Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

Figure 1.3 
A contextual model of communication
Communication is the process of creating shared 
understanding.
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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12 Improve your Communication Skills
As managers, we tend to focus on action as the reason for 
communicating. Yet, as
people, we usually communicate for 
quite another reason. And here is a vital clue to explain why 
communication in organisations so often goes wrong.
Relationship: the big issue of small talk
The first and most important reason for communicating is to 
build relationships with other people. Recent research 
(commissioned from the Social Issues Research Centre by British 
Telecom) suggests that about two thirds of our conversation time 
is entirely devoted to social topics: personal relationships; who is 
doing what with whom; who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’, and why. 
There must be a good reason for that.
According to psychologist Robin Dunbar, language evolved
as the human equivalent of grooming, the primary means of 
social bonding among other primates. As social groups among 
humans became larger (the average human network is about 150, 
Relationship
Information
Action
Figure 1.4 
The three levels of understanding
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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13 What is Communication?
compared to groups of about 50 among other primates), we 
needed a less time-consuming form of social interaction. We 
invented language as a way to square the circle. In Dunbar’s 
words: ‘language evolved to allow us to gossip’ (
Grooming, 
Gossip and the Evolution of Language
, Faber and Faber, London, 
1996).
Gossip is good for us. It tells us where we sit in the social 
network. And that makes us relax. Physical grooming stimulates 
production of endorphins – the body’s natural painkilling
opiates – reducing heart rate and lowering stress. Gossip 
probably has a similar effect. In fact, the research suggests that 
gossip is essential to our social, psychological and physical 
well-being.
We ignore this fundamental quality of conversation at our 
peril. If we fail to establish a relaxed relationship, everything else 
in the conversation will become more difficult.