Personal Change Report 1

Personal Change Report

Jordan E. Durham

Salt Lake Community College

Interpersonal Communications - COMM 2110

Alisa Brousseau

April 22nd, 2022

Personal Change Report 2

Overview

For this project, I decided to work on improving my active listening skills and providing

more balance to my conversations. I selected a handful of strategies that I felt would best help

me in this endeavor. For active listening, I decided to listen to challenging material to practice

using my listening muscles and make a conscious effort to listen through mental check-ins. To

improve the balance of my conversations, I opted to ask appropriate questions and paraphrase

accurately. It was challenging to remember the goals I wanted to accomplish and I expected more

of myself in the first week so I had to adjust my strategies to fit with the level I was at. With

practice, the strategies became easier to implement in my regular communication interactions

and I remembered to put my phone away to avoid distraction while also paraphrasing and asking

questions of the speaker. I saw improvement in my ability to listen and positive improvements in

my relationships as they felt heard and seen. I plan to continue using the strategies I selected

while adding a goal to stop interrupting in conversation. Overall, the experience was very

positive and I highly recommend that others follow these steps to improve their communication.

Unwanted Communication Pattern

I chose to work on two separate issues over the last several weeks. Firstly, I wanted to get

better at active listening. In the past, I was easily distracted by both external and internal noise

and “distractions make it difficult to sustain attention to a message” (Beebe et al., 2020, section

5.3). For example, one time my fiance was talking to me about something that happened at work

while we waited for dinner to finish cooking. I pulled out my phone to check the time left for the

vegetables, and got distracted by some notifications. My fiance stopped talking and when I

looked up, I realized I had missed most of what he said because of the internal noise about

worrying about the timer and the external noise of notifications coming in. I asked him if he
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could repeat what he told me and admitted to having ignored him. Thankfully he was willing, but

there are plenty of times when this behavior has caused people to get frustrated with me.

The second issue that I decided to work on was to balance out conversations so that the

give and take was equal. I have a tendency to be a self-absorbed listener and “rather than

focusing on the speaker’s message, [I] think about what [I am] going to say next” (Beebe et al.,

2020, section 5.3). When people talk to me, I am happy to answer their questions and discuss my

own thoughts and feelings, however, I struggle to come up with questions to ask others to hear

more about them. I have often worried that people walk away from our conversations feeling like

I don’t care about them enough to ask them questions, when I am happy to hear them tell me all

about everything in their lives but I don’t know the best way to ask. I have one friend who is a

wonderful listener. She is attentive and asks lots of questions about my life. We don’t get

together very often so when we do, we hang out for several hours and chat. One of our last

dinners together, we talked a lot about my kid and my divorce, which was fairly recent. When I

drove home, I realized that I didn’t hear much about her own life. I got no update on her work or

how things were with her husband. I felt really bad that I hadn’t asked her any questions at all,

and just spent the time venting about my own life.

Strategies

One of the strategies I decided to implement was to practice listening to challenging

material. Practicing a skill is a way to maintain or improve upon it because the skill will

deteriorate otherwise. The textbook specifically said, “listening to difficult, challenging material

can sharpen skills, so good listeners practice by listening” (Beebe et al., 2020, section 5.4, para.

20). Since active listening is one of my bigger struggles, I decided I needed to practice it

regularly. I think of it like communication weight lifting, the more you do it, the stronger you
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get. My theory is that if I listen to podcasts regularly that contain more challenging content, I

should be able to get better at listening.

The second strategy I wanted to work on was to make a conscious and mindful effort to

listen. This strategy is meant to set the tone by telling your brain that it is about to listen. The

textbook says, “to be a better listener, you should stop focusing on your own mental messages

and be other-oriented” (Beebe et al., 2020, section 5.4, para. 6). This strategy is more of a mental

note and reminder that listening is going to happen and that it is important to stay focused. The

regular mental check-ins while listening should help keep me on track.

The third strategy I decided to implement was more paraphrasing of what I understand

while conversing. Since one of my struggles was worrying that conversations were unbalanced

due to my self-centered communication focus, I felt that paraphrasing would be a good way to

show that I was listening and absorbing what was being shared with me. As it states in the

textbook, “accurately and appropriately paraphrasing… not only increases message accuracy, but

also enhances the quality of the relationship between the speaker and the listener” (Beebe et al.,

2020, section 5.5, para. 8). I figured that a conscious effort to paraphrase would ensure that the

speakers felt heard, which is what I wanted to improve on.

The final strategy I wanted to do was to ask appropriate questions. I regularly find myself

in conversations where I don’t think of asking questions about other people, but I know that I

need to if a normal conversation is going to happen. Aside from being a way to help the speaker

to narrate their story better, “asking appropriate and thoughtful questions also communicates that

you were indeed listening and interested in what your partner had to say” (Beebe et al., 2020,

section 5.5, para. 4). The goal then, was to first practice creating questions for the podcasts I

decided to listen to. I wanted to come up with questions I would ask the podcast speakers, if
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given the opportunity. Then I wanted to continue this by making sure I was asking at least one

question for each listening interaction so I could show that I cared about the other person and

wanted to hear more from them.

Constraints

One of the main challenges I faced was remembering that I wanted to implement these

strategies in the first place. The strategy of making a conscious effort to listen is considered part

of the “pre-interaction phase” (Beebe et al., 2020, section 5.4, para 6) so when I found myself in

a communication interaction that I hadn’t planned for, it was tough to utilize that strategy in

advance, and I needed to remind myself to listen during the conversation which lessened my

ability to focus on the speaker. Starting a new goal is challenging because habits are formed over

time. After so long of communicating a certain way, it was difficult to not slip into the old habits.

Additionally, my first few attempts at listening to challenging material proved very

difficult indeed. Using the same analogy of weight-lifting, it was like starting 20 pounds heavier

than I was able to lift. I was very ambitious and expected much more of myself from the start

than I could have possibly given. I put myself in situations where lots of noise got in the way,

like running errands while listening to my challenging material and the internal noise of to-do

lists made it impossible to focus on the podcast.

Implementation

The specific things I wanted to implement to work on my strategies were to listen to a

podcast episode three times a week, come up with three questions per episode, put my phone

away during face to face interactions, while paraphrasing and asking questions of the speaker to
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keep the focus of the conversation on them. I also let those close to me know that I was doing

this so they could provide feedback if they felt it would be needed.

My first experience with listening to a podcast was a disaster. I tried to listen while I ran

errands so that I could kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, when I was close to my

destination my focus switched to the mental list of things to do, and I was no longer attentive to

the podcast. I realized that I was not at that skill level yet and needed to make sure I started

listening to a podcast in situations where I could focus all my attention on the speaker. Once I

adjusted for that, I noticed improvements. I was then able to add simple tasks, like folding

laundry, while listening. Toward the end of the six weeks, I began listening to shorter podcasts on

my errands so that they were done before I would arrive. This was a successful modification, as

well. While I had originally set the goal to come up with three questions per episode, I ended up

not doing it because I completely forgot about that being part of my implementation plan.

Putting away my phone for face to face interactions ended up being a relatively easy

practice to implement, especially with the people I told that I was working on the goal. It was

challenging at first to remember, but eventually it became easy to do. There was one instance

while I was out to lunch with my friend and she got a phone call. I pulled out my phone to check

on notifications while I waited for her call to finish, and after that I forgot to put my phone back

in my purse. After it got left out, I became distracted by the notifications that popped up. Since

that experience, I made sure my phone was out of sight so that I wasn’t tempted by the many

distractions it provides.

Paraphrasing and asking questions were both strategies that I worried the most about but

they ended up being added to my communication interactions very naturally. When my fiance

got hired for a new job and was excited to share with me, I made sure to ask questions about
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what his pay would be like, the benefits he would get, and what hours he would work. I noticed

that it helped him to share more than he normally would. I was also given many chances to

paraphrase what he said to me over the week, but the most important was probably when he was

having issues with the mother of his child. By paraphrasing what I heard, I was able to

understand the conversation he had with her much more clearly and he was able to get a lot of

negative emotions off his chest.

Since these strategies were not part of my usual communication, it was challenging to get

used to implementing them but over time, the old habits died out enough that the new habits

could thrive. It made it easier to remember my goals and get over that particular constraint and

more successfully implement the strategies I chose.

Results

Active listening was the main struggle I felt I needed to work on. By focusing on these

goals, I have seen positive improvements in my ability to listen, just as was suggested in the text.

I saw a direct improvement in my ability to focus on challenging material over the weeks and

even reached a point where my usual podcast selection was now easy material. I have also seen

improvements in my relationships, particularly with my fiancé and my son. My kid is way more

excited to talk with me which not only shows that his speech therapy is helping, but also shows

that I am showing him that I can listen to him. My fiancé has always been a quiet person but I’ve

been able to get him to talk much more about things by asking questions and just listening. I

noticed that I tend to do the majority of the talking in my relationships, so these goals have

helped me to step back and let the quiet people have a turn.

Since I only saw positive outcomes, I feel very satisfied with my attempted changes to

improve my listening and responding skills. The quality of my relationships has improved, my
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ability to listen has improved, and I have more skills in my arsenal that I can continue to build

upon. Aside from that, I also know that the skills can be successfully implemented in my life

which, I believe, is the best outcome.

Recommendations

Considering how positive this experience has been for me, I will continue to use these

strategies in my communication going forward. If I want to maintain the positive benefits of

these new strategies, I will need to continue to practice them because “to improve or even

maintain any skill, you need to practice it” (Beebe et al., 2020, section 5.4, para. 20). The one

strategy that needs minor adjustment is listening to challenging material. Since the podcasts are

now easy for me to listen to, I need to add more weight and find material that is more

challenging.

The next strategy I would like to incorporate now is to avoid interruption. I noticed that

in my excitement to ask questions, I was interrupting the flow of the conversation so I want to

work on this aspect. I want to improve on this because interrupting means I “likely miss much of

the meaning of [my] partner’s message as well as disconfirm him or her” (Beebe et al., 2020,

section 5.5, para 15). I want to make sure that my communication partner is able to share their

message and feel that I am confirming their contribution.

Overall, I feel like this activity was highly beneficial. I have seen the improvements in

myself and my relationship, and I hope to continue working on the strategies we learned in our

textbook so that my communication skills can continue to consistently improve.

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References

Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. V. (2020). Interpersonal communication: Relating to

others. Pearson.