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Over the course of the unit, we have used a wide range of interpersonal skills and communication techniques to communicate with our teams. These skills are useful if used correctly, but can also be detrimental to group work when they are overused or misused. Knowing how these skills work is vital for working well in a team situation and producing good work.Interpersonal Skills Verbal Exchanges: Signing, Lip Reading Verbal exchanges are possibly the most important part of working in a team. By talking to your team members, you can communicate about the current task and learn about the thoughts and ideas of the other people in your team. This is the most common way Of communicating as it is quick and easy. Lip reading and signing can also be used for people who have trouble hearing, although signing requires an understanding of sign language from both parties, which means that it is less likely to be an effective way of communicating.Although it is a good way to communicate, there is a danger of people going off topic and not focusing on the task at hand when they are talking to others in their group. Written messages can be used instead, which allows the team to write out their ideas in a clear and concise way, without veering off topic. Nonverbal Exchanges: Body Language and Intonation On the other end of the spectrum from verbal language, there is nonverbal language. The most common form of this is known as body language and in some cases, can be as useful and informative as verbal cues.Body language describes how a person moves and acts when they are addressing someone. By studying body language, you can assess the attitudes of people in your group, which allows you to change topic when they start to become bored, which will increase the level of information that is passed through the group. This can also be bad if a team member is displaying negative body language such as crossed arms, as it will make the rest of the team less likely to talk to them. Nonverb al communication can also be observed through the attire that someone wears.If someone walks into an important team meeting with inappropriate clothing, it shows that they may not take the meeting seriously and do not feel the need to dress appropriately. Proper clothing can make the rest of the team more inclined to listen to you as you will look more prepared. Intonation is the way that someone speaks to express their thoughts more clearly. This can be simple pauses before words for effect, or increasing and decreasing the pitch of their voice. This is an important tool for effectively broadcasting your views about a particular subject.It is also useful if you are the team leader, as it helps to make your voice more interesting and memorable to the people you are speaking to. While this is useful, it can also be unhelpful when negative Intonation is used, such as using sarcastic comments in response to an idea. Positive and Negative Language Positive language is language that is h elpful or constructive, and helps the team work together. This language can be used to critique a person's work without making them feel like their work is being dismissed unfairly.Examples of positive language can be saying things like â€Å"This is a good piece of work, but it needs to be amended slightly. † Negative language is the opposite of positive language. It is often unnecessarily mean to the receiver and so is usually less helpful, as the person is less likely to take on the criticism. If a group has too much negative communication, it means that they ill be less likely to work well in the group and perform to their best standards. To some people, what is seen as simple criticism can come across as negative, especially when the subject is something personal or something that they have worked hard on.It is important to be careful about what language you are using, but you may have to use a combination of positive and negative language in order to correctly express y our opinions of the team work. Active Engagement: Nodding, Summarizing, Paraphrasing Active Engagement is the use of positive, engaging learning techniques in order to help the people you are working with get more involved and remember more than they would in other situations. This type of interaction is helpful in keeping the ideas four team fresh and flowing, which in turn helps to promote friendly behavior and team working within the group.While beneficial, too much active engagement can lead to the lesson becoming distracting, causing the core information to be lost. For active engagement to be effective, it must be used in moderation so that it does not become so energetic that it is confusing. Barriers: Background Noise, Distractions, Loss of Interest Barriers are common in all areas of work, be it teamwork or individual work. Barriers are things that directly affect the amount of information that you can process. All of these interpersonal skills can become barriers to commun ication if they are used extensively or wrongly.Other barriers can include distraction caused by loud noises or interesting things happening nearby, or mental barriers that are caused by stress or emotional problems. In every area of work, there will be barriers that have to be overcome. These barriers can be exacerbated by other team members, but can also be overcome easier with others to keep the group on track. Examples of overcoming barriers could include taking a short team break when everyone becomes tired and unresponsive.This lets the team process the information so that they can remember it more effectively, and allows them to release some energy so that they don't become a distraction to others. Types of Questioning: Open, Closed, Probing, Speed Of Response Questions can come in two main forms: Closed and open. Closed questions are ones that can be answered with a simple, short sentence, whereas open questions require a more in depth answer. An example of a closed question could be ‘Meal it sunny yesterday? , while an open question would be â€Å"What did you think of the sunny weather yesterday? Both types of question are good in different ways. Closed questions allow you to get definite, concise information from the answerer. Open questions make it easier to assess the answerers attitude and thoughts behind the topic. Open questions are also good in that they can be used to enter a discussion which stops your team members from becoming bored, like they would if you had just asked closed questions. Communicating In Writing Guidelines Guidelines are sets of rules that dictate how you should write a particular piece of work.For example, a set of guidelines for a piece of writing intended for children may say that it has to be simple and easy to understand, whereas a piece for people of a higher age may need to be more informative and contain more complex language. Guidelines are good as they give users a clear idea Of how the work should be wri tten so as to convey the message to the highest standard. Emoticons Emoticons are representations of facial expressions made by using symbols on the keyboard (E. G. L) Emoticons are generally informal and are used to indicate the tone of the intended message.In a team environment, emoticons re not generally necessary, and can disrupt the main information in a message if they are overused. Grammar Grammar refers to how sentences are constructed using the proper syntax. Grammar is important in any area of work as it makes your work easier to understand and makes you appear more prepared and knowledgeable. Spelling Spelling is an important part Of any type of work that you do. Good spelling allows your work to be easily read and understood, as well as making you appear more professional.Good spelling also means that you will have to spend less time getting your team members to correct your work and you can Ochs on more important tasks. The need for good spelling is diminished if you sp eak to your teammates in person, but there will always be work that will have to be copied down, making good spelling a vital part of group work. Structure Structure relates to how writing is laid out in a piece of work. Good structure allows people to follow your work easily, as well as quickly jump to the parts that they need in the writing.Structure can be improved by the use of contents pages, which clearly show what topics are covered in each paragraph. When compiling lots of pieces of team work from different authors, good structure can make save lots Of time by reducing the amount Of time taken sorting through random pages trying to find the right piece of work. Identifying Relevance Relevance is how connected something is to the main topic. By identifying how relevant pieces of work are, you can reduce the amount of time put into researching things that aren't important to the topic as a whole.Identifying relevance can sometimes be hard, as something that is deemed irrelevan t at one point can actually become more important later on. By using techniques such as underlining and highlighting, you can easily ensure that important acts are clearly shown to the reader. Another way of doing this is to completely cut any relevant information and place it into small notes. This way may be effective, but can be risky if you end up cutting some information that later turns out to be important. Proofreading Proofreading is the process of overlooking work thou have written and checking it for any mistakes.By proofreading work before you send it to someone else, you reduce the risk of sending them something that might not make sense, or may give them incorrect or misleading information. Proofreading your own work can be hard, as you are more likely to skim over ND miss any small errors that someone else may catch. Proofreading can be made more efficient by getting someone else to read your work and check for mistakes, leaving the work for at least a day before proof reading so your brain can treat it as a new piece of writing, or reading the work slower than usual and out loud which will help to catch any mistakes that you may have made.Alternative Viewpoints An alternate viewpoint is research that comes from a source that is different from your own. An alternate viewpoint can come in the form of a document that you get from the internet or from collaboration with a co-worker over a ice of work. Getting many alternate viewpoints is important to ensure that your work is not biased or factually Inaccurate. When referencing other people's work in your own, it is important to clearly distinguish where one person's viewpoint begins and another person's ends, and to correctly credit the author of the alternate viewpoint.Note Taking Note taking is a good tool for team working as it allows other members of your team to tell you what could be done better or what needs to be changed. A good way to take notes is electronically, using software such as Micr osoft Word. This lets you write and erase notes easily, as well as send updated copies to other people for fast collaboration. Most people use hard copies, where a single physical copy of the work is handed around and people write on the work directly.This approach can be quicker if it is being handed to a small number of people, but note taking electronically makes it easier to assess and change. Capitalization Capitalization is mostly used at the start of sentences and nouns such as England or Mark. When writing abbreviation, capital letters are also used, such as in ELK. Capitalization can also be used to display emotion when writing message, usually in the form of capitalistic every letter of a word to indicate shouting.Shouting in writing is generally thought of as negative and unprofessional, so should be avoided for more important letters. Team review Assessment think that I performed well in my team review meetings and my one-to-one tutorial target setting sessions. I used p ositive language verbal exchanges with my team members to accurately discern how we worked as a group. Think that I could have used more open questions to gain a better insight into what other people in my team thought about the work that we did.