Community Leadership - Functional Communication Competence

1a

Functional communication competence

• Competence means ability
• Communication means being able to give and receive messages efficiently
• Functional means to achieve intended goals
• FCC ability to communicate to achieve goals  

Intrapersonal communication (inner dialogue) -> Interpersonal communication <-> Functional communication competence

Intrapersonal communication – “is a mirror image of one’s own cultural values, beliefs and biases’ (Jun, 2010, p.1)

• Commonly referred to as ‘self-talk’
• Occur consciously/sub-consciously
• Inner thinking
• Reflects our well-being which indicated how we think about

• Ourselves
• Others
• Social world

• IPC reflects world view; self-talk affects how we perceive the social world

Multicultural competencies

• Ability to understand and identify with various cultures
• Enables us to

• Expand our own worldview
• Incorporate others’ values and beliefs

IPC directly affects our communication with others

IPC is developed from childhood when they grow up from a culture; they repeat the beliefs, attitudes and thoughts of the culture

• Automatic Thought Formation – foundation of IPC

• Holistic thinking
• Linear thinking
• Hierarchical thinking
• Dichotomous thinking

Effective communicator is someone with a high level of interpersonal constructs

• Recognize the complexity of communication context
• Look holistically at things from others’ view point

1b

Holistic thinking – critical thinking

• Tend to be flexible and non-judgmental
• Is able to look at the multi-layered and multi-dimensional views and acknowledge that these views are as important as their own views  

Linear thinking – could be positive or negative

• If -> then, using evidence at the current moment to predict the future
• Assumption: people, events, things stay the same
• Generalize based on the past

• Over-generalize -> stereotyping/discrimination

• Negative effect of linear thinking leads us to think that we can only do what we’ve always done

• Put limitations on his own ability

• Positive LT if you think that if you do certain things then success will follow you, then you will be motivated to do this series of things such that success will follow

Hierarchical thinking – could be positive or negative

• Superiority and inferiority in standing
• -ve: Regards some things/people as more valuable than some others
• +ve: Being able to recognize the difference in quality to get a better result

Dichotomous thinking – could be positive or negative

• Either/or mindset: looking at things in two extremes
• Difficult to have the “both.. and” mindset or the “win-win approach”
• Tends to see things as

• Black or white
• Good or bad
• Us or them
• Win or lose etc

• Reflects inflexibility and over-simplicity
• +ve: all-or-nothing mindset

• all in or just not do it at all  

[pic 1]

1c

Inappropriate use of thinking styles  

• basis for discrimination such as racism, gender bias and ageism

moving towards holistic thinking

• deconstruct inappropriate linear, hierarchical and dichotomous thinking
• identify inappropriate thinking patterns related to our values, beliefs and biases to understand how we think and why we think that way

values, beliefs and biases -> holistic thinking

critical thinking -> honest self-reflection -> holistic thinking

[pic 2]

develop multicultural competencies which will allow us to

• expand our own worldview
• incorporate others’ worldviews