teammates and coaches and faculty associated with the sports world.
Instead, Hansen caught me off guard by going straight to the root of thorough communication and shared a vital truth about communicating with others that I think we often miss more than anything.
“I think it’s important that we don’t just have one-way communication from a top-down standpoint when there’s communication amongst teammates,” Hansen said. “It’s important that there’s also not just communicating verbally, but highlighting the ability to listen appropriately and intentionally to be an effective communicator. The concept of listening is just as important—If not more important–than the concept of communicating verbally.”
Listening in communication? Again, it’s one of those points we hear shouted at us, but often I think that voice is drowned out by the myriad others screaming louder so their voice can be heard.
I left Hansen’s office that day admiring his wisdom and thinking how different and great it would be if more people thought as he did; little did I know, there were.
Completely unaware that I had given any previous interviews, my next source picked up where Hansen had left off.
“Within commun-ication, it’s so important to listen,” Fuller said. “I think we get so caught up in speaking that we don’t always listen to what other people are saying, so I think it’s important to make sure we are listening so that we are able to communicate well.”