Eldred 1

Ethan Eldred
COMM 2110
Relational change project
04/26/2022
Overview
This paper outlines the personal change project I had submitted. My goal was In
conversations with people, I would start to clarify my speech to mitigate misunderstandings in
my conversations with people. I put into play four different strategies from the text which
included working on not being a self-absorbed listener, having missed meanings, Being more
specific in my speech, and empathizing rather than remaining detached to conversations and
people. I have noticed that my speech has become more coherent and the recognition I get from
my significant other has helped tremendously in keeping me consistent. In this I still want to
become more of a Flexible listener rather than a rigid one to help breakaway from always
keeping conversations as objective.

Unwanted Communication Pattern

I have a habit of not entirely taking other peoples stand points into account. This is where
I wanted to mitigate the misunderstandings as I do see it as something that is damaging to the
relationships, I formed around me. I have experienced in conversations completely skipping over
details because I wasn’t taking the other person into consideration, I have not been clear in my
speech and expected people to know what I am talking about and in the following examples you
will see that I ended up making movement

Here are two examples:

 One of the situations occurred with my significant other when we had gotten into a
disagreement about the use of the word resigned. In our relationship we’ve had growing
opportunities and challenges we had to overcome on both ends. However, during one of
our conversations she had stated she had “resigned” to the fact a certain habit would have
to be broken. I started an argument because I wasn’t fond of the fact that she had used the
word resign, I began to lecture her on the context of it because I was worried that she
would come to resent be as generally I had found resign to be a negatively charged word.
However, I thought I was helping explain my position but in this I became detached from
the conversation and was engage in a self-absorbed manner. This caused the situation to
be blown out of proportion and I ended causing more damage than I recognized because I
wasn’t taking into context what the word had meant for her.

 Another situation occurred but this centers around clarifying my speech and being
specific. At work we were getting raises due to the market increase in demand, and it was
during this that me and a co-worker began to have a conversation about how much his
was. Using the fact’s he gave me I turned around and found I should have been getting
paid around two dollars more. He wasn’t pleased with this and as I found out later my co-
worker wasn’t aware I hadn’t had my conversation with management about mine. This
co-worker went to management upset I was being paid more and this led to a
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conversation with me that I had to explain what happened. This though had ruined my
relationship with this co-worker, I had tried to make amends on the misunderstanding,
but he focused on what had been said to a degree that if I had been more carful, I
wouldn’t have hurt that relationship if I had been more specific.

In these situations, I was being self-absorbed, much more so in the former example, and in them
I wasn’t using the skills and keeping them in mind. This led to a much grimmer outcome for the
latter and luckily a fixable mistake with my significant other. If I had kept the strategies in mind,
I would have been able to turn both conversations to a much more positive image.

Strategies

When I had made the decision to change this communication habit, I initially thought about
multiple strategies, but I had felt the issue ran much deeper. I wanted to remember that a
conversation is not just about my experiences but is a sharing of experiences. So, I chose the
following strategies to deploy a more other oriented outlook.

The first strategy I focused on was stopping myself from becoming a self-absorbed listener
(Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p. 123) and focus on what the other person is saying without
trying to formulate my own response right away. In my conversations I had tended to rely on
selective listening (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p. 123) as working for a massive tech company
I began to view people with the expectation that they would have the same level technical knowledge
or meet up with what I felt the minimum knowledge was. These pre-formed biases I felt were
causing stress in my relationships, Choosing the self-absorbed listener (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond,
2019, p. 123) was imperative as the idea behind stopping that interna dialogue and focusing in would
allow me to garner more positive experiences in my relationships.

My second strategy I focused on was being aware of possible missed meanings (Beebe, Beebe
& Redmond, 2019, p.157) and focusing mostly on the concept bypassing (Beebe, Beebe &
Redmond, 2019, p.158) which is one reason missed meanings can happen. One explanation to
this the book had used was Ivan Pavlov’s experiment on dogs, which conditioned them to
salivate at the sound of a bell. It reminds us that sometimes we forget the symbols behind words
because we are so used to hearing them. This concept was explored in my first example as I had
read into a connotation without taking into consideration my partners views. If I had kept this in
mind, I should have asked or been more mindful of the understanding of the words.

Thirdly, I focused on being specific (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.159) which is close to
the last one but is centralized on the language we use. For myself it is being to specific as we get
into restricted code (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.159) which is a set of words,
specifically jargon (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.159), that someone may not understand.
This is a result of me being not other oriented and sometimes it is the opposite and I get to
ecstatic in conversations, I then end up using complex words but also the jargon I use at
regarding the devices we service and the components technical names. The way I combated this
was to focus on being other oriented and reminding myself consistently to slow down when
speaking. I even found myself asking questions regarding what I had talked about at work to
make sure that I hadn’t done anything, However I do mind myself to be careful in the questions I
ask as I don’t want to demean or make people feel as though I’m looking down on them.
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Lastly, I chose to Empathize rather than remain detached (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019,
p.169) as I have a tendency to get into rushes and without thinking I would say things in a
demanding way Ex. “I need to get into this drawer.” versus asking them kindly such as “May I
get into this drawer?” (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.169) and in changing this I have
found a much warmer reception from people. Even during the busiest times at work, I would try
to remind myself that and people tended to treat each other better in small ways. I found in
developing this skill though I had in a way also improved the three other strategies I chose
because this was something I had to remind myself of during each example. Such as one of my
Journals point out, at the start of the semester this wasn’t something I had been using so much
and it wasn’t until the third week I started using this strategy. Once I did start using it after the
first time, I went into it with a different mindset that had increased all of the future interactions.

Constraints

I had encountered multiple constraints through out this personal change project but the most
challenging one to overcome was my standpoint. I had originally thought I was really good at
putting myself into other people’s shoes and it has been this semester taking multiple classes,
specifically my literature class, that I began to realize I was incredibly wrong. I had been
working on this but to an extreme and as I learned I wasn’t right in a lot of my assumptions. And
this was incredibly hard to break but also has been incredibly insightful as it pushed me in all
aspects of life but mostly in areas where it counted.

The second big constraint I found which I am still struggling with is getting over my assumptions
on knowledge levels for people. At work I can have patience for people, I can spend hours with
someone who wants to learn from me, however when people at work come in rudely, I do go into
a defensive mode and I fall back to using jargon (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.159). This
has detrimental effects as people who are already frustrated don’t like to be confused. In
breaking this habit, I found myself trying to be other oriented and focus on the needs of others
because in doing so it helps me align with people and in most scenarios de-escalate the situation.

Implementation

At the start of this project, I hadn’t taken it honestly to seriously. For the first few times I really
didn’t do much or try that hard with the strategies. This changed when I felt the ramifications of
a bad interaction at work, and it left a sour taste in my mouth. The following day was when I
chose to focus on Empathize rather than remain detached (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019,
p.169) and it changed how I started treating this project and started taking it seriously. The first
constraint is what I could consider as my greatest feat that I’m proud of myself for coming over,
however I know that it is going to be a constant learning opportunity for me. When I took this
project to heart, I had set the goal to make the communication I have at work, in my home life
and in my relationship with my significant other.

The First group I focused on was in my personal relationship and I was able to keep in mind how
I can assume people are expected to know things. It has affected how I talk and really is hard
when it affects my personal life, so in overcoming this I had focused on this since I would need
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to be vulnerable enough to admit when I did something but also to ask questions if I am
confused. I had the best success here acknowledging that every conversation I have and all
situations have different context and depending on this context it can be unique. (Beebe, Beebe
& Redmond, 2019, p.169) I had to always remind myself that especially if emotions were high
but being that I started these conversations it made things a little easier since we both generally
can be vulnerable together.

However, when I started this within work I found a very interesting change that most of the
people at work did tend to notice. But it wasn’t the change I was expecting. The change that
occurred was a better way of explaining things and a more friendly prose style that my
management took notice of and put in charge of training as they saw it fit. Later in this project,
only three weeks ago to be exact, turned it into a full-blown position because of some of the
changes I had made. This is common within apple to have new positions created pretty often so I
the grand scheme it wasn’t big but for a personal goal I do attribute it to keeping these strategies
in mind. Needless to say, the changes I had made at work was in the day to day conversations I
have with my co-workers. They are an incredibly diverse bunch, which made it perfect for me to
focus on missed meanings (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.157).

Some situations I had focused on this in while at work was with the new trainees when it had
first stepped into the role. To give some information to have this make sense we were discussing
the new iPhone 13 pro models and how they differed on repairs from prior models. In this we
were discussing removing a vital component that if mishandled would make the phone no longer
usable and we would be liable to swap the device out. One step in this is regarding the different
type of cellular units you can find across the world since we do service devices purchased in a
vast majority of countries. The key here was whether the phone had a specific cable that we
would tear if not aware of. I had assumed during this everyone was aware of the difference as the
modules went over them thoroughly but also doesn’t state it in clear cut terms which is what
causes a lot of confusion during training. This led to a disagreement between me and another
new trainee who had stated that the training was telling them smothering different.

Having been in my role for close to three years I had become to comfortable and I began to
become a self-absorbed listener (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p. 123) and was combative in
my speech. However, I was able to catch myself and stop the issue from getting out of hand, in this I
had to take a step back and understand that I could be completely wrong regarding the differences.
This led to me being less combative, but I knew later I would need to apologize because the damage
had already been done. In a funny twist of events that I was able to lead into an apology, was that the
module had it labeled incorrectly and had a repeat of names. At the end I was able to use the steps
outlined in the book to help make an effective apology. (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p. 173)

Halfway through the project I had one of my bigger failures when I wasn’t able to keep my strategies
in mind. I had been having a conversation with my mother about work and some issues I was having
with a personal relationship that was approaching a hostile work environment. I had been taking the
appropriates steps at work and had reported the incident. However, my manager pulled me aside and
discussed it with me. I had kept face and was able to make it out of the conversation but to say things
were bad was an understatement. I had brought it up to my mom and she kept telling me that this is
how corporations are, to quit my job, if I’m unhappy there to walk away, Etc. In a way I recognized
she had been a self-absorbed listener, but I also did the same thing, I had gotten defensive and we had
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an argument over what we had felt was right to do in the situation. I had been selfish in not realizing
my mother works for an airline corporation, but I also recognized that she hadn’t heard me fully out.

I didn’t apologize right away; I had stepped away from the conversation and went to the gym and
then to my significant others. I wasn’t home till the next day and my mom had been short with me
and didn’t say more, So I started the conversation on an apology, but I flipped it around and
explained my side of things and practiced Empathize rather than remain detached (Beebe,
Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.169) but still at the end of it my mom wasn’t thrilled with it. It took
a conversation from my dad for her to finally listen, but I have since then been able to reconcile
with her and let her take responsibility in her role in it.

Results

By the end of the project, I am happy with the progress I have made. In conjunction with this
class, I had a literature class. This really helped me start to realize how off base I had been in my
open mindedness but through the two they really helped me make it almost to my goal. As stated
in the student example, I have the “human nature” side of things to still really focus on and not
fully wrangle in but enough that I don’t lose sight and become self centered in my relationships.

The last idea this project imparted on me was the longevity and the slow way in which bad habit
creep up on us without us knowing. This project taught me to that trying to be mindful and
having awareness in conversations allows also a level of freedom in the conversations. Keeping
aware of my goals and knowing how far I have come is good because even after the class, while
keeping these strategies in mind, I will be able to use it as a launch pad to make it to the goal
fully.

Recommendations

I intend to fully keep to my strategies and keep them in mind especially when an interaction is
turning sour. I have seen the biggest impact inside of work and my personal relationship with my
significant other, however I want to more implement these with my family to allow a better
relationship with them.

One strategy I will be adapting in the future is unchecked emotions. I am good currently at
putting aside my emotions but that will lead to what Beebe refers to as emotional noise (Beebe,
Beebe & Redmond, 2019, p.123). In separating yourself from your emotions it isn’t possible to
entirely do so, and I already felt the ramifications of it within my own family and this is
something I want to implement and work into my communication style as this would improve
the relationships I have within my family.
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Works Cited

Beebe, Beebe, & Redmond. (2019). Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others.

9th Ed. Boston: Pearson Education/Allyn & Bacon.