12.2: Interpersonal Communication and the Workplace
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Making the Connection
People do not always associate interpersonal communication and organizational communication. However, we do not live in silos, nor are we robots. The workplace is full of interpersonal interactions. According to McKeown & Ayoko:
Often it is the people who make or break a job for us—getting on with those we work with impacts on our happiness is not just work but in our wider life as well as on our physical and mental health. Some help us grow personally and professionally. Some serve our need for social interaction in our daily lives. Some can be harmful and inappropriate, for which we should be empowered to stand up against. So let’s look at the basics of why we are inclined to engage in interpersonal communication at work. (2020, para. 1)
Why Learn Professional Interpersonal Communication Skills?
In the pie chart in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) shows that work and work-related activities take up the bulk of most Americans' days with 8.9 hours or 37% of our total day. Sleeping and personal care follow closely at 8.64 hours or 35%. Leisure and sports account for 3.01 hours or 13%. We spend about 1 hour each day in the following activities, which each account for about 4% of our day: eating and drinking, household activities, and a category labeled "Other." Caring for others came in at 0.59 hours, or 2%. of our time.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Average Hours per Day Spent in Selected Activities on Days Worked by Alex Mata is licensed as CC-BY 4.0.
A survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that most people spend more time working and/or spending time with people from work than they do on any other activity on a weekday, even more than time spent sleeping. In fact, given this information, consider the time spent with family, friends, children, or any other person with which you have an interpersonal relationship. You might see that those working relationships take up a significant amount of your day.
However, learning about effective interpersonal communication skills is more than just a numbers game of hours spent in a day. If you recall from Chapter 1, many researchers have pointed to how interpersonal communication can help meet our needs as humans (Maslow, 1987; Schutz, 1958). Being that many of us spend so much of our time at our workplace, it could be advantageous to utilize this working time to help meet more of our interpersonal needs. In addition, if you remember our previous chapters on the self, verbal and nonverbal communication, and perception (Chapters 2 through 5), the way we communicate with others has an impact on how we view ourselves and those around us. Practicing our interpersonal communication skills at work further reinforces things like our identity, our observations, and our relationships. Let’s review these concepts and discuss some specific examples present in the workplace.
Interpersonal Communication Meets Our Basic Needs
In Chapter 1 you learned that communication helps to meet our basic needs. When it comes to the workplace, research from Cheung (as cited in Morgan, 2020) shows us that many people gain a sense of belonging from their jobs, and that even employee happiness is related to their social interactions at work. Psychologists have cited interpersonal relationships having a considerable impact on our health, to include mental, behavioral, and physical health (Umberson & Montez, 2010). Probably best related to interpersonal communication are esteem needs, for which reputation recognition, attention, or appreciation (as defined by others) (Maslow, 1943) are met. Our workplace is a common venue through which we gain a reputation, attention, appreciation or recognition. Therefore, our workspaces often serve as a significant source for meeting our esteem needs.
Interpersonal Communication Influences Your Thinking about Yourself
As you learned in Chapter 2, research by George Herbert Mead (1934) shows that our understanding of ourselves is shaped by interacting with others. Because we learn, grow, and develop at our places of work, our interactions with our co-workers help to shape how we see ourselves through theories like Reflective Appraisal (Mead, 1934; Cooley, 1902; Sullivan, 1947) and Social Comparison (Festinger, 1954). From how you dress to the praise or criticism you receive on a project, our interpersonal interactions in the workplace continuously shape our self-concept. And since we have already reviewed the data about the amount of waking hours spent at our workplace, consider just how much impact your workplace relationships have on your self-concept.
Interpersonal Communication Influences Your Thinking about Others
As we learned in Chapter 3, our understanding of others is highly influenced by our perceptions (Knudsen, et al., 202). At the workplace, this may look like past experiences with bosses, colleagues, customers, and meeting dynamics, which could have shaped how we expect others to interact or behave. Perhaps by starting a new job or working with a new colleague, you might notice that your understanding of others’ roles at work is contextual, or learned through past experiences. The competent communicator could recognize how perception can create biases in the workplace that could influence pay, opportunities, leadership roles, and even harassment in the workplace. For example, say that your last employer was very strict regarding punctuality. Being late was frowned upon and happened rarely. At your new place of work, your colleagues seem to be very relaxed in their approach to punctuality. Arriving to a meeting with a coffee in hand, 5–10 minutes late, is not uncommon. However, you find yourself judging those who are late, perhaps even labeling them as unprofessional or disrespectful. Your past working norms have influenced your understanding of what is, and is not, an appropriate way to interact with others.
Employers Look for Interpersonal Communication Skills
Have you ever been interested in a job as a brand strategist, social media manager, content marketing manager, web producer, social media planner, or public relations specialist? If so, these were reported as some of the top Communications degree jobs in 2021 (Keiling, 2021). But it is not just for Communication-specific titles that employers look for strong communication skills. In Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\) we show the communication-specific skills that were cited in the Job Outlook 2021 Spring Update by the National Association of Colleges and Employers—skills in which communication, working with others, and/or the combination of the two, essentially dominate the attributes employers report seeking out in candidates.
When you look at the various jobs you’ve had throughout your life, whether they be typical nine-to-five office positions, part-time work, or chores around your living space, what made your work more effective and enjoyable? Did you have a co-worker that would make you laugh to get you through a long shift? A boss that was especially kind when giving praise? Did you have a parent or roommate that set clear expectations about when things needed to be done or offered help when you could not carry your own weight? It may seem obvious now that you look back, but those interpersonal communication dynamics in a workspace are particularly impactful to how effective and enjoyable our work is. In fact, they could be the difference between loving or hating the work, and motivation to get the work done and at what quality.
Read this article: Interpersonal Skills: Definitions and Examples.
Reflection Questions
- Out of the nine interpersonal skills listed, which do you think are your strengths?
- The article mentions using your interpersonal skills from the job interview to the daily interactions at work. How have you seen these show up effectively in your own experience?
- The video embedded in the article talks about EQ. What is EQ and how is it related to workplace communication?
Why Do We Seek Out Relationships at Work?
If you take stock of your own workplace experiences, or those of people you know, you might notice co-workers at children's birthday parties, receiving invites to a colleague’s wedding, or meeting work-friends for drinks. You may know past or present co-workers who are dating, or even getting married themselves. Perhaps you have a boss who routinely texts you “happy birthday” or a subordinate whose baby shower you attended. Essentially, if you pay attention to workplace relationships around you, you may just realize how prevalent they are.
We know from interpersonal communication research that we seek out relationships with others based on proximity, similarity, and physical attractiveness. When you consider how physically close a co-worker is to us for much of our waking hours, along with all we might have in common with that person (we work on the same industry, we possibly have the same boss and co-workers, we may have a similar commute, and we might be close in socioeconomic class, etc.), you could see similarities emerging quickly. Therefore, relationships at work are very convenient for us.
In addition to ease and accessibility of relationships, there are emotional and physical benefits to workplace relationships, as many researchers point out. An article from the Harvard Business Review cites studies showing that “teams of friends perform better; that people with supportive co-workers have more work/life balance and are less stressed; that strong personal ties increase information- and idea-sharing, self-confidence” (Beard, 2020, para. 3). Furthermore, this article cites a book written by former US surgeon general Vivek Murthy, who refers to friendship as “fundamental to successful professional relationships” and says that by just having a friend around significantly impacts our blood pressure and immune cells" (para. 4).
In most workplaces, the most basic level of communication that we will have is in our interpersonal interactions—in the form of interactions with co-workers or customers/clients, organizational leaders, or subordinates. Therefore, most communication will flow either vertically or horizontally. Communication amongst superiors and subordinates is considered vertical communication, which flows either upward or downward, while communication with our colleagues and customers or clients is considered horizontal communication. Communication across these channels can be structured formally, due to organizational processes such as with job instructions or contracts or performance reviews, or can occur more informally through networks that are created by the types of relationships established in the workplace. In the next section, we describe some of the types of workplace relationships where dyadic interpersonal communication plays an important role.