HOW WHATSAPP AFFECTS OUR RELATIONSHIPS

A few days ago I talked about using apps like whatsapp or social networks like facebook to communicate with our family and friends. With this post I want to show my opinion about how new technologies affect our social relationships. 

I see that with the progress of technology as the years can make us communicate with people who are far from us instantaneously. This is definitely a great progress and an advance. 

But this affects the way we interact with those we have around. It is not unusual to see a group of people who have met but everyone is with their smartphone, people arguing because they have not answer a whatsapp, people trying to solve problems on whatsapp instead of face to face ... 

I think these ways of communication can make us feel closer with people who is far, but can also separate us from people who is by our side.

Here there is a video where there is a situation that I'm sure that every one have lived or seen at least once.

SPEAKING IN PUBLIC

Speaking in public is an unpleasant activity for many people and the greater the importance of the event the worse we feel. However, as engineers, we must constantly deal with exhibitions and presentations, either to your team, partners, customers or potential investors. And you must do it the right way to connect with your audience.

But public speaking is not really that difficult. Here there are some tips if you are the kind of people that becomes nervous when you have to speak in public:

- Express yourself with simplicity

-Organize yourself

-keep in short

-Be honest

-Don’t read. SPEAK

-RELAX YOURSELF

HOW TO SAY NO

Sometimes we don't know exactly how to express our opinion when we don't like something. There are several techniques that we can use.
Here there are some communication skills students who have recorded a video with some examples of how to say no, but being assertive and in a polite way.

ASSERTIVENESS

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 Assertiveness is used to describe a communication style that is respectful of others but clear and firm in intent. When you communicate assertively, you communicate honestly but appropriately. We have to explain the style of each one each example and we must correct the speech. Been assertive is an attitude that is between been aggressive and been passive.

Passive people are who respect people around them but don’t respect themselves. On the other hand, aggressive people are who doesn’t respect the opinion of the people around them.

The most correct attitude is the assertiveness and we have this attitude when we listen to the opinion of the other people, we respect them, but we also take into account our own opinion.

When you are assertive you can:

-Express your own thoughts, feelings and needs

-Make reasonable requests of other people (while accepting their right to say ‘no’)

-Stand up for your own rights

-Say ‘no’ to requests from others at times, without feeling guilty

WHAT DOES AN IMAGE SAY ABOUT US?

As some other things, a picture can show a lot of things of you and for this reason we have to be careful and show exactly what we want to show to the rest of the people.

      

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The moment of choosing a profile photo comes to everybody. It shows   how we want the rest of the people to see us. We chose them for CV,   social nets, identification cards…

 When we are choosing a photo for a professional document we have to take into account that we have to give a good image, seem very professional and inspire confidence because it’s the first impression that an important person (a teacher, a person who can give us a job…) is having about us, and it can prejudice you if you choose a wrong image.

For example in a CV choosing the correct image is essential because it may be the difference between get a job or not. We can guess if a person is charm, self-conficent, hard-working watching a photo, and we prefer to hire a person with these qualities than a person with an image that transmits the opposite things.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

All of us communicate everyday but maybe we don’t do it properly.

The communication has different elements: the source, the message, the receiver, the channel and the code. But sometimes there is noise which disturbs us while we are communicating.

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The noise is not always sound which doesn’t let us hear the person who is talking. It is everything which doesn’t let us pay attention. If the receiver is thinking about the summer holydays or sending messages with the mobile phone it is also called noise. There are some obstacles which don’t let us communicate properly. These obstacles can be physics for example a deaf or a blind person which have difficulties to communicate. Another type of obstacles are for example consider things as a given, prejudices, having arguments or giving advices (because when we are listening someone’s problem we are thinking about our own experience and we are thinking the advice we want to give and not listening to this person).But we can overcome this obstacles. We can overcome the physic obstacles by using different types of communication like for example braille or sign language. The other type of obstacles we can overcome them by changing our behavior, forget the prejudices, be more open minded and respect the other’s opinion.

INTERVIEW

Every student has wondered at least once what he or she is going to do when he finishes the degree. I want to interview an engineering student who is about to finish his degree. His name is Javier Ortega and he studies systems engineering at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

Question: -Why did you decide to study an engineering four years ago?

Answer:-Since I was a child I enjoyed a lot studying math and physics in the school, and I am very interested in the technology and micro-technology so I decided that this engineering was the best option for me. I don’t imagine myself studying other thing. Also because I am bad at memorizing things so I wouldn’t be able to study something like history or civil law.

Q: - During these years, have you had any difficulty with this degree?

A: -Actually yes, I had some difficulties and I also still having them. You have to be a very hardworking person if you want to be an engineer and it requires long hours of studying, calculating, practicing... Although I like this kind of knowledge some subjects are too difficult.

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Q: -Nowadays everybody talk about economic crisis and joblessness in Spain. Are you afraid of that? Do you know what you’re going to do the next year?

A: -Like the most of spanish people I am also afraid of not be able to find a job. This year I finish my degree and I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do next. I have already take a look for some jobs and I have noticed how important is to speak English fluency. I have a good English level but I am not sure if it’s enough. If next year I don’t find any job, probably I will spend several months in a foreign country just to learn more English.

Q: -What advices would you give to everyone who wants to study engineering?

A:- I always say that if you want something you have to work hard to get it. As I said before I think that if you want to be an engineer (aerospace, mechanic, electronic…) you need to spend a lot of hours studying. Sometimes you will have to spend whole days until you have a big headache and it won’t be enough but if you really like it you don’t have to stop working and give it up. Everything is possible if you are a hardworking person.

"YO TB TQ"

It’s not strange to communicate with our friends or our family using apps like WhatsApp or social nets like Facebook. As a result of this new way of communication, almost everybody has misunderstood something he has been told, or someone has misunderstood something we have said. This kind of situations creates absurd arguments or annoyances.

Here there’s a video (in Spanish) where there is a boy and a girl having the same conversation by two different ways. I encourage you to watch the video and think about which way of communication is the better option.

HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION

As I have said before making a good presentation is something important in your professional life. But, do we know how to make an effective presentation?

First of all we have to know that a presentation has three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The first and the third one are the most important. In the introduction you have the only chance to catch the attention of the audience, and if you don’t do it correctly they won’t pay you attention in the rest of the presentation. In the conclusion you have to remark the main idea (the most important and one you want them to keep in mind). Before making a presentation you have to know which is this idea, because if you don’t have it clear they won’t have it either.

The best way of catch their attention is make the audience to take part in your presentation, but this is not always possible. Other tips you can follow are: don’t write too much in your slides, control yourself if you think you get nervous speaking in public, modulate your voice volume…

MAKING GOOD PRESENTATIONS

Let's imagine you're a prominent businessman and you have to choose between two projects. These two projects are very good and you will earn a considerable amount of money if you get involved in them, but a project is a little better than another.

Although they both are very good, there is something where they are different: the presentation.

The first presentation is the project that is a slightly  better than the other, but who has carried out was very nervous and has done a very boring presentation where he has been reading some slides, so there are some details that you don’t have completely clear.

On the other hand the project of the second presentation is slightly worse, but at present it has done much better than the first. It has caught your attention from the beginning. You have understood the main idea of the presentation and at the end if you had any doubt, you could solved it.

Probably the project you would choose is the second one.

Now that you know why making good presentation is important. Do you know how to make a good presentation? If you are interested on learning how to make it, you should read the next posts.

ASPERGER SYNDROM

Every day when we get home we have talked at least with 100 people. This is because we have the necessity of interact with people. We need to meet people and talk with our friends and family. We all need to have some relationship with people and things around us, but there are some exceptions, like for example people who has autism.

Asperger syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder which is characterized by several difficulties in social interaction and non-verbal communication. These difficulties don’t let them have normal relationships with people around them. They can’t express their feelings and they don’t understand the other people’s feelings. They also have problems understanding the irony and sentences with a double sense. People with this syndrome don’t have our same necessity of interaction with the people around them. Also they are people that need every single thing to be a routine because it makes them feel comfortable and secure.

Apart from these difficulties in social interaction and communication, they are normal people so they don’t have a lack of intelligence or something like that. The results of different studies say that Asperger people are as intelligent as people without this syndrome or even more. 

THE BODY AS A WAY OF COMMUNICATION

Today I’m going to talk about a very interesting person.

Marina Abramović was born in Yugoslavia in 1946. She is a performance artist that uses her body as a way of creating art, and in some of them trying to explore her physic and mental limitations. Some of her works are very interesting, but I think that for this communication skills subject there are one of them that is especially interesting.

This work named “The Artist is present” took place in the MoMA in 2010, and Marina was supposed to be sitting in a chair just looking another chair in front of her. People can participate and sit silently in the chair in front of her.  The reason why I think this is quite interesting for the subject is because it shows how non-verbal communication can communicate lot of things. Sometimes you can say more things in silence than with long conversations. If you don’t believe me I hardly recommend watching this short videos and paying attention in the gaze of the artist and see what happens when an old colleague and boyfriend appears in front of her some years after they saw last time.

BODY LANGUAGE

The body language and non-verbal communication may have a big impact in your professional and personal life.

Our body language tells to the others more than we think. Not only we have to choose carefully our words but also we have to take care of the body language, which includes body movements, facial expressions, postures, voice volume etc.

It can say how we feel, if we are agree or disagree with the current situation, what is our attitude in that moment and lot of things and we just don’t notice about that.

But I think that you have to take into account that this is not a science like maths or physics because when we talk about human behavior we have to keep in mind a lot of things. For example:

People who look to the sides while speaking with you are nervous, lying, or distracted. This means the person is distrustful or unconvinced.

But this is not a rule or something that always happens because some cultures think that looking at someone in their eyes shows a lack of respect.

But this is not a rule or something that always happens because some cultures think that looking at someone in their eyes shows a lack of respect.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my blog!

My name Clara Zamora and I study Biomedical Engineer at the Universidad Europea de Madrid. This degree consists on the concepts, principles and methods of engineering to solve problems in biology and medicine.

This blog has been created for the subject of Communication Skills so I’ll  write posts  about this, and I’ll try to make them as interesting as possible.

I hope you enjoy it and have a good time.