Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace
Instructions/ I have attached the completed research paper.
Reflective Essay
Task: Explain how the process of completing your research project has affected your understanding of an issue or event in society.
Length: At least 1200 words
Sources: No minimum number of sources. Cite any sources you use in APA format.
Due date and grading: This assignment is due by the end of Week 8. It is worth 10% of your course grade and will be graded with a rubric. To view the rubric, access the assignment from the Assignments area of the classroom.
Outcomes you should achieve by completing this assignment
• Organize information clearly in an explanatory essay (Course outcomes 1 and 2)
• Use an introduction paragraph with a thesis statement and a concluding paragraph to frame an essay (Course outcomes 1 and 2)
• Demonstrate accurate grammar and mechanics in writing (Course outcome 3)
Topic
You began your research project by reading an article from the news about a current issue or event in society. Your goal in this essay is to explain to your professor how the research and writing you have done for your research project changed your understanding of that issue or event. You will explain what changes occurred in your understanding and how those changes occurred.
Here are some questions you can consider in developing ideas for your essay:
• What changes occurred in your understanding?
o Do you know more about the issue/event now than you did before? (Probably!)
o Do you look at the issue/event from a different perspective following your research?
o Have you reconsidered opinions or assumptions that you held at the beginning of the semester?
• How did those changes occur?
o Which sources from your research had the greatest effect on your understanding?
o Did the process of writing about your topic affect the way you thought about it?
o What role did interaction with your classmates and/or professor play in your understanding of your topic?
Organizing and supporting your essay
Your essay must include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
The introduction should gain your reader’s attention, orient the reader to your topic, and state your thesis.
The body of the essay should include focused body paragraphs in support of your thesis statement. There are various ways you might choose to organize information in the body of your essay. Here are some suggestions you can consider:
• You might focus each body paragraph on a step of the research process and how that step affected your understanding of the issue/event.
• You might focus each body paragraph on your understanding at a particular time relative to the research process (before, during, after).
• You might focus each body paragraph on a particular aspect of the issue/event and explain how your understanding of that aspect developed during your research.
The essay’s conclusion should answer the question “So what?” by placing the essay’s explanations into a larger context. To accomplish this, you can consider addressing one or more of these questions:
• Will your current understanding of your event/issue affect your future actions or decisions? If so, how?
• What lessons—about interpreting current events, about your field of study, about the research process—can be drawn from the experience of completing the research project?
• Is research of the sort done in WRTG 112 a worthwhile activity? Why or why not?
Point of view
First person (I/me/my) is appropriate in this assignment, but second person (you/your) should be avoided.
Formatting your assignment
Incorporate these elements of APA style:
• Use one-inch margins.
• Double space.
• Use an easy-to-read font between 10-point and 12-point.
• Include a title page with the title of your paper, your name, and the name of your school.
Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace
Name
Institution
Due Date
Interpersonal Communication in the Workplace
Introduction
Interpersonal communication is a topic that is quite common. For this reason, it is a topic that could be easily ignored. Additionally, the fact that there is a lot of information on interpersonal communication means that it is possible for people to think that they know more about the topic than they actually do. Well, the statement above happens to aptly capture my mindset because I was among the people who thought they knew everything about interpersonal communication and its importance in any setup. For example, I knew that it is communication between two people and one that happens either through verbal or non-verbal means. I knew that communication did not involve the use of language or words only but that it could also entail the use of my body, face, hands, and tone of voice. Knowing the above gave me a lot of confidence because interpersonal communication was not such a difficult concept, and I did not need to pay that much attention to such an easy topic. However, when I embarked on this assignment, I got to learn a lot of things. My ignorance of the topic was clearly exposed as I got deeper with my research. Provided herein is a discussion of how research into the topic of interpersonal communication helped enhance my understanding of the influence interpersonal communication has on the success of an organization.
First, I believe that I now know more about interpersonal communication and its impact in the workplace than before. Initially, I believed that interpersonal communication was simply a tool that helped ensure that communication was smooth in the workplace. I did not consider it that much of an issue or factor, especially with regards to having that much influence in the workplace. However, as I was reading Singh’s article titled ‘Role of Interpersonal Communication in Organizational Effectiveness,’ I got to understand that there is a way that it can become an asset to managers. Singh (2014) makes it clear that managers make use of interpersonal communication both directly and indirectly. It is a tool that they make use of every day. However, not all of them find value in using it because they are yet to grasp its value and how to tap onto the same. Therefore, they make normal announcements and speak to their employees when they need to. However, they fail to understand that employees need more than their managers asking for status reports and supervising their work. So, many of them lose out and thus never learn how crucial an asset interpersonal communication is to their success.
With the research I have conducted, I now look at the phenomenon of interpersonal communication differently. I consider it a phenomenon because it is a simplistic term when considered superficially. However, when looked at in-depth, one gets to understand how crucial the term is and its effect on not only organizations but also other personal or face-to-face communications. Instead of the seemingly simplistic and easily ignored term, I now consider it an asset. I believe that there is a need to study interpersonal communication and not for work purposes only but also for daily communication. For example, by learning about interpersonal communication, I got to understand the place of listening in communication. For the most part, and for most people, communication mainly entails passing information across. However, as I got to learn, listening is an essential skill that everyone needs because it helps to make communication more meaningful. For leaders, Mishra (2020) notes that empathetic listening helps to enhance one’s influence since more employees will respond to such a leader. In the same way, people need to practice empathetic listening as a daily and normal approach to conversations. In doing so, it will become easier to communicate and to have a connection with other people instead of simply trying to outdo each other in passing information across.
In close connection to the above paragraph is the demystification of the belief that how I pas...