Am I a Competent Communicatior What are My Strengths - Essay Example

In case of women, they are more expressive of their emotions while the men tend to bottle themselves up and not let their emotions show to the public, if it can be helped as being emotional can be interpreted as a sign of weakness. The idea is to maintain the stiff upper lip, so to speak. In the cultural upbringing of men and women, this is also evident in how they express themselves. It also depends to great extent on the national culture, on what is generally acceptable behaviors. Culture determines how each gender express their emotions in a culturally-approved manner.

Along these lines, women tend to engage in conversations more than men. Women in a way are wired to be more talkative and the nature of their conversations are matters which in a way are not very much of consequence, such as exchanging secrets, information and gossip. The men engage in banter just for the fun of it, but also in order to size each other up. This is to measure or assess the personality of the other guy, a way of analyzing the capability of the person to whom one is talking to. Women talk just for the sake of talking to be comfortable.

Moreover, culture also exerts a great influence on non-verbal behaviors. This include hand gestures, facial expressions, length of time between the next word or the silent intervals when speaking, body postures, touching the hand or arms, tone of voice and eye movements. In this regard, the verbal expression when speaking to a person could be either be congruent, contradictory or ambiguous with the accompanying non-verbal expressions. This may tend to either deliver the message accurately to the receiver or may be confusing if it is contradictory.

This happens when the verbal message does not coincide with the non-verbal expressions of a person when he or she is talking or speaking to someone, depending of course on a situation. It is therefore very important that we are aware of our non-verbal expressions and gestures. I for one make an extra effort to deliver my message across accurately by making all the right non-verbal gestures coincide with what I am talking about to a particular person. This way, it is not possible to get misconstrued and avoid any misunderstandings that can lead to conflict.

Men and women handle emotions differently and react to them also differently. Most men are afraid or reluctant to wear their emotions on their sleeves or shoulders, so to speak. In women, they are not afraid to express their emotions which is why people tend to say women are sometimes very emotional. Expression of emotions are very evident when it comes to how intimacy is shown to a partner. In this regard, I try to control my emotions whenever possible, as emotions can either be good or bad, depending on how I react to certain situations.

A good example is if my boyfriend tells me “I need to talk to you about something” which can either be interpreted as something exciting and romantic or understood to mean something worse or bad that affects our relationship. My reaction, in terms of physiological changes, can therefore be good, such as happiness or excitement that elevates my emotions or it can be adverse that affects my blood pressure resulting into hypertension, palpitations, nervousness or insomnia. When it comes to managing conflicts, there is also a cultural and gender divide as to how men and women approach conflict resolution. Women