COMMUNICATING WITH CONFIDENCE
Whether it’s with strangers or friends, parents or partners, communication is one of our most important skills. But having the confidence to share how we feel or bring up challenging topics without becoming frustrated or offending someone can be tough.
Without people in their lives to model pro-social communication skills, students can really struggle resolving conflict, making friends, being persuasive, having their emotional needs met, and feeling comfortable meeting new people.
Our Communication course gives students the skills they need to become better communicators, and to feel more confident doing so. We do this by diving into a greater understanding of how people work, and a number of fun activities with implicit communication lessons built right into them.
Being an effective communicator means thinking about what the other person is hearing, not just what you are saying. It requires empathy, finding the right moment, choosing the right words and conveying them in the right way.
It’s a foundational skill that will have huge impacts on not just our social lives, but our professional success too.
Value for students
Activity Showcase 1.
If an alien came to earth tomorrow, one of the many confusing things they’d encounter would be toast. How on earth do humans make it?
We ask students to visually depict the process of making toast in one minute, and then examine what assumptions they’d made about the alien’s knowledge without realising it. Did they show the importance of heat? How did they show time? Where did the bread come from?
Effective communication isn’t about describing what’s in our own head. It demands empathy to see the world from the other person’s perspective.
Students refine these skills with a fun follow-up game, in which one person faces the back of the room, and draws an abstract shape purely from the description of their paired partner. They can’t ask questions, and the describer can’t see what the drawer draws.
The results of their communication skills (or lack thereof) can be clearly seen on the paper in front of them.
Activity Showcase 2.
Our ‘Magnet Hands’ activity has students pair up, face each other, and hold their hands a few centimetres apart, as if a magnet were connecting them. They then take it in turns to be the ‘leader’ - slowly moving their hands while the other tries to mirror their movements.
Finally, we ask them to simultaneously lead the other person AND follow their movements, leading to a complex and hilarious interaction as they navigate taking and relinquishing control intuitively. Just like in our social lives, some people are naturally more dominant, while others are more passive.
We use the activity as an introduction to 3 communication styles - the passive pangolin who finds it challenging asking for what they need, the dominant dingo who can come across as aggressive or hog the limelight, and the assertive alpaca, who strikes a healthy balance in between.
Having identified their default social style, students learn strategies for gradually shifting themselves towards the assertive centre. Passive pangolins will learn to voice their opinion and contribute to the group, while dominant dingoes begin to take a step back and listen more to others.