Interpersonal Communication - Coursework Example

Interpersonal Communication Part one Question one Many interpersonal relationships break because people are very poor communicators. It is quite hard to find effective communicators who take into consideration the elements of the communication process (Adler and Proctor 25). When I communicator with my younger brother I must listen to him when he is talking through nodding to show I get his point, I maintain eye contact to ensure I get all that he wants to say so that I do not misinterpret him. When responding to his questions or the issues that he raises I consider his thinking and his level of knowledge and select the best words that would make him understand the concept or issue that he asked. In presenting the ideas I do it in simple terms and I do not complicate the issue because I need him to get a given viewpoint and not to introduce multiple perspectives that will confuse him. I listen to him and put myself in his situation and try to understand what he wants to say and sometimes help him in passing the point across just to show that I am with him. I doing this I also am aware that my viewpoints may influence him so I give him information that is general which can help him make a decision on his own. Question two I have always thought of myself as a leader in everything I do. Be it in class or in other activities outside classwork. My friends always tell me that I am born a leader as I usually find my way around things even when people are stuck I find ways of going about the issue and in the end I manage to salvage the situation. This has affected the way I communicate because in the first place I am usually very confident when I approach situations. I speak with authority and I feel I have the necessary facts to support my point. In the end people agree with me easily and this makes me feel like am really a leader as they usually tell me. I feel that the self-fulfilling prophesy is real because I have been called several times by my friends to help because of the belief they have in me that I can do it and I can lead them to achieve something worthwhile. Answering these questions does not change anything because I already think and know that I am a leader. I think of a friend of mine as quite intelligent and creative in many ways. He usually amazes me with how he comes up with solutions to problems. I usually tell him about this verbally and through giving him tests to prove it. When he passes them he feel good about it and this reinforces his perception of my prophesy and makes him see it as real. Answering these questions has made me think that maybe it is my thinking and the situation may not be true. Question three Recently we were at a friend’s party where many of us attended the birthday party. Most of the people who attended the party were young and just my age. There were several new people around and so I got to meet and interact with some. In my interaction with them I posed as a humble person and quite outgoing, understanding and a good listener. I wanted to be seen not as a person who knew many things or a leader or so I thought of myself. In so doing I got to make many friends in one day whom I never thought I would make because usually I am a very busy and not quite sociable person. My reasons for behaving in this manner was because there were quite many people around and I wanted to make friends and get to know and meet new friends and not just those whom we usually interact at school. I wanted an interesting day out and thus I made sure that I was polite enough to be noticed. I think having behaved like that was an indication of my need for belongingness as I thought I was more to myself all the time and I needed to open up to people. I wanted to impress others and to make them think I was not that serious person they know and that I can also be a nice person whom they could easily approach and share a conversation with. Question four A stereotype I have held for quite some time now is that all Muslims are terrorists and thus they should all be treated just like any other terrorist should. Actually there are many things that led me to think of Muslims as being terrorists and this is because of (1) media representation on TV and in films; (2) popular beliefs and what people say about them (3) my own perceptions and attitudes of the acts that have been committed by Muslim outfits and (4) protecting myself from danger and simplifying my interactions with them. I must say that my interaction with Muslims is a cautious one. I make sure that I am not alone with any person who is a Muslim even if they are my close friends. I have the fear that they are always planning something behind the back. When I talk to them I ensure that I show them that I fear them. I usually go straight to the point and our conversations are usually very scanty in terms of information and the content of the conversations. I do this because I want to spend very little time with them to avoid being caught on the wrong side when they implement their plans. Question five In my culture people hardly hide emotions such that when something is disturbing an individual they will out rightly say it and show their emotions. If I am angry with a person I will shout at them to show my anger or even fight them to show how angry I am with them. In my culture it is better to do that instead of staying with the pent up emotions that will erupt later. As a woman I show emotions more often through crying and sometimes laughing out when I feel good about something or when something interests me. I am quick to become emotional even with the slightest problem I experience and thus like my things to be straight forward and not complicated. Socially, how I was brought up also affects how I express my emotions. For example when I am bored or let down by a given issue I sometimes choose to keep quiet about it and not show anger at all. This is because I was brought up in an environment that dictates that if you show emotions you can do many destructive things and it is thus good to be peaceful. Question six Empathy simply defined as getting into ones shoes and feeling the way that individuals feel about a given situation. Being empathetic is a good thing because it enables one to help others solve problems that would otherwise be difficult for them to solve. Effective communicators have to be empathetic if they have to succeed in communicating precisely to people in a given setting. Understanding people is the first thing that a good communicator needs to know or else he or she may deliver a message that does not fit a given group of people (Adler and Proctor 108). A friend of mine performs poorly in class and is continuously stressed about this. It makes him think a lot about his life and if he is going to make it. Recently I was talking to him as we tried to work through some class exercises and I realized that he quickly opened up because I understood him and he thought I was willing to help him. My showing empathy gave him the courage to talk to me and show me the problems he is experiencing and how he wants to be the best but he cannot. With this we were able to communicate freely and effectively and I helped him through the exercises which he did well. Part two Question one Affiliation is the need to be associated with a given person or thing. Every individual would love to be associated with people who are viewed as “cool” or influential in the society. Language makes us think that actually these people are influential and that being with them or close to them is a good thing (Adler and Proctor 171). The concept of affiliation has influenced my thinking such that at the moment I believe that being close to people of a given class is good. I have developed positive attitudes towards them and this has helped me in realize that actually it is good to have a person whom you are affiliated to. Power is the ability to influence and control. Language that powerful people use is one that is assertive and one that is unrelenting. This makes others listen to them because of the perceived consequences that come with not listening to them. Power has shaped my perceptions such that I think of powerful people as bad people who only want to control others. Question two Non-verbal communication is a very interesting component of the communication process. Messages are clearly said through non-verbal communication with others being reinforced and others misinterpreted. No single communication event can take place without including the aspect of non-verbal communication because it comes out naturally and unintentionally (Adler and Proctor 205). Recently I was talking to a friend and then I shook my head sideways several times as I was thinking about something else apart from the conversation we were engaged in. I immediately noticed a change in the way my friend began to talk. I was thinking deeply about something and how it was affecting me and yet my friend interpreted that as me refusing what he was saying. I did not mean to refuse the point that he was passing across but rather I was thinking about the implications of that statement and point he was passing across. My friend began convincing me on the point he was making without noticing that I was deeply thinking about it and not refusing it. Question three Effective listeners are those who pay close attention to the small details in the communication environment. You need not only attentively but with empathy so that you understand what the other part is saying. It demands that you pay close attention to him and the surrounding environment that dictates how the message is conveyed and even the nonverbal messages being conveyed (Adler and Proctor 245). I was talking to a friend who was hurt by the fact that he could not get a scholarship he had applied so many times despite his good performance. I was distracted by my mental thought of why I had not applied for the scholarship as I would have got it because I had the qualifications. I did not maintain eye contact and kept looking from side and this made him stop talking because he felt like I was not interested in the conversation. I would have listened to him attentively by blocking my mental thoughts about the scholarship and my possibilities of qualifying. I would have also maintained eye contact with him and give him the motivation to continue talking and not to show that am not interested in what he was saying. Question four Knapps relational stages are a series of stages that people go through when they first meet to the time they go apart or the relationship breaks. People come together according to him through a series of things that happen and then later on break because of a series of things that also happen making the relationship costly. In coming together there is initiating where people meet and talk in a pleasant manner; experimenting where people begin discovery, there is small talk and people avoid uncomfortable topics; intensifying when people become close friends, they disclose more and the verbal communication also changes; integrating is when personalities seem to fuse, intimacy may begin with changes in verbal and non-verbal communication and lastly bonding where people become committed and there is a common future (Adler and Proctor 277). In the second part called coming apart there is differentiating where there is conflict, communication centers on differences of the individuals and uncoupling begins; circumscribing usually entails decreased communication and avoidance of certain topics with superficial acting in public; stagnating is where there is no growth in the relationship and little dialogue; avoiding is where parties physically avoid each other and usually separation may occur and lastly terminating where communication is often associated with distance and dissociation as participants work to erect barriers between themselves (Adler and Proctor 279). I have been in a relationship where we broke up and this is exactly what happened. In the coming together our interaction was that of strangers and moved slowly to intimacy as we exchanged information gradually and became lovers. In the coming apart stages there arose a problem which we could not solve and thus we began to avoid each other and communication was little until now we do not talk. Question five Conflicts are usually hard to resolve especially if the two parties are not interested in talking to one another. However, conflicts may be easily resolved if people tried to understand the root cause of the problem (Adler and Proctor 383). In the relationship I had in the past the problem was that there was no trust between us because of the simple fact that I was pretty and I was being approached by many guys. This situation was inevitable because I did not choose to be like this. The fact that he could not understand this made it difficult for us to initiate a conversation and thus it became difficult to solve the problem leading to the break up. I believe that interpersonal conflicts can be easily solved if both parties are willing to sit together and talk to ensure that they reach a solution to a given problem. The parties can negotiate and reach a compromise instead of trying to avoid the whole situation. Communication is the key to resolving a given issue be it in interpersonal relationships or in other relationships. It is thus easy when both parties are willing to talk to settle their differences. In the above situation that I was in I learnt the importance of coming together and putting differences aside to talk about a given issue. Question six My relationship with my parents is a very open one in which we talk about things that affect me and how I can go about issues in my daily life. The communication climate is usually calm and supportive as they would want to listen to me and get to understand my problems and everything that affects me both in my life and at school therefore they provide a conducive environment that would help me talk. In my relationship with my close friend we are always listening to one another and helping around. The communication climate is quite supportive as we want to make sure that everyone of us is able to solve problems that affect them. The conducive climate is caused by the need to want to help me succeed. Listening attentively to me means that my parents are able to know what is affecting me and how they can help me avoid it. If the environment was tensed I could not possibly give them information or tell them what was disturbing me. My friend does that too because we also want to help each other succeed. Communication makes us understand each other and express ourselves and our needs effectively. The confirming behaviours that led me to conclude this are those that my parents show which enable me to view them as concerned. Disconfirming behaviours are those that make me fear expressing myself and thus affect what I say to them. Works Cited Adler, Ronald B. and Russell F. Proctor. Looking Out, Looking In. 13th. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning, 2010. Read More