1. Pay attention.
5. Respond appropriately.
• Face the speaker. • Do not be distracted by your thoughts, feelings or biases. • Do not mentally prepare a reply. • Avoid distraction from other things (for example, background activity and noise or your mobile phone). • Pay attention to the speaker’s non-verbal cues (for example, their body language, tone and volume of their speech) to pick up hidden meaning.
• Be open and honest in your response. • Give your opinions respectfully. • Don’t offer opinions or solutions unless asked to do so. • Treat the other person in a way that you think they would want to be treated.
2. Show that you are listening. • Combine eye contact with smiles to encourage the speaker. • Keep your posture open and interested – so try not to cross your arms or legs. • Try not to distract the speaker by playing with your mobile phone, fidgeting, looking at a clock or watch etc.
Effective communication is always about understanding the other person, not about winning an argument or forcing your opinions on others. Studies have proven that your overall happiness, career and life success, and income improve when you are an effective communicator.
3. Give feedback. • Reflect on what is said and the non-verbal cues. • Ask questions. • Summarize the speaker’s comments.
4. Keep an open mind. • Try to think about the situation from the speaker’s perspective. • Allow the speaker to finish each point before asking questions. • Avoid jumping to conclusions. • Avoid interrupting with counter arguments.
Source: https://media.healthdirect.org.au/publications/CarerGateway_Resource_02_ Effective_communication_techniques_v03.pdf
Women in Maritime Following a resolution being adopted by the IMO, 18th May has been made the International Day for Women in Maritime. In this first year of celebrating women in maritime, two of the main goals set by the IMO are the creation of a barrier-free working environment and the recruitment of more women into the industry to address the current gender imbalance. They are goals that will inevitably benefit everyone as even now, when they constitute a minority of the maritime workforce, women have played an integral role in numerous maritime activities. The inaugural International Day for Women in Maritime has arrived more than three decades after the IMO’s gender programme was initiated in 1988. Back then, maritime training institutes were not readily accessible to female students, but this has changed. Nowadays, thanks to
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Issue 80-June 2022
Source: www.imo.org
IMO policies and procedures, training and employment opportunities for women in the maritime sector have become much more widespread. One way of gauging the success of such policies, procedures and opportunities is through numerical evidence. BIMCO and ICS report published in 2020 revealed that just 1.2% of seafarers are women.
While this figure may be viewed as disappointing, it does represent a rise of almost 50% on 2015 figures. As regards shoreside staff, women are much more strongly represented. Indeed, in some sectors such as the cruise industry, crewing agencies and insurance women sometime outnumber their male colleagues.
