Page 18 - Communication in Organizations Basic Skills and Conversation Models

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Regulating skills

Introduction

The purpose of the regulating skills is to protect the order and clarity of the conversation.
Table 1.1 gives an overview of the skills that are discussed in subsequent paragraphs.
Table 1.1 Overview of the regulating skills

• Opening the conversation, setting goals
• Goal evaluation
• Closing the conversation

Opening the conversation, setting goals
When you take the initiative in a conversation, for efficient continuation it is usually
important to supply your conversational partner with your intentions fairly soon after
beginning. How exactly you open the conversation is naturally dependent upon the
situation. When you want to discuss the progress of a project with a colleague who drops
in now and then, you would start this conversation differently from when you meet a new
client for the first time, or in a selection interview when you meet an applicant. In the
first case, you would start fairly informally, whilst in the last case you would usually
begin formally. In order to create a relaxed atmosphere, one often begins a conversation
by discussing generalities. This can work well, but we must realize that there are many
people who do not feel at ease when discussing generalities. These feelings of unease are
on the one hand brought about because one has the idea that time is not being efficiently
used, and on the other because one does not know exactly how to end the generalities.
Such people only begin to feel at ease when you get to the point, namely when the
conversation about the important subjects begins.
Whether you start formally or informally, in both cases clarity of your intentions
promotes the smooth progression of the conversation. When you have the opportunity to
prepare yourself for a conversation, you can try to devise a global structure for it. You
should try not to stick to this structure too rigidly in case other turns in the conversation
turn out to be more useful, bearing in mind its purpose. In general we can state that a
clear conversational structure, upon which the conversational partners have agreed at the
beginning, promotes efficiency. In practice, conversational partners will often have a
number of subjects they wish to discuss. By making an inventory of these subjects in