Employees are increasingly encouraged to be themselves at work; i.e. to be authentic. Yet recent organisational psychology research, which examined the impact of being yourself on workplace relations and task performance, has sounded a note of caution, questioning whether it is wise in all contexts.
Part 3 of a three part series on Context and Culture. In Part 1 and Part 2 we focused on the interactional context – the setting that a communication event takes place in. In fact, the interactional context is just one layer of context. Here I explain the other three levels of context and use a published case study to show how interconnected the levels are.
In this Part 2 of the series, we present a framework for understanding the key features of the interactional context as a whole. Communication always takes place in a particular setting. Many features of these settings can be summarised into the notion of a communicative activity that is recognised by others as having a set of familiar features.
Part 1 of a three-part series.
When people think of culture and its impact, their minds often turn to national differences and ask questions like “How do I deal with people from X country?” or “Why are people from X country so loud (or so quiet)?” In this series of GPC Insight pieces, I’ll be focusing on how such questions fail to consider the role of context.
If you are an employer or an employee and are seeking to recruit someone new, what would you list as the top 10 types of communication skill you’d be looking for? Would you include people skills? Or integrity? Why/why not? This ‘GPC Latest Research Insight’ considers these issues in relation to a study that stimulated these questions.
