Communication

What's it about?

Your course will offer plenty of opportunities to develop your communication skills through formal and informal seminar presentations and through written assignments which will help you improve your fluency and confidence.

Communication skills are vital to the workplace and include things like:

• expressing yourself verbally within different contexts
• motivating others
• producing reports and other forms of written documentation
• delivering presentations to a wide range of audiences
• explaining complex ideas to different stakeholders

Keep track of where you stand with the different communication skills so that you know what you need to improve and develop.  Employers will ask for examples of how you have demonstrated good communication skills, so keeping records makes sense.

Written communication

Examples of written skills could include:

• writing reports
• writing emails or letters in a business context
• contributing to publications (the university newspaper for example)
• contributing to or starting blogs
• writing seminar papers.

Oral communication (inc. presentation skills)

Examples of oral communication skills could include:

• persuading people; e.g. selling something or persuading someone to try and change their behaviour
• empathising with someone in difficult circumstances
• motivating others
• dealing with difficult customers or situations
• discussing issues with a team 
• reporting to meetings on behalf of others
• giving presentations
• leading group discussions.

Assess your written and oral communication skills (GTK09, word 42kb) then using the examples above look at ways to improve your skills (if necessary).

Use the presentation skills checklist (GTK10, word 54kb) to plan and review your presentations, identifying areas for improvement as necessary.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions, both within yourself and other people. It is important to understand to understand the impact of verbal and non-verbal communication upon clients, colleagues and others.

An example of this might be recognising a colleague who is competent but lacks the confidence to go for promotion. Your task as a manager may be to support them in gaining more confidence and working to the best of their ability.

Team working

This is about managing relationships to others in work or study situations. Remember ‘team working’ does not mean always necessarily mean leading the team, it is about recognising the different roles and abilities within the team and your ability to take up different roles. You may work in multidisciplinary teams and across teams so there will be often be a need to work flexibly.  

Are you a constructive team member, who makes a practical contribution to the success of the team? Think about:

• what size teams have you have worked in
• what was the context? – at work, university, recreational activity?
• how did the team function
• what did your team achieve
• what role did you have in the team?

If things went wrong in the team, were you able to identify why? How would you things differently next time?

Do you have experience of:

• taking responsibility for others and their work
• setting specific tasks for others and measuring their progress
• dealing with tricky issues that arise with other people
• taking responsibility for a team, for example, leading a project or captaining a sports team
• motivating others to do a job
• making decisions about how a job is done
• guiding or mentoring people through a project.

Assess your team working skills (GTK11, word 42kb). Are there any areas for improvement? Think about opportunities to expand on your skills and experience, using the examples given above.

Networking

Networking can be defined as forming employability connections and contacts through informal social meetings.

Take advantage of opportunities to network with employers or recruiters where there are events inside or outside the university - for example, make the most of careers fairs and look out for other events run by the Careers Service. Use opportunities to discuss plans with friends and family or other social contacts. Also use social media such as LinkedIn to join discussion groups and make professional contacts.

Get more information about networking.

What's next?

Now go on to look at how to evidence research skills.