 sometimes students in my class will come in and talk about a situation that they've encountered recently and in a communication sense and say did I get that right? Did I do that right? And the truth is it can be hard to say because we don't measure communication in such a binary way necessarily. So you know in many aspects of life you know one plus one equals two right? But in communication sometimes one plus dump dump truck equals giraffe. And that kind of explanation is just that communication has so many variables in it that it's not always as straightforward as one plus one equals two. And so now you may be thinking well okay if we don't use one plus one equals two isn't necessarily true in communication. Well how do we measure how effective we are communication? Well I'm glad you asked because that's the topic of this video. The purpose of this video is to talk about what we call communication competence which is how we measure the effectiveness of somebody's communication. So let's define that a little bit. Communication competence has to do with engaging in communication with others that is both effective and appropriate within a given context. Now it's important that we keep all of that in mind that we're looking at both effectiveness and appropriateness within a given context meaning that that could change what's appropriate could change from situation to situation. And that's where you get one plus dump truck equals giraffe because every situation is different. We have to approach every aspect of communication differently in each unique situation. So let's take a second to look at what is involved in communication competence. What are the factors or the components of communication competence? What do we need to do in order to be competent communicators? Well the first thing we need is a large repertoire of skills. I refer to this a lot of times as having as many tools in our tool build as we can have. You can't build a house very easily with just a hammer or with just a screwdriver. You need a variety of tools to accomplish a lot of any complicated task and communication is a complicated task. So we need as many communication skills in our tool belt as we can get. So we need to develop all kinds of things. We need to develop our language skills and our nonverbal skills both as how we use nonverbal but how we interpret it as well. We need to develop listening skills. Most of us have seriously deficient listening skills that we need to work on. All these different kinds of things and we need a large repertoire because you never know what you're going to need to pull out of that communication tool belt. So we need to develop as many communication tools as we can so that we can have a fully stocked and loaded tool belt. Then once we have those tools so we have to have the adaptability to use them in different situations. We have to be able to identify what's the most appropriate communication tool for this situation and be able to adapt to the situation when we go from a more formal dinner party or that kind of thing. We're going from a more formal situation like that to hanging out with our friends or just to go on a whitewater rafting or whatever we're doing. What's required of us is going to be different. We have to be able to shift gears a little bit and adapt as communicators to identify what's the appropriate tool for me to use here. We've got all these communication tools in our tool belt. How do we select what's appropriate and how do we know how to change those up from situation to situation? That's adaptability. That's an important part of communication competence. We also have to be able to do these things skillfully if they have the ability to perform skillfully. It doesn't do us any good to have all these communication skills in our tool belt if we can't perform them skillfully. We can have an academic understanding of the listening process and what it means to be an effective listener and how to engage in active listening, but if we can't actually do it then it's not going to do us much good in a practical sense. We have to be able to select the right tool to be adaptable to pull the right tool out of our tool belt and then actually use it appropriately. We also need to develop empathy. Empathy is an important skill for a communicator. Empathy is just the ability to relate to the other person, to see things from their perspective. It doesn't mean we have to agree or endorse their point of view or their behavior or whatever, but just to understand it and say okay I can see how they got there. I can see why they would see things in that way or why they would have that perspective. It's a really critical skill for us to have as communicators to be able to develop empathy, to be able to see things from the other person's perspective. We also have to develop cognitive complexity, which in some ways sounds a little bit like empathy, but it's not exactly the same as empathy. Cognitive complexity is really the ability to hold multiple ideas, even conflicting ideas in your head, in your mind at the same time, and really examine them from different perspectives. So let's just say you have a view on, I don't pick your topic, a view on gun control or view on, you know, abortion rights, anything at all. We ought to be able to look at the other side to take their perspective in our mind, turn it over, examine it really fully from all angles. Again, doesn't mean we have to agree with or endorse that way of thinking, but we have to have the ability to compare these ideas and to really give them consideration, kind of checking emotion at the door in some ways to do so, but having the ability to really thoroughly examine these ideas at the same time in our mind and really mow them over and identify different aspects of them. That's cognitive complexity. Again, another really important tool in developing communication competence. And finally, we need self-awareness and self-monitoring. We need to be able to look at ourselves and say, okay, who am I as a communicator? Am I doing this effectively? We ought to be able to look at a situation and say, okay, this is going well, so let me keep, you know, using that skill or this is not going well. We have to have that monitoring skill to say, okay, that's not working. Let's shift things a little bit, shake things up a little bit and try a different tactic. Communication, pull a different communication tool out of our tool belt and try it. We have to have the self-awareness to see how we are impacting others, how our communication skills are working, if they are effective and appropriate. So we need to identify those things within ourselves both in the moment, but then afterwards being able to look at kind of an after-action report and say, okay, how did that go? Can I have done better? What should I do in the future and then make those adjustments? So we throw all these things in the blender and they end up as our communication competence. So these are the different skills that are involved and different things, factors and different things we need to develop in order to be our competent communicator. Now there are a couple of really important principles of communication competence that we need to keep in mind moving forward here. So first of all, there is no single ideal or effective way to communicate. There are many paths to get to the same result oftentimes. So I want you to think that there's only one way to, in any given situation, to be an effective and appropriate communicator and demonstrate a high level of communication competence. It really depends on you as a communicator. Again there are lots of different variables at work here. So there are a variety of ways to reach the same level of effectiveness and appropriateness. There's not just one way to do things. Many paths leading to the same road oftentimes. So there's no single ideal or effective way to communicate. Next communication competence is situational. It varies from context to context for each person. So and it really exists on this kind of continuum. In some situations you may be highly proficient in communication competence, meaning you are communicating at a high level of effectiveness and appropriateness. In other situations you may struggle a little more. It may be a little more deficient, but it's going to depend and vary from situation to situation. Competence is highly situational. Competence can also be learned. This is something that we can learn. It's not something that that is just a natural ability. Some people start at a higher level than others, but it is something that can be learned. It's not, you know, you're not just set in stone wherever you're born. That's where your communication competence is for all time. This is something that can be learned over time and that's important to remember. We can make improvements here. We can grow. We have that growth mindset. We can grow these communication skills and increase our communication competence. Hopefully you have a better idea of how all these things work together to form our communication competence and how we can go about increasing those things and really working toward an improved communication competence. If you have any questions about communication competence or any other aspect of this topic, please feel free to email me. I'd love to engage in that dialogue with you and in the meantime I hope that you will kind of dissect those different areas of communication competence and evaluate where you're at so that you can begin to make improvements toward more effective and appropriate communication that will increase your communication competence.