Four..................

Communication can be applied in all aspects including in group, it is called GROUP COMMUNICATION.............

You must be familiar with group communication as most of you have been involved in one of any groups. What is the purpose of making a group? To interact and know each other better? To share information? To come up with the best result? The answer depends on you, everbody has different views.............

The first group that I have was in my primary school, with some of my friends, we discussed a topic given by the teacher. We decided what factors are important regarding that topic. After some times, the teacher asked each group to speak about that topic. Seems familiar??

I beleive that all of you have been in that situation too, am I right?

We decide something in group if the topic is complicated, hard to do by individual, has a big risk, etc. In order to come up with the best result, every individual in a group needs to interact and give opinion. Unspoken messages may cause a problem in a group..............

Usually, there are some people in group who come from different cultures and backgrounds, therefore the characteristics may differ too. Everyone is unique. Let's see the picture below.......


This is a picture of basketball team/group. As we can observe that most of them may come from the same country but their characteristics may not be the same. Among them, there must be a captain or a leader. Usually a leader has a characteristic to lead his/her group to achieve the goal. In this case for example, the goal is to win a competition in sport week. The leader should encourage the group members to work and practice together in order to win that competition.

In order to maintain a good relationship in a group, there are some characteristics needed, such as harmonizer (bring peace, decrease tension in a group), group observer (observe and give feedbacks), encourager (accept others' contributions), etc.

As far as possible, try to prevent these negative roles in a group.......................
Being a dominator (dominates the group, does not give chance to others to give opinions),
Being a recognition seeker (wants to be a centre of attention),
Being a self-confessor (disturb the group by sharing personal stories), etc.....

Here are the formulas to become a good leader according to Stephen .R. Covey.....................

The four imperatives of leadership..............

The first is to inspire trust. You build relationships of trust through both your character and competence and you also extend trust to others. You show others that you believe in their capacity to live up to certain expectations, to deliver on promises, and to achieve clarity on key goals. You don’t inspire trust by micromanaging and second guessing every step people make.

The second is to clarify purpose. Great leaders involve their people in the communication process to create the goals to be achieved. If people are involved in the process, they psychologically own it and you create a situation where people are on the same page about what is really important—mission, vision, values, and goals.

The third is to align systems. This means that you don’t allow there to be conflict between what you say is important and what you measure. For instance, many times organizations claim that people are important but in fact the structures and systems, including accounting, make them an expense or cost center rather than an asset and the most significant resource.

The fourth is the fruit of the other three—unleashed talent. When you inspire trust and share a common purpose with aligned systems, you empower people. Their talent is unleashed so that their capacity, their intelligence, their creativity, and their resourcefulness is utilized.

If you want to test whether you are a good leader or not, here is a link to the quiz............
http://money.cnn.com/quizzes/2007/fortune/leadership_annie/index.html
Enjoy..............

Now, let's move on to INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION.....................

Different places have different cultures. Our culture depends on where we live or stay. We share cultures with different people from different places. For example, if we migrate to another country, we meet people in that country, as time goes by, we share our culture with the local people and vice versa. We learn new cultures.

There are individualist cultures which are common in Western area (e.g. America, German) and collectivist cultures which are common in Eastern area (e.g. China, Japan).

Someone who is individualist will strongly decide something by personal needs and goals. Not easily influenced by ingroup (e.g. family). Individualism belongs to low-context culture which is very well organized, on time, direct in communication, etc.

Different with collectivism, group is very important in here. Decision making is based on the group, therefore harmony can be seen in this culture. Collectivism belongs to high context culture which is the opposite of low context culture. People in this culture like to build a good relationship with others, very polite, do not want to hurt others, etc.


However, different cultures make each one of us unique, which one is yours?
Please give comments, feedbacks or critics, just write them in comment's box...................

Thank you..........................................

Hv a nice day everyone!!