Communication Self-Assessment - Essay Example

Sur Communication Self-Assessment and Communication Goal First, I’d like to begin by saying that the quote that serves the epigraph to the first chapter in Wood’s seminal book is exactly about my experience as a communicator. Some time before I opened this book, I had already started to realize that had I communicated differently in this or that situation in the past, I would have reaped totally different outcomes. Indeed, Anthony Robbins was right when he concluded that “the way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives” (Robbins qtd in Wood 1). While reading “Communication in Our Lives”, I found so many things that needed improvement that I eagerly delved into the assessment challenge. Assessing my skills objectively will help me enhance my strengths and remove my weaknesses as a communicator. Therefore, I find the task completely fascinating. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of my strong and weak qualities and skills in terms of communication. This will be done in several communication contexts, notably those I feel are the most important for me. Also, examples will be provided that will help make my assessment evidence-based and quite objective (as much as it is possible, of course). Besides, this paper will outline the principal goal that I will set for myself as an effective communicator once the adequate assessment is completed. Communication Self-Assessment According to Julia Wood communication, as the process of creating and interpreting various meanings in human interaction, occurs in in a range of contexts (Wood 1). In this paper, I will focus on three of these: interpersonal communication, listening, and intercultural communication. In self-assessment, I will be guided by the theoretical background on communication contexts from Wood’s “Communication in Our Lives”, personal observations and feelings, as well as objective results of credible tests found in available scholarly sources. For a start, the interpersonal communication context refers to communication that takes place between people (unlike intrapersonal communication which means communication within one’s self) (Wood12). The continuum of interpersonal communication may be described as the one that ranges from highly impersonal to highly interpersonal communication. The former takes place when we ignore somebody or act as if he or she were an object; the latter is represented by Buber’s “I-Thou” model which suggests treating another person “as a unique and sacred individual” (Wood 12). In the middle, there is an individual’s communication within his or her social roles. Importantly, this type of communication is believed to be “the lifeblood of close friendships and romantic relationships” (Wood13). To assess myself in terms of interpersonal communication skills, I have used Spitzberg & Cupach’s Self-Assessment tool. It can be said that according to the scale offered by the scholars, my interpersonal communication competence is slightly higher than average: on the scale from 18 to 90 points I scored 61. Specifically, I am rather motivated to sustain effective communication (27 of 30 points). Knowledge of how to act is just 22 points out of 30, while my communication skill is 23 out of 30. I have high adaptability potential (15 of 15), high conversation involvement rate (14 of 15), and low conversation management competency (7 out 15). Besides, my effectiveness as a goal-achiever in communication has been rather low (5 out of 15), whereas my empathic skills are quite high (14 out of 15). Similarly, my ability to meet people’s demands in communication is not bad (12 out of 15). Therefore, my strongest points in intercultural communication are involvement, adaptability, empathy, and motivation. Just average skills are knowledge of how to act, communication skills, and ability to meet people’s expectations. As for my weaknesses, it appears that I need to considerably improve my skills of conversation management and achieving goals in conversation ( my lowest scores). While this assessment may have some subjective colouring, in most cases it represents the objective picture. I am a good communicator in average everyday contexts, yet if I happen to communicate with people that are hostile or non-cooperative I may fail to achieve the goals of communication. Specifically, it is particularly hard for me to manage the conversation when my interlocutor gets quite aggressive. For example, I used to have few situations of this kind with my ex-partner. When I could not convince him not to do some either irrational (to my mind) or immoral (to my mind, too) things, and he would go on doing the way he wanted, I was usually nervous and started to hurl insults at him. Sometimes, I would cry and call him some bad names. Interestingly, that never helped. My partner would do the way he had planned in 99 cases out of 100. The remaining one he would just postpone that till “better times”. Similarly, it was very hard for me to communicate with my ex-boss. That was a middle-aged woman who desperately wanted me out of the job. I had been accepted for the job by my previous boss, her greatest rival, so she would tell lies about me and harass me in my workplace. As she started the conversation with untruthful information (e.g. “yesterday you were late for work” while I did not have a working day at all and was not supposed to come), I would just calmly respond by saying no it is not true, but could not manage the conversation the way that would be beneficial for me. I just could not imagine how to deal with the person who tells me her own lies about myself. I also found it hard to sustain positive relationship with few people from my workplace who were negative about my success. Once I got a reward, those people would get furious. My positive attitude to them did not help, surprisingly. As for the listening aspect of communication, this has been very important in any conversational context. By my own perception, I can speak of myself as an average listener. My biggest plus is my empathy since I sincerely try to understand the person I communicate with and often find myself compassionate to people. I would ask additional questions and show my reaction by non-verbal and verbal means. Yet, I may often be quite unreserved and interrupt people. For example, this often happens in situations with my mother. Mom loves to explain everything in detail and sometimes it is hard for me to listen that long, so I start interrupting with attempts to summarize what she says. Or sometimes I feel so excited about the subject that I may interrupt the speaker. Yet, this mostly happens with very close people, and very rarely in formal context. Interestingly, the results of the assessment offered by the Mc-Graw Hill quiz, too, point out that I am an average listener (scored 50 out of 70 possible points). My weakest points are interruption and forming an opinion before the speaker finishes talking. At the same time, I am good at showing interest, organizing information, and maintaining interest (“Management: Self-Assessment”). Well, this seems to be true. Finally, assessing my intercultural communication, I may say it is average as well. On the one hand, I make every effort to avoid stereotyping or biased perceptions, as well as speak or at least understand a few languages. On the other hand, I may sometimes fail to recognize some cultural signs, which means I still have to learn about cultural peculiarities of some nationalities. For instance, when I happened to talk to some Spaniards one day, I found them standing very close to me. I thought they were acting in intimidating or harassing way. That seemed weird, especially given the tone of our talk. I discovered later, the proximity between speakers in Spain is different from that in other nations. They stand closer to each other when communicating than Americans do. It seems, twice as close as we do. Communication Goal Based on communication self-assessment, it may be said that I have to improve my communication skills a lot. I have decided to set the following communication goal for myself: to learn to be an excellent listener. In order to achieve this, I will need to watch myself during the conversation so as to avoid interrupting other people. On the other hand, I will learn to postpone my evaluation till the end of the speaker’s speech. To evaluate whether or not I have achieved my goal, I will put down the critical observations of myself in a special diary. I would fix how many times I interrupted/ not interrupted a person, and write down whether I managed to cast off the thoughts of evaluation before the end of the speech. Conclusion In summary, this paper provided the overview of my communications kills. It appears that I am an average communicator who is particularly interested in maintaining effective communication but lacks certain communicative skills. The communication goal set for the nearest future is to learn to be a good listener. Works Cited “Management: Self-Assessment”. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. N.d. Web. 10 Feb 2013. http://www.mhhe.com/business/management/buildyourmanagementskills/updated_flash/topic13b/quiz.html. “Spitzberg & Cupach’s interpersonal communication competence”. Austin Community College. N.d. Web. 10 Feb 2013. http://www.austincc.edu/colangelo/1318/interpersonalcommunicationcompetence.htm. Wood, Julia. Communication in our lives. Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. Read More