 Hello, everybody. My name is Amri. I'm acting director of studies here at Life in Language, and I'm delighted to be here. So, I'll just jump straight in, and it's disappeared. So, I've got to have a little bit of a compression time today. Bear my soul, confess my sins in terms of communication. I'm starting to stray in at the deep end, talking about some of my communication breakdowns, and giving some concrete examples. And then I'll go on to discuss the why, the how, if they were the conference, indeed, of communication, and again, the technical. Looking at the functional, interpretive, and critical approaches to communication, because I think, having done a tiny bit of research, different, I told the water I found, they actually have something to say in some of the problems I've encountered as a newly recruited acting director of studies here. And then I'll go back to my initial problems, give some ideas of how I've coped with some solutions I've come up with, and some perspectives I've gained from having looked at the functional, interpretive, and critical approaches. So, compression time. So, in the different communication breakdowns I've had, I've asked myself, OK, how have I transmitted this message? Why has there been a breakdown? What am I not getting? Of course. Why is it that I thought the teacher or the student was listening to me, but later it been emerged it wasn't? In the spirit of being a teacher I thought some reality over me. So, we have exhibit A, if you all know what this is, a beautiful, perfectly kept register. So beautiful that she's color coded. We have exhibit B, probably one more more familiar. Now, there are a very number of problems with spending on this register. For immigration, we don't have the attendance, for the teacher coming in to cover. What do I do? What lesson do I do? But, we have an exhibit C. Sit in the picture. And here we have a problem that occurred in August. A full class, we have a name on the top of the register. What does that mean? The student going into the wrong class. The teacher not communicating that to me. The student not communicating it to me. Instead going to the agent. I get the letter, I get the agent letter. Maybe the following week, maybe a month, maybe last week. So, I communicate to the teachers. Please, if the student goes in, not on the register, don't allow them in. This has been constant with me. Luckily, eventually they got through and they missed teacher as you'll see. Check to the new register and actually she found the student. So, it does get through. It doesn't always get through. In my question, how, I repeated it, teacher's meeting, how is this not getting through? I ask myself, what is it I'm not communicating properly here? So, parking, even that aside from it, a month to the why and the how. So, let's start with a simple definition of what is communication. And it's communication is the process by which information is transmitted and understood. Well, we know that's a bit problematic because it's not always transmitted accurately. It's not always understood. So, I like the behaviorist definition, which sees communication as a symbolic process by which individuals act to exchange perceptions and ultimately build a knowledge bank for themselves. It recognizes that it's perceptions that we are exchanging and not ultimately building that knowledge bank. So, why do we communicate to get things done, to bring about change? Another why we will see, George Finley referred to 95% of the time we spend on communication a study by Vince Berger in 1973 found that in that particular study he managed to spend 80% of the time on communication, information, transmission, activities. And then the how, well, we transmit verbally, non-verbally, and then the phone face-to-face, notices, well, we could pass some notices here. And also that non-verbal, and you're probably all familiar with this, 55% of that is transmitted non-verally, 38% by the tone of voice, and only 70% by the tone of words used. So, you have to be so careful of what you're transmitting, the non-verbal message that you're sending. So, in a face-to-face communication, talking to a teacher, am I transmitting non-verally the seriousness of this message? Is it the suggestion, or is it, yes, I really wanted to do that? Another how is the challenge of communication we use? Nadine mentioned a face-to-face. Management texts emphasise that it's so important not to underestimate the complex interconnections that we can make, we can form in unanticipated face-to-face encounters. So, this could be traditional water cooler exchange or going into staff room chatting with the staff, as you do, building that trust to facilitate and improve your communication with them. It also allows for the maximum amount of information to be transmitted, so you've got the non-verbal, but you can also see the reaction. It's a two-way process. Media-richness theories suggest that we should match the media with the message. So, the more ambiguous the message, the more scope for misinterpretation, the more rich media should be, face-to-face, for example. So, think about what media you choose to transmit your messages. And your staff meeting, is it a notice, or do you go around individually to each teacher or tell them? The medium matches what it is. Again, the medium is the message, Mark Marshall McLean's medium and the message tells us that. In the medium we choose to transmit more information than the word, not more information, but it does make the message beyond the word itself. So, again, if you get a formal letter and head a note paper from the company's stamp, that's very formal, that sends you a message even before you read them in. If you have a face-to-face, yes, it allows for all that information, but it might be interpreted as informal and not really the law. The lens metaphor is perceptionist. It recognizes that communication is selectively perceived. We don't always receive all the information. Unlike what's useful to remember when you reflect on why some of the communication isn't as successful as we want. And listening? A plethora of studies from 1930 to 2006 all find the majority of our communication activities, the large proportion of those are listening, whether it's in work, in school, in play, in interaction. One of them, in particular, conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1991, found my respect 55% of their time in listening activities in the communication. In 1995, Hasan Arland, I found that listening was perceived as an important component in communicative confidence and furthermore, that individual confidence was judged to be directly related to listening ability or perceived listening effectiveness. So how you perform as a listener reflects your performance as an individual in the company. So now moving on to the functional. The functional school of thought on communication sees communication as a metaphorical pipeline. So there is a sender and a receiver. Information goes through one way very linear. Functional sees communication. The purpose of it is to control, motivate, and inform your workers. It makes them a little harsh. And it sees an organization with containers in which people work and goods and services are provided. There is a communication as a mechanistic view of information flow, where there are prescribed routes and fine content. So imagine your management chart where you have a manager, a managing director at the top, teachers at the bottom. There is an indication of the information flow, communication flow. Who can communicate with whom? In what direction? It's usually downwards, as I've mentioned, not upwards. We'll come back to that later. Also, this school of thought allowed communication and information flow as discrete things. But these could be investigated within the organizational container in order to increase productivity. So it saw overall the metaphor where the machine predictable, communication was predictable, flowing in certain pathways. In reacting to this, and maybe something I prefer more, is the interpretivist school of thought. And this saw a conceptual shift from mechanistic to a constitutive view. So from the metaphor of the machine to the metaphor of the organism. So communication is something that exists in the workplace, but is rather than something that manages the workplace. So it recognized what's particularly illuminating and relevant, I think, about this is that it underlie the unpredictability of human behavior. How you might give the message to this room, everyone will react in a different way. You cannot predict. So it's not as robotic as the function of this school of thought. It recognizes people will react in different ways. It goes back again to the lens metaphor, the idea of selective perception and how it's so important to choose the right medium for communication. Moving on to the critical, the final one. We saw the critical definition of communication when we're looking at the what of communication. And the critical the critical school of thought and communication in terms of hidden exercises of power and managerial influence. The metaphors of voice and discourse allows you to study who is allowed to speak, to whom, and in what way. So again, you go back to that chart. Who is allowed to speak to whom? The managing director? Maybe he can speak to the lowly employee, but can the lowly employee initiate that conflict? And what? The expression or suppression of voice is one way that communication is seen within this school of thought. What is interesting is a study done by a global study done by the International Association of Business Communicators which highlighted the need for organizations to make significant changes and how they communicate with their employees in order to connect with them. In order to give them voice. There's been references by Nadine and I think in George in terms of feedback in Nadine in terms of the sessions where you allowed the teachers to have a participation in the project involvement. This is something that was highlighted by this study. Respondents said they wanted the opportunity to collaborate and actively contribute to their organization. And I think this is maybe something we miss sometimes in my problems in the registrations. Maybe I can say in the meeting, how do we deal with this? Teachers, they have the best ideas. They are on the ground. How can we give them a voice? Maybe it's problematic to implement but is it worth considering? So to move on. So to go back to my communication breakdowns and I think it's worth to go back and see what are those problems and to analyze them through the latest metaphor. And maybe the information is incomplete. It's been selected and preceded. Maybe my non-verbal communication of the message is giving a different message. So I rush into the staff room. I said, can you teach this class? Okay, yeah. Rush out. Teachers in terms of the class. Why? I didn't probably communicate that message. I didn't probably communicate the message that is so important to check the register. I have to how my communication spend that moment of focus, as you said George, 30 seconds of focus on that person without thinking, what am I to do next? What am I to do next? And that is where it's important to remember your non-verbal communication. What media do I choose to transmit? Do I do the face to face? Which is great. It may be perceived as conformal. Do I do both? Do I back it up? And I'm meeting recently. I can't subject. What is the register? What happens if students enter the class? It worked but the next week the problem came up again. It has to be repeated. And which students, as I said at the outset a problem was they were going directly to the agent. So I initiated this process around the time when I was first asked to speak at this conference. So I started reflecting, self-reflecting. Right. On Mondays, I'm going around to each class. I'm introducing myself. I'm telling them where they can come and meet me. Instead of them coming to me I'm going to meet them. I introduce them to some of the previous leaders. You'll get your book tomorrow, the letter change test. Yes. It also gives me the opportunity to get non-verbal feedback from them. They're sitting there like that. There might be a problem. They kind of look confused. Maybe I can follow up on that. It also gives them the opportunity to ask questions to me. Equally, on the Friday if I'm going to merge a class, open the class and they'll be changed I go and explain it. I usually say, couldn't use. Your class is going to be smaller. You're going to be, I'm re-arranging the class so the nationalities will be mixed. Explain to them why. And I have to say, now I haven't done any of this research on this. There have been fewer complaints. There have been fewer emails from the agents. And any email I have got have been reflecting back to the time before I implemented this. That's not to say it will never have been. In a feedback forum last week from a student who will be named this he said he wrote, sometimes our class has changed and I don't know why. This is strange. The student is communicating a lot. Maybe he's not in that Friday. Maybe he's hungover, maybe he doesn't get that message. So I'm not saying it will always work. But I just find the need to repeat, reach out and try to initiate as much communication and revisit as often as I can. So we're moving on to my next slide which is Any questions? Any questions? I can read those. APPLAUSE We're going to meet in the middle there and deal with any questions. Before I finish I have a list of the references of any bold and rash statements I've made in the book. So if anyone wants I can pass those to them. But if there are any questions anybody who has any questions about it? I just wondered in relation to the registration I very often find in our context as teachers it's often one person who is not doing it continuously. I kind of find the effectiveness of delivery in a general meeting. Because the individual who's not putting in the register is thinking she's talking to all of us. I'm not the only one who's in the register. And then the individual who's doing is like I'm hearing this again. I think I often feel that maybe managers are afraid to approach individuals. And also perhaps it's time consuming. I just wonder if you've come across that. Yeah, in terms of that I wouldn't deal with the particular teachers. As large a way as possible. And yes the filling in the register is one thing. My more serious concern was students going into class. I deal with that individually but I think it's also important to keep moving it. So it does get through. But you're right. It often is one of them. Thank you very much. Depending on the context within that particular team and the relationships you all have you could consider naming and naming as well. The relationships and how it's all set up but that could be a factor too. Yeah that is an idea. There is often a guy who stand up and say yeah I know it was me but you know I'm just terrible at paperwork. Where does a batch of armor on something like that. I'm creative though. I think it's the only thing for me. And these are all excellent teachers who do an excellent job. Thank you very much. Thank you.