Page 282 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

Project Name: Manual for Soft Skills
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components, emotion usually involves an expressive, behavioural component.
When we experience an emotion, we often express it in some fashion- we
talk about how we are feeling, hug someone or slam the door—all these
communicating our behavioural state. We also express our emotion by our
nonverbal behaviour such as our gestures, changes in postures, and most
importantly, facial expressions. A facial expression can display a single intense
emotion, such as, anger or disgust, but it can also communicate the subtleties
involved in mixed or complex emotions. Facial emotions are powerful in
nonverbal communication.
Freud observed, ‘Mortals can keep no secret. If their lips are silent, they
gossip with their finger tips’. Betrayal forces its way through every pore. The
nervous fidgeting of a teacher belies his or her dead-pan expression. Being
able to pick up on such emotional cues is one of the most interesting and
important skill in communication. Sensing what others feel without their
saying so, captures the essence of empathy. Others rarely tell us in words what
they feel; instead they tell us in their tone of voice, facial expression, or other
nonverbal ways. The ability to sense this subtle communication requires
more basic competencies, particularly self-awareness and self-control.
Being emotionally tone-deaf leads to social awkwardness, whether from
misconstruing feelings or through a mechanical out-of-the bluntness, or
indifference, that destroy rapport, which in turn affects our relationships and
may also lead to responding to other people as stereotypes, rather than as the
unique individuals they are.
Simply put, empathy requires being able to read another’s emotions, it
means sensing and responding to a person’s unspoken concern and feelings.
At the highest level, empathy is to understand the issues or concerns that
lie behind another’s feelings. The key to knowing other’s emotional terrain
requires an intimate familiarity with own. To be tuned to others’ emotional
cues, we need to put aside our own emotional agendas for the time being.
This competency is especially important for teachers and counselors. Among
counselors for instance, the most effective and empathetic were best able
to tune into their body’s own signals emotions essential for any job where
empathy matters, from teaching to sales.
Although our nervous system is automatically tuned to this emotional
empathy, but how we use this capacity is largely a learned ability that depends
on motivation. Our first lesson in empathy begins in infancy when we are
held in u our mothers’ or fathers’ arms. The extent to which we master this
emotional curriculum determines our level of social competence.
Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies
important in every performance especially in teaching. These include:
• Understanding others: Sensing others’ feelings and perspectives, and
taking an active interest in their concerns.

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