Perception and Communication

During this week’s assignment, I have realized the importance of perception and how it affects communication.   Everybody perceives things differently and that does not mean that one person is right and the other is wrong.  It also does not mean that communication between individuals who have different perspectives require more understanding, negation, persuasion, and tolerance of those differences. 

In completion of the assessments, there were more similarities than differences when comparing all three.  It was similarity in the fact that I can become slightly more interested in communication and that I am empathetic when I listen to others.  I was surprised the most about being slightly aggressive with others, because I rarely get into altercations with others or become negative.   Sometimes I will make corrections when I know something is not done correctly by others, but I do not feel that I express them in a negative fashion. 

The insights that I gained about communication this week is that perception can come from how we grew up, and the likes and dislikes that we experience within our lives.  Once we decide upon our views of life, I understand that people are influenced by their life positions, in how they think, feel, act, perceive, communicate and relate to others.  I have learned to listen attentively and to repeat exactly what the other person is saying.  I have learned to be more aware of nonverbal body language as well.  All of these insights can definitely help me professionally because it helps with the development of interpersonal communication within the working environment, it helps to establish openness within a professional environment, and it helps to explore perceptions of one another as a way to have more goals and objectives for communication. 

Now that I think about, I definitely communicate differently with people of different groups.  The people that I interact with on almost a daily basis include co-workers, young children, slightly mentally challenged adults, Muslims, people who are in same-sex relationships and the male gender as well.  Of course we all know that communication is needed to advance in life and build effective social skills for survival.  The way that I communicate with others depends on where we are, the age range, and social status.  When around my co-workers, I communicate freely in any form or fashion because I work strictly around other women who relate to many things as I.  We talk relationships and love, and we also talk about our children and roles as mothers.  I feel the most comfortable communicating and interacting with them because we have plenty in common.  When I interact with young children, including my daughter, I have to communicate in words and ways that they should understand and be the authoritarian as well.  Communicating with children is definitely fun and eventful because I always try to do and say things that teach them fundamentals for school.  Age appropriate communication is how I communicate with them.  Every weekend I am around someone who is slightly mentally challenged and I communicate with her depending on how she is feeling.  She has mood swings constantly and I have to filter the things I say and be sure to give her the attention she thinks she deserves.  We have conversations about my child and how she wants to get her driver’s license.  I have to communicate with her on teenager’s level in order for her to relate and understand what is spoken.  When it comes to interacting with people of the Muslim religion, I do not converse much, because I feel uncomfortable talking.  From experience, whatever I speak about around them strikes insensible feelings because they seem to correct the lives of others.  I personally respect them, but I rarely hold conversations so that I stay optimistic and eager about life.  I interact with people with same-sex relationships often and I feel comfortable around them because they tend to be “down to earth” people and are the honest people I have met thus far.  They speak what is on their mind and are not afraid/ashamed of who they are.  I normally have relaxed communication with them because we joke around and use slang.  With the male gender, I usually communicate with them in uptight surroundings because they tend to be bias toward gender.  There are few things that I communicate with males because we lack similarity roles in everyday life.  If I communicate with males it is usually about work or business.  This assignment has opened my eyes to the multiplicity of communication skills that I partake daily.  I value the relationships that I am a part of and am more aware of the effective communication skills that I use on a daily basis.

Communication Skills: Language, Nonverbal, Listening

I watched an episode of Sex and the City and the relationships I noticed were up close and personal relationships with couples in the show. I assume that these characters were either married or dating.   Holding hands, kissing, hugging, smiling, frowning, crying and looks of confusion are body gestures that I observed throughout the show.  I assumed that maybe the couples were having deep conversation about their relationship.  I observed facial expressions and body gestures that appeared to be results from an argument or altercation, or even receiving bad news of some sort.  When I watched the show with the sound on, I hear conversations of married couples involving fantasies to make the men happy.  As a result, some of the women agreed and a couple of the women were upset about it.  After listening, I clearly understood why I observed smiling and hugging from some and crying and frowning from others.  I would not have ever guessed that “fantasies” was the topic of discussion of the show based on nonverbal communication.  What I learned from this experience is that nonverbal communication can be deceiving.  As I witnessed in the show, you can receive a hug and a smile from someone, but speak words such as “I will kill you and that’s a promise”, which is very contradictive.

Blog Assignment Week  1

When dealing with communication, we all have our strengths and our weaknesses.  Communication is needed to help begin, maintain, and end relationships. (O'- Hair, D., & Wiemann, M., 2009) How would our world operate without lines of communication?  The person that I would say that displays competent communication skills would be one of my college professors, Jaque Slater.  She always spoke and taught with enthusiasm in ways that everyone would understand what is being said.  She never used the “umm” while presenting, she was great at giving eye contact and posture, and she always expected feedback from her students.  She taught majority of our English and literature classes and was absolutely great at what she does.  I can say I would definitely love to acquire behaviors like her to be effective to any audience I speak to.  She was just so free flowing and down to earth.  It is difficult for some people to give eye contact while speaking as well as babble over words.  I never saw her uncomfortable while communicating with others.

References

O'- Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2009). Real communication. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.