Communication Week 4

·         Blog Assignment: Week 4<p>

 

 

This week our job was to observe ourselves as communicators and also have others evaluate us as a communicator. I will be the first to admit that it can be hard to be truly honest when self evaluating. We are either too hard on ourselves or make things up to look better in other people’s eyes. The people I had evaluate me were my daughter and a co-worker.My daughter was very honest with how I communicate and I like that she didn't hold anything back from me. She helped me to see that as I have gotten older I have become more outspoken and this tends to get me in trouble sometimes. I definitely noticed that I was harder on myself than they were on me by the scores I received. While I was taking the tests I was really surprised at how I was scoring myself because I didn’t think I was aggressive in any way towards others when talking to them. I do admit that as I have gotten older I have become more vocal and not always in a good way. This class is making me take a closer look at how I communicate with people I know well and people I have more casual interactions with. After going through these tests I can see how imperative it is that I build better communication skills in my professional interactions. I do see that I have differences with communicating with adults and children. Most of the time I am pretty good with children but not with adults when it comes to communicating effectively. One area that I would like to share is how I communicate with people from different cultures, I have noticed that I get impatient when I don’t understand something and try to change the topic to something that is easier for me. This is not fair to them and I have tried to overcome it and work towards really listening to what they have to say and learning from what they have to tell me. The other thing that I found is my interactions between professionals and family-I know these two are very different types of communicating but I need to be cognizant of being empathetic with both groups and not getting frustrated and become an aggressive communicator. I know if I continue to learn from my mistakes I will become a better communicator.

Week 3: Communication

I believe I do communicate differently with the various cultures that I come into contact with everyday. I feel I use more non-verbal’s such as hand actions and body language in these situations. I work with many people that speak with either Spanish or Pilipino and sometimes it is hard to communicate only verbally. I try to learn the basic phrases for the languages that are used in my classroom, but I find it difficult to learn and understand some languages.

Every time we moved while in the military, I wanted to learn the new language but have found that I am better at understanding and playing the translator than speaking the language. By learning to read body language and other non-verbal cues I can become a better communicator over time or at least this is my hope.

Week Two-Communicating

Blog Week 2

What do you think the characters' relationships are based on the ways in which they are communicating?

For this episode of “The Office”, the members of the office are at their desks working while Andy and David are in the conference room having what seems to be a heated conversation. It seems like everyone else is trying to look busy, but they keep looking at the closed door. The facial expressions that I see make me believe that nobody really agrees with each other about whatever is going on. The body language and expressions throughout suggest that most of the staff is uncomfortable about the argument that is going on. Andy then brings in former friends of Erin and Pete’s and this seems to make the whole office uncomfortable. What are they feeling and expressing based on the nonverbal behavior you are observing?

It seems that everyone is pretending and hiding things from each other the whole episode and do not like what Andy is doing.

What assumptions did you make about the characters and plot based on the ways in which you interpreted the communication you observed?

I assumed that Andy was over reacting to something in the office, but didn’t know what or why. Andy is the office manager and I assumed he should be acting in a more professional way when it came to dealing with a personal situation at work. He should have set down in the beginning and asked questions and not played the jealous boyfriend. Would your assumptions have been more correct if you had been watching a show you know well?

I think if I were watching a familiar show my assumptions would have been correct because I know what to expect from each member of the cast. I can anticipate their reactions and understand their body movements most of the time.

Learning to Communicate with Others! Step One

Blog week 1

The person that I feel is competent with his communication skills would be my husband because of the job he does. Being a government contractor he has to be able to be diplomatic but also get the job done. I have listened to him have conversations with both managers and people that work under him. He always listens to what the person has to say, and asks questions for clarification when needed. I have also had the opportunity to read papers and emails for him before being sent and again he is always very tactful and to the point. I would like to become more confident in communicating with others in this way because I know I need to be able to talk with many people in order to fully care for my families. I think that if I just let my husband help me along with this class I can master my communication skills over the course of this class and beyond.

It is so important for us to be able to communicate in our job because we have so many people we need to communicate with daily. My hope is to learn from my husband, co-workers, friends, classmates and instructors as much as possible about the correct way to communicate. It is so important to think before we speak and I have found that the older I get the more I forget this simple rule!