Trends In Professional Practice

PROF2000 Professional Practices: Activity 1

Contemporary trends in professional practice: Communicate in today’s workplace

Description of a Successful Communication Incident

I was involved in a successful communication incident whilst interacting with a customer during my part-time job, as a service delicatessen clerk. I greeted the customer as he approached the delicatessen counter and politely asked, “How can I help you today?” The customer then went on to ask for “some ham”. I was confused, so in order to clarify the order I enquired as to which type of ham the customer required, as we stocked many types. I did this by listing off and pointing at all of the types of hams in the cabinet, as well as providing additional information surrounding

In this example, the context of the communication was easily established by both parties as a result of the common socially understood setting between a delicatessen clerk and a customer. This can be explained by the communications accommodations theory, as the “socio-historic context” between the parties becomes “embedded” into the “interaction” (Giles 2007, p. 294). In this case both parties have an understanding of the social norms between customers and delicatessen clerks, this allowed the style of communication to be accommodated for the best result. For example, the term “How can I help you?”, based on socio-historic context clearly was only regarding help with providing the customer products. Therefore, as both parties were aware of the social norms when interacting at a delicatessen, no issues of social misinterpretations

This can be supported by the uncertainty reduction theory, as when “strangers meet” their “primary concern” is to reduce uncertainty about “the behavior of” both parties (Berger 1975, p. 100). In this incident the clerk asks what type of ham the customer would like, in order to improve the predictability of their behavior. As even though the customer may have known which product they wanted, based on the previous dialogue between the parties there was no way for the clerk to know. This strategy worked well to overcome confusion which could have been a potential communication barrier. In addition to this, the use of non-verbal communication by way of the clerk pointing at each product whilst they were being described further reduced the uncertainty of the customer’s behavior, as the clerk provided enough information to avoid sending a message that would be difficult to decode by the other party. This in turn, was a reduction of noise in the communication process, as miscommunication in terms of the product the customer required could have been a disruption in the natural flow of communication process and resulted in the customer receiving the wrong