Being Human - Rockhurst University

not just a jobIt’saCommunicationMinefieldBy Katherine Frohoff“I honestly believethat graduates ofmy day read morebooks than thoseof today.”You can’t live without them. Somedays you may think you can’t livewith them until 5 p.m. They areyour co-workers. And, unless yourun a solo business, your productivityand your happiness — your sanity itself— may depend on your ability to communicateeffectively with them.Miscommunication in the workplace issometimes humorous, often frustrating andoccasionally the cause of major stress. If thedesire to understand more deeply those withwhom you share a cubicle, office or departmenthas ever sent you searching for help, you’re notalone.Each year, approximately 600,000 professionalsattend training seminars sponsored byNational Seminars Group, a division of RockhurstUniversity ContinuingEducation Center Inc.,and one of the nation’sleading providers of continuingeducation. A goodnumber of those people,whether they are fully awareof it or not, attend the seminarsto learn better communicationskills, says Micki Holliday, directorof curriculum and training for NSG.Holliday says many people who enroll ininterpersonal skills classes are there to learn tact,finesse, how to handle difficult people or how toDennis Owens, ’67make teams run more smoothly. Often, she says,the attendees are sent by their boss.“In the early ’90s, we held quite a few classeson assertive communication skills. Usually wewould have a large group of people who werenot at all assertive and a small group of peoplewho were very assertive. Neither group knewwhy they were there.”Holliday says that, although she doesn’t liketo make generalizations, she’s read literature inthe field that says women tend to have a passivecommunication style at work and are morevocal at home, with men displaying the oppositepattern. This seems to be true for offices dominatedby the baby boom generation, she says,but not the “dot.com” companies where youngerpeople are in the majority.“The greatest problem in the workplacenow is misunderstandings because of differencesbetween the way 20-somethings and those intheir 40s talk,” Holliday says. “Many of us inour 40s and 50s have to stop and tell ourselves‘That person is not rude and they do knowwhat they’re talking about.’”Timely TipsVisit the National Seminars GroupWeb site at www.natsem.com forarticles on work- and managementrelatedtopics. The site alsoprovides information aboutNSG training courses.ROCKHURST10