The Importance Of Nonverbal Communication In Mediation Process

Discussion

Communication can be determined as an effective process of sharing information or data from one person, group, and place to another (Coffelt, Grauman and Smith 2019). The communication process mainly includes one sender, a recipient, and the messages. These also include the medium utilized for communication, emotions, cultural situations, and others. Communicating effectively can be defined as an important life skill and it enables people to pass several information to other people. The entire communication process can be divided into three main steps and those are decoding, encoding, and thoughts. The thoughts are the subject of the messages that generally exist in the mind of a sender. When the senders transform their thoughts or ideas into written messages or verbal speech then, it can be termed as encoding. Communication is mainly a two-way or one-way process and when the messages conveyed by the senders are received by the recipients then, it can be stated as the completion of a one-way process (Ter Hoeven and Van Zoonen 2020). If the recipients formulate a message for giving a reply to the messages of the senders then, it can be stated as a two-way communication process. Different types of communication processes are there and among them, non-verbal and verbal communication is so important. Reframing is known as a unique strategy that helps to reconceptualise different problems by addressing it from different perspectives. Altering the emotional or conceptual contexts of the problems often serve to alter several perceptions for exploring new opportunities to solve those problems or issues (Feinberg and Willer 2019).

Verbal communication can be defined as a process of transferring all necessary information or data through speech and it also includes such information that people can hear on telephones, interviews, speeches, televisions, and radios (Mandala 2018). The verbal communication process involves the use of different interpersonal skills. On the other hand, a non-verbal communication process can be defined as a communication process that mainly uses nonverbal platforms like facial expressions, body language, gestures, and posture (Grillo and Enesi 2022). In this communication process, people can convey their expressions, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions without using verbal language.  The main aim of this paper is to analyze the statement “nonverbal communication is a largely ignored element of communications” and also to highlight the roles or responsibilities of nonverbal communication in the mediation process.  

The transition in recent years to a remote or virtual environment has completely changed the ways people communicate and work. Workplace trends help to indicate that hybrid or remote workplace environment is suitable for the foreseeable future. When communicating with the employees and clients over zoom and other virtual platforms, nonverbal communication plays an important role in interpreting and recognizing all messages. The non-verbal communication process serves an evolutionary function from the verbal communication process and the non-verbal communication process is mainly biologically based while the verbal communication process is culturally based. The nonverbal communication process is so important as it helps to provide all necessary information about different situations including how the people receive information and others (Khan and Zeb 2021). Different ways are there through which nonverbal communication can bring several benefits and support the ability to effectively communicate with other people in the workplace. While having different conversations and participating in the meetings, nonverbal cues underscore and emphasize the contents of the messages (Alexandrache 2021). As an example, using the hand gesture for indicating the importance of a message or idea can help the listeners to give more attention to the key points. One can use the nonverbal communication process for showing feelings like happiness, relief, contentment, disappointment, and others. The main success factors in both professional and personal relationships depend on the ability to communicate effectively. Body language can be determined as a physical behavior, mannerism, and expression to communicate with the other people. Different types of nonverbal communication processes are there and those are facial expressions, body movements, eye contacts, gestures, and others.

Facial expressions can be defined as one of the important ways to convey emotions and thoughts without saying any words and the facial expression for sadness, surprise, disgust, anger, and fear are almost the same across some cultures (Goyani and Patel 2018).  As an example, a smile for showing happiness, a raise of the eye brows helps to emphasize any word or ask questions to someone. A frown or scowling indicates frustration or discontentment. Gestures are generally made with arms, body, and hands and it also includes movements of eyes, face, and head such as rolling the eyes, winking, nodding, and others. The concept of several gestures is in its developmental phase but the researchers have identified several categories of the gestures. One of the most familiar gestures is a quotable gesture. These are culture-specific, conventional gestures that are utilized as the replacement for different words like hand waves while saying goodbye and hello. The emblematic gestures have different significances in various cultural contexts ranging from highly offensive to complementary. These gestures allow an individual to convey variety of emotions and thoughts from hostility to approval. As an example, “thumb-to-index finger sign helps to convey “OK” and the wave indicates goodbye or hello to someone. Gestures can be classified into two categories and those are speech-related and speech-independent. Speech independent gesture depends on culturally adopted interpretation and also has direct verbal translation. As an example, the speech-related gesture is utilized in parallel with the verbal speech. Speech-related gesture tends to provide all supplemental information or data to verbal messages. Facial expressions are also important for expressing the thoughts and ideas of all people and with the help of different muscles that can control lips, eyes, jaw, forehead, and mouth, human faces are able to make more than 10,000 different expressions. This versatility helps to make non-verbal extremely honest and efficient unless manipulated deliberately. Displays of the emotions can be categorized into two main groups and those are positive and negative. Eye contact can be determined as an instance or context when two persons look at the eyes of each other and it can be determined as a nonverbal way to indicate attention, involvement, interest, and engagement. Some of the studies have displayed that people use their eyes for indicating their interests. Eye contact can be defined as one of the main channels of nonverbal communication. Communication is the most important thing because people spend almost seventy-five percent of waking hours in communicating and 80% of communication occurs non-verbally. Thoughts, emotions, feelings, and ideas are mainly shared by the people with movements and expressions and environmental factors can also be considered as a non-verbal communication process. Nonverbal and verbal communication happen simultaneously. METTA model of the non-verbal communication process helps to represent movement, environment, tone, touch and appearance. These five elements collaboratively develop major components and potential cues of the non-verbal communication process (Ivaldi et al., 2017). The negotiators become so aware of non-verbal communication processes to achieve all of their goals by using this METTA model.

Interpretation of different signals of the nonverbal communication process is an easy step and it varies across different cultures and people as this type of communication process has no fixed meaning and it is also different according to several contexts. But interpreting and noticing it properly helps to provide many advantages over another person. Misinterpretation may help to create different problems and destroy relationships. The most important thing about the non-verbal communication process is that it helps to make a workplace better and it also helps in businesses and interviews. Many professionals such as lawyers, doctors, teachers, and doctors need to make effective communication on daily basis. If the non-verbal communication process is not so effective then, it may lead to decreased performance of their works. Eye contacts in meetings and interviews show interest and confidence. Eye contact also helps to show the accuracy of several intentions and trustworthiness. The non-verbal communication process actually develops social languages that are more fundamental and richer in various ways (Hall, Horgan and Murphy 2019). Neuro-linguistic, paralinguistic, and kinesics are some important words that are mainly used for describing different non-verbal cues and these happen during the communication process in a workplace. Non-verbal communication in a workplace may overshadow actual messages. For this reason, observing all things from voice tone to body languages can help the listeners with an accurate interpretation of the communication process from front-line employees to executives. Listening is so important in a non-verbal communication process. Observation and awareness are the main components or elements of the listening process that help to interpret different messages.  So, non-verbal communication is an integral part of the communication process.

The verbal communication process uses words, voice, sentences, and phrases as the mediums of the communication process but the non-verbal communication process uses facial expressions, body language, and others as the mediums of the communication process. Some examples of verbal communication are group discussions, emails, reports, meetings, letters, and telephone calls. This type of communication process can maintain a positive and good relationship. Doing constrictive and effective communication results in increased productivity, decreased errors, and smoother operations (Sauter 2017). The skills of verbal communication help to improve the ability of an individual to share ideas, thoughts, and concerns without hurting any person. Almost all business organizations and jobs require employees to use verbal messages and for this reason, verbal skill is ranked highly on the evaluation checklist of the candidates used by job interviewers. If the verbal communication skill of a person is stronger then, there is a great chance for that candidate to be hired by the employers. Verbal messages highlight both how the messages are delivered and how those messages are received by the recipients. Verbal communication helps to make a good relationship among the employees, colleagues, clients, and subordinates, and this type of communication takes place in different contexts like group meetings, disciplinary sessions, performance appraisals, training sessions, and sales pitches (Wahyuni 2018). Open communication is vital for the success of a team especially when completing deadline and quality-critical projects. The verbal communication process helps to ensure that all issues or problems will be solved and spotted in formative phases by coveying all messages concisely and encouraging the members to provide inputs. Verbal communication is of two types and those are informal and formal. The foremost and first point in realizing the benefits of this type of communication process is that it builds a corporate image of the business organizations. An organization covers vendors, stakeholders, investors, customers, and partners and the staff and management have to manage all of them. For this reason, a transparent verbal communication channel is needed. Having a transparent and clear verbal communication process with a high confidence level during team meetings enables the flow of ideas and thoughts.

Understanding the importance and benefits of the verbal communication process can help the business organizations to deal with foreign stakeholders and investors. If all employees or workers understand the advantages of verbal communication skills then, it may lead to several impacts on the workplace environment. Different types of conflicts such as role conflicts, task conflicts, and others occur between two employees and departments. But a clear and transparent verbal message can solve these issues easily. The skills of verbal communication must be practiced and there are several ways through which verbal skills can be improved. Business organizations that have outstanding verbal communication skills implement productive business relationships with suppliers, customers, and clients. A diverse workplace should maintain an effective verbal communication process as it can eliminate language barriers and decrease cultural differences (Guo, Sengul and Yu 2021). So, the verbal communication process is a main element of the communication process. It cannot be denied that the non-verbal communication process is more effective and suitable than the verbal communication process and this type of communication process is able to convey several expressions better than the verbal communication process. As an example, a smile may help to convey feelings much easier than words. Nonverbal cue is powerful and useful while communicating with children. The non-verbal communication process is stronger than the verbal communication process as people express themselves through different gestures and facial expressions daily (Lim, Lee and Foo 2017). Through the process of verbal communication, people can manipulate and control what they want to convey to avoid speaking hurtful things. The nonverbal communication process is stronger than the verbal communication process as the human body subconsciously delivers many messages that are not able to convey verbally (Pratolo 2019). The non-verbal communication process conveys more expressions than the verbal communication process and it is also more ambiguous than the verbal communication process. The non-verbal communication process is not about the facial expressions but it also helps to provide several information about emotion and mood. Apart from this, nonverbal behaviors help to display intimacy levels in a relationship and regulate interpersonal communication with others (Niedenthal, Rychlowska and Wood 2017).

The mediums of the communication process must be aware of all necessary things like credibility, a steady and deep vocal tone, calmness, and professionalism. The nonverbal communication process can make several impacts on participants’ emotions and thoughts in an arbitration or mediation and this must be considered while evaluating the communication feedback (Smith and Neff 2018). While the phrases or words that have been spoken are so critical to evaluate the communication process, assessing the meaning of the words through analyzing nonverbal cues and gestures, eye contact, and body language are more important to evaluate and send a message. Mediation can be defined as a method that helps to assign meaning through a discourse of disputants whereby all signals that are generally sent verbally become the rare indicators of a complete and effective communication process. There are several research papers and articles that have indicated that fifty-five percent of the total communication process occurs through nonverbal communication mediums. If assessing the non-verbal languages is not taken into consideration then, it may lose almost ninety-three percent of total information expressed by an individual (Korzilius, Bücker and Beerlage 2017). It is necessary to realize the most current gesture and therefore, implement mediators’ communication skills to improve substantially their discourse. In western culture, the facial expression is a highly expressive emotional state and the human face generally exhibits different types of expressions like sadness, happiness, anger, fear, and others. Non-verbal communication happens through different mediated communication networks. Non-verbal communication always thinks of actions and behaviors that are connected directly to the body like facial expressions, gestures, and others. Non-verbal communication can be defined as both unconscious and conscious, which means people use it unintentionally and intentionally. While the abstract and symbolic nature of verbal languages may lead to misunderstanding, the non-verbal communication process is so ambiguous. The non-verbal communication process is mainly used with verbal communication for repeating, emphasizing, and supporting verbal messages. The non-verbal cues of an individual can be read easily by family members, partners, and close friends.

Non-verbal communication has more benefits than the verbal communication process in exchanging several information but some limitations are also there in non-verbal messages. Non-verbal messages are not well-structured and formal as oral and verbal communications (Lin and Lin 2017). So, sometimes in formal situations, it cannot be used. Non-verbal messages have inherent effects but lack in creating after-effects as these messages cannot be heard or read repeatedly. One of the main limitations of the non-verbal communication process is lack of flexibility. In this communication process, people can mislead others easily by utilizing some symbols or signs (Damanhouri 2018). So, non-verbal messages may create several chances of sharing fraudulent messages. Negative gestures can affect the entire communication process. As an example, standing with arms crossed, avoiding eye contact and others can hurt someone’s credibility.  Decoding and encoding in the non-verbal communication process will not be accurate if both sender and receiver are from different cultural backgrounds. The non-verbal communication process occurs through different body movements, signs, symbols, and others (Gorawara-Bhat et al. 2017). For this reason, it becomes impossible to preserve such information. Nowadays, the no-verbal communication process is using many advanced technological instruments and these instruments are not accessible to all of the people. But the benefits of the non-verbal communication process outweigh all of its limitations.   

Conclusion

Non-verbal communication is an important part of the communication process and it helps to improve the ability of a person to establish, engage and relate meaningful interactions. Some forms of the non-verbal communication process have several meanings in different cultures. From the above paper, it can be concluded that both non-verbal and verbal communication has several benefits. Verbal communication is a rule-governed and agreed-upon system of different symbols applied to share information. But non-verbal communication process depends on facial expressions, body language, gestures, and others. There are many people who argue about the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication but from the above paper, it can be deduced that the non-verbal communication process is not an ignored element of the communication process because this form of communication process helps to communicate with a person from the different cultural background and also helps to convey messages quickly. Non-verbal communication represents non-linguistic behaviors such as social cues, attitudes, behaviors, and emotions. It is the most vital part of human interaction and also plays a critical role in articulating everything with words. Most people do not even understand that it is a large part of human lives and it must not be ignored. Non-verbal communication is not limited to facial expressions and body languages but it also helps to decrease wastage of time. Verbal communication is a time-consuming process, especially while conveying complex messages. Non-verbal communication takes less effort than the verbal communication process. The managers or leaders also use this type of communication to lead other team members and employees. The non-verbal communication process helps to explore several opportunities to communicate with the potential clients, colleagues, and competitors through avenues outside of the explicit words choice. The non-verbal communication process also helps to demonstrate professionalism, confidence, and enthusiasm through presenting a message. 

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