Who am I as a Communicator?

For your blog this week, think about the similarities and differences between how you evaluated yourself as a communicator and how others evaluated you. What is the one thing that surprised you the most? Why? What other insights about communication did you gain this week? Choose at least two to share with others through your blog and consider how each might inform your professional work and personal life.

To complete this assignment I had both of my daughters and my baby sister to complete the assessments. My two daughters are 27 and 29 years old and my youngest sister is 48 years old. The results of the assessments are as follows; for the Listening Styles Profiles, all three assessors including myself placed me in Group 1 which is the people oriented category, for the Communication Anxiety assessment, my score range was between 33 – 34, very comfortable communicating in public settings and with unfamiliar people, and for the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale, my score consistently fell in the Moderate range with a score of 63 from my oldest daughter and my sister and a 67 from myself. But, surprisingly, the score I received from my youngest daughter was a 76! This placed me in the significant category, indicating that I have the potential to move from the position of attacking a person’s disposition to attacking them personally which can be hurtful to the listener. 

Since we were on the phone together while my youngest daughter completed the assessments, this of course prompted a discussion as I was naturally curious as to why her score was so different from the others that were so consistent. Long story short, my daughter brought up a conversation we had regarding a disagreement we had several months back. To make a long story short, I discovered that my high rating of verbal aggressiveness was not due to swearing or delivering direct insults to my daughter, but she experienced hurt feelings because I told her that she should not feel the way she did. She also pointed out that when we did not see eye to eye, my changing the subject was insulting as well because she perceived that as saying that what she had to say was not valid. Other words that I used included telling her that the mature thing to do is this…. And you have to forgive….and you should …..  

During this conversation, I expressed to her that the hurt I caused her was not intentional. This reminded me of the information I learned about microaggressions in my last class, that unintentional subtle messages can be hurtful to others.  

So moving forward, I shared with my daughter that because we are so close, I will always tell her the truth. Since we are both Christians, the foundation for our truth stems from the Bible, so I asked my daughter how she felt about me replacing the “you should/ shouldn’t” with have you considered? My daughter’s response was very positive and she agreed that this approach would be better because it does not attack her perspectives. 

I found this to be very interesting and conclude that the way in which we communicate with others is influenced by who we are, our personal experiences, where we are, and what is going on. O’Hair & Weimann (2009) refer to this as context. Also just as my schemas were at work during this conversation, so were my daughter’s. O’Hair & Weimann (2009), states that schemas consist of gathering new information and processing it in relation to prior experiences which impacts how we perceive and communicate with others.

Ways in which I can apply the assessment results to my professional career is to improve in the area of verbal aggressiveness by being careful not to use subtle words that could be offensive and by allowing people to have their opinions even when I may not agree. Also, although my anxiety level for speaking in public and with unfamiliar people is low, I must not become overconfident to the point of being slack in not being prepared (O' Hair & Weimann, 2009). Lastly, While having a people oriented listening style is great for building relationships with children, families and co workers, I must not allow this to impair my ability to make good judgements about people.While I do not see myself as a trusting person lacking judgement, this was true about me ten years ago. However,several experiences that have been added to my schema has changed that big time.

Seems my personal schemas have impacted this area causing me to be more cautious of people.