Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Comm 2110 Personal Change
Comm 2110 Personal Change
Comm 2110 Personal Change
Communications 2110-401
Submitted to: Dr. Carolyn Clark
Date: 11/28/2014
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Overview:
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With this paper I will analyze a communication behavior Ive been working
on. By improving how to respond skillfully in the workplace, at home with family
and with friends to maintain valuable interpersonal relationships. I will further
describe the unwanted communication pattern by explaining two scenarios and
the consequences of each scenario. Ill describe in detail the methods I used to
tackle the problem. Furthermore, I will outline the obstacles I encountered while
changing this habit, and what actions I used to implement the behavior. I will
conclude the paper with results of the project by explaining the positive and
negative consequences throughout the semester and explain what I learned from
this communication change.
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Unwanted Communication Pattern:
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by saying, Your a cosigner and are equally responsible, also. I need to set up a
payment with you. She responded by repeating what she said before then hung
up.
Another time when I did not respond in an effective manner was when I
was having a conversation with my sister about what we needed to do for our
annual Christmas dinner party coming up. It is a tradition in our family to have a
Christmas get together with our family, my Aunts family in South Jordan and
our Uncles family in Kearns. Each family takes a turn to host the Christmas
dinner. This year is my familys turn and my mother put my siblings and I in
charge to host this year. My sister was letting me know that she could not
participate in hosting the dinner party because she made plans to volunteer
somewhere for the holiday. I told her we all need to be there because its a
tradition. My sister told me she could probably leave early to make the party, I
told her she better do that. She got upset and said, She doesn't have to do
anything, then I responded by saying, Whatever then we changed the subject.
This wasnt effective at all because nothing was resolved.
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Strategies:
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Constraints:
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The goal os a critical listener is to use information to make a choice. (Beebe and
Beebe, p. 140). Communication takes work and if I wasnt willing to communicate
then things did not work but theres a difference between communicating and
communication effectively. Interpersonal communication is a distinctive,
transactional form of human communication involving mutual influence, usually
for the purpose of managing relationships. (Beebe and Beebe, p. 3) It was hard
for me to stop myself sometimes because I wanted to be right most of the time
but then I would reflect upon those difficult conversations and realize that I
didn't feel better afterwards and I didn't like that feeling of unresolved conflict.
Another challenge that would come up while trying to improve responding
to others is not to jump to conclusions and assume the worst of another person. I
know how I need to consider how other people react is different from how I
would react in a certain situation.
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Implementation:
When I set out this goal I didnt plan on the changes effecting me
emotionally. Learning to change my responding skills has given me the
confidence to speak openly. Ive had to question the purpose of communicating
effectively to understand how applying communicating effectively helps much
more. One pivotal change of communication behavior was when I learned about
applying the Appraisal Theory of Emotion during one of the Chapter Discussions,
I wrote about an experience I encountered with using the Appraisal Theory of
Emotion:
similar situation with one of my co-workers who came to me upset with another
co-worker sharing private information about her on a public system at work. My
co-worker wanted to send an email to my supervisor and the other co-worker, the
email was vicious and emotional. I remember the Appraisal Theory of Emotion
and mentioned how it applied to me. I asked her to take a step back and think
about sending the email because her job wasnt worth losing. She understood and
chose not to send the email after calming down.
After the scenario with the situation with the cosigner I had at work, I
listened to the call with my supervisor. I felt like her hanging up wasnt solving
anything but I questioned what I could have done more to help the situation
where both parties would be satisfied. When I listened to the call I thought it was
a tough situation and tried to put myself in the cosigners shoes, then I thought
about what I needed to do as a Senior Account Manager to help the cosigner. I
wanted to excel at work. I realized I couldn't turn back time with that particular
cosigner but moving forward I could come up with some sort of talk-off with
similar cosigners. In this particular situation being an ambush listener does not
help so learning to not respond in an ambush manner would help, too. Using the
strategy to be patient then respond would help in the long run. I came up with a
talk off to say something of this sort:
I respect that you want to reach out to the borrower, my concern is we have
been unable to reach the borrower and we have a limited amount of time to work with
you to avoid the loan from charging off.
I then used this to paraphrase when speaking with cosigners and I got
positive feedback with my calls. With saying this, I would offer to 3-way call
borrowers with the cosigners on the line to attempt to reach the borrower if we
were unable to reach the borrower if we were unable to reach the borrower then
the cosigner would try but I would be clear as far as the goal of the loan and what
we both needed to do to resolve the delinquency. By social decentering and
using..A cognitive process in which you take into account another persons
thoughts, values, background and perspectives as you interact with him or her.
(Beebe and Beebe, p. 136) I understood where customers were coming from
because I have a personal financial life too.
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Results
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Recommendations:
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Yes, I will continue this course of action because it has proven a positive
over negative outcome. Im glad I chose the goal to improve my responding skills
because I can use them anywhere I go, well if they understand the English
language that is. With my present line of work, I realize the impact I have on my
co-workers around me, too. I notice when I say certain things that help my calls,
my peers use similar verbiage. We do not relate and then talk, but relate in talk.
(Beebe and Beebe, p. 10) When I need to modify my actions, yes I would be
willing to try a new process or implement other strategies to respond more
effectively. This project has given me the confidence to not be afraid to try new
things, I need to analyze procedures and think smart about what my objective is
and weigh options as pros and cons then make a decision. Thank you for this
opportunity.
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Works Cited
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