Page 156 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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perceived consensus towards attaining symmetry. Here, neither the teacher
nor the learner is trying to change each others’ attitude for effective commu-
nication. In any institute of learning, the aim of the communication process
is not to direct the learners attitude toward dominant coalition (teachers’)
perspective but rather moving toward each other for mutual understanding
and increasing communication.
The psychological knowledge of values by the teacher is essential for
effective communication and this knowledge which is available through
psychographics, is constructing a psychological profile of the learner. Among
the learning community there will be sub-group of value-grouping ranging
from poor struggling survivors to highly motivated, integrated, sustainers,
belonging individuals, emulators and achievers with their distinct value pat-
terns. For example, the belonging individuals, emulators and achievers share
in common the fact that they are outer-directed. To specify, they respond
to how others in society expect them to behave. Belonging individuals
always aspire to be a part of the mainstream because they believe in a puri-
tanical code of behaviour. Emulations are competitive and upwardly mobile.
Sustainers are always angry with the system and distrust the system. On the
other hand, the achievers value hard work and success. There are also groups
that belong to the inner-directed. Whereas, outer-directed group tries to
meet the expectations of others, the inner-directed people are more indi-
vidualistic in their responses, they are inventive, impulsive, and liberal in
orientation; they take up leadership roles and social reforms. The integrated
are more matured people, self-assured, self-experienced and actualized indi-
viduals according to Maslow’s developmental model. In every full-fledged
classroom, every one of these will appear, as will the values making the task
of teaching a challenge.
Now let us take this psychograph and put it in a classroom. What would
be the role of the teacher? What kind of communication would be most
effective to cater to the needs of all the different groups? We shall try to see
the role of values in communication.
It is said that classroom communication creates ‘gigantic magnetic
fields’ of common and conflicting items of knowledge, beliefs, and values.
A teacher by his or her imaginative and effective and empathetic mode of
communication shall be able to bridge these cultural and individual differ-
ences in values spanning across a message, effectively. At the same time the
teacher must make access to the value system in a relatively ambiguous man-
ner. Ambiguity allows the students to identify with the values rather than
explicit appeal to bring attention to that which divides the students.
But how do the teachers plan their communication to get access to their
universally held values? For this the teacher has to understand the process of
communication and the methods. A teacher needs to link the peripheral beliefs
to more centrally held beliefs about the nature of reality. These peripheral

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