Communications - Case Study Example

COMMUNICATION al Affiliation) Dear Josh and Hellen, I would like to congratulate you for your successful wedding last week. I would like to welcome you in your new life as couple. Soon you will start a family and no doubt you will be faced with a number of challenges that couple face. I would however like to give you some advice that I believe would help you in your relationship. My advice will be grounded on issues a range of issues such as: barriers of effective interpersonal interactions; development of strategies to active, critical and empathetic listening, description of strategies for managing interpersonal conflict as well as understanding the impact of gender and culture on interpersonal communication. Barriers to effective interpersonal interaction To begin with, I would like to address the issue of effectiveness of interpersonal interaction. While in your life you would be able to come across many books, attend a number of seminars and get to many organizations that would try to explain to you a number of effective ways of interacting. I would like to highlight three main concepts that I believe would be barriers to effective interactions. This are the barriers that you would need to focus on to ensure that your relationship flourish. These three aspects are negative emotions, low self esteem and lack of commitment. Negative emotions have tendency of reoccurring in relationship. Usually these emotions are past experiences that have formed part of individuals’ personality. (Baldwin, M. W., 2005) It is expected that these issues need to be dealt with at earlier stages. When similar situations occur in life, these emotions end to be triggered. Usually they occur without notice. When these issues begin to reoccur in your life, they tend to affect interpersonal relations. Secondly, the low self-esteem may highly affect relationships. This normally comes in form of difficulty of expressing one’s own idea, thought and feeling due to the feeling of being unworthy of doing the same. When people fail to express themselves in a way that is ideally expected, then that sends a different message and leave room for speculation. Ultimately, this may affect relationship. It also tends to mislead people, who may think that you do not want to take responsibility for your action. Finally, another barrier that may be a hindrance to effective interaction is that of lack of commitment. This is normally attributed to by inability to know what you want in a relationship. It may also be attributed to by lack of courage to do the right things in a relationship. Lack of commitment in a relationship may be a key propagator of breakage of relationship. It is important that the two of you reexamine yourselves particularly when you find yourselves in situations like those that I have mentioned. Try to deal with those issues early enough to avoid problems in your relationship. Develop strategies for active, critical, and empathic listening The next concept that I would like to bring to your attention is the development strategies of active, critical and empathic listening. I believe that these strategies would be important to you particularly considering that you will constantly face challenges among yourself and with your children when you have them. Being an empathic listener is usually associated with provision of gifts to other. One of the main ways of designing this is appreciating new ideas, doing the same without any judgment, or having some expectations from the people you are showing such empathetic response. (DeVito, J. A., 2011) These responses require that an individual demonstrate high level of warmth, and genuineness. Some of the challenges that people tend to face are the expectations that the society always demand. The society we live in always demand for a reward for showing kindness to people. This has made many people to associate empathetic listening with lack of determination and obedience. The world in which we live exposes us to the media which makes us so confined in ourselves to the extent that we fail to interact with others and show empathetic response to them. These technological changes deny people the ability to interact at personal level. The fact that individuals can be able to listen and genuinely and show empathy to others is never only about giving emotional support, but also a way of developing intimacy with the others. In order to successfully show empathy, individuals should first learn to identify the particular emotion involved. It is important that we listen and understand what the speaker is saying. The listening in this stage should be as attentive as possible. This should be accompanied by provision of support to the speaker without interrupting them or showing judgment to them as they talk. It is required that the listener pays close attention to what the speaker says so that they can be able to paraphrase what they are saying in their own words. When an individual paraphrases what the speaker says, it demonstrates to the speaker that indeed the listener was empathizing with the situation. It is important that the listener allow the speaker to solve their issues personally. This stage of the listening does not necessarily need the listener to solve the problem of the speaker. The idea is that the listener must be able to understand the key things to consider, which are purely listening as you let the speaker speak without interrupting them in a way that may upset them. It also requires that the listener try to verbalize their understanding and the interpretation to the speaker. To this end, I believe you have understood clearly the strategy that you need to adopt to ensure that you advance empathetic listening to your partner and hopefully to your children. From here I would like to help you understand a very important factor that I believe that would be very significant factor in your relationship. Listening is quite critical in your relationship; however, if this listening is not active, then its significance is reduced greatly. Active listening allows you to understand direction, understand others, and love problems as well as share interests. There are five keys that would enable you become active listener. (Barker, A., 2010)The first one is to ensure that you pay attention. This can be achieved by avoiding destructions particularly those that come as a result of the environment in which you are in. You also need to listen to the body language of the speaker. You need to demonstrate to the speaker that you are paying attention through the use of gestures such as nodding and making facial expressions. This should be followed by factors such as providing feedback to the client by trying to clarify issues and deferral of judgment. The other aspect of listening that you need to observe is Critical listening. This is the listening that is never mentioned since it only pertain analysis. This kind of listening is very important in a relationship since it allows for evaluation of your partner’s feelings and reactions to matters. Describe strategies for managing interpersonal conflicts. I would also like to discuss with you how you can manage interpersonal conflict. This will be a very critical part of your relationship since conflict in a relationship is a fact that is inevitable. There are going to be varied degree of conflict among you. I do not know about you but I also know that some people try to avoid conflict as much as they can. It is therefore beneficial to you to appreciate that learning how to manage conflict would good for your relationship. When you are faced with conflict, it is important that you appreciate that it is a normal occurrence and should always be expected. When issues arise, try to deal with them in that manner and never to anticipate issue that does not exist. Understanding the other person’s point of view is important in managing conflict. Emotions should not be judged at all cost and this comes along with understanding that everyone’s emotion is important. Understand the impact of gender and culture on interpersonal communications. To this point, allow me to inform you of the aspect of gender and culture and how they influence interpersonal communication. Culture is one of the most important parts of conflict resolution. Culture has ability to influence and shape our views and ideas on ourselves as well as on others. Inasmuch as cultures are powerful, they are usually unconscious which makes it difficult to deal with. Culture will define the manner in which people respond to you, how you dress and even what you eat. It is important that each of you understand each other’s culture so that it does not interfere with your relationship. You should also understand that culture usually changes with time Evaluate appropriate levels of self-disclosure in relationships. Before I finish on my advices, I would like to make you aware of self-disclosure and how it would affect your relationship. The question of individuals saying too much in their first date; or saying too much to a tutor; or making some comments that you would wish that you never made are matters that concern self-disclosure. All these are factors that surround self disclosure. Self disclosure defines issues of verbal and non-verbal. When one discloses much about themselves, then they may end up making mistakes that would embarrass them. This may affect their future relationship. I am sure you have passed this stage of knowing each other at the first instance. But you must remember that there are others you are yet to meet as you build on your relationship. Thank you, Your Sincerely (Insert Name) References Baldwin, M. W. (2005). Interpersonal cognition. New York: Guilford Press. Barker, A. (2010). Improve your communication skills (Rev. 2nd ed.). London: KoganPage. DeVito, J. A. (2011). Interpersonal messages: communication and relationship skills (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Read More