Ashford University COM321: Communication Theory Final
Necessary Tact
My mother was an expert yeller. She could yell in such a way that would make us cower in our boots long before she was in view. If there was a phone call or friend at the door, if she just was not sure where we were, or if we had forgotten to do something she asked, we could tell by the distinct yell she had developed. In the case of the latter, she tended to repeat herself a lot. We would always respond with, “I heard you the first time!” She would then reply, “Yeah, you heard me, but were you listening?” It was during these arguments that I first began to understand that there was a difference. Today, I will use my studies of communication to gauge my interpersonal, group, and organizational communications skills.
Interpersonal communication is the easiest type because I always know exactly whom I am talking to, and it is generally informal. I am best at this type because I am not usually intimidated by talking to a single person, even if they are above my status. This is also the form of communication I use most. I am a telephone operator and use spoken language and listening skills on a regular basis. It is important that I communicate a message to the receiver in exactly the same manner in which the sender communicated it to me.
I am a channel, and most people mindlessly treat me like nothing more, but I also need to use perception checks as if I were the receiver. Bill Tiffan (2009) explains this necessity: “What you heard may not be what they meant. The only way you will know for sure is to ask clarifying questions and receive feedback” (p. 88). In many cases, I am simply required to repeat the message verbatim. People that call through my call center are from all over, and many of them speak English as a second language. Even the best of them have rather thick accents, and some of them speak a very broken form of English, so it is difficult to decipher what they are trying to say. In these cases, my repeating the message does not help, because they have just as much trouble understanding me. Difficulties in communicating with these people are increasingly difficult, as I have to use a time-oriented listening style, in which my interactions are brief or hurried. In this, according to Kiewitz, Weaver, Brosius, & Weimann (1997), I am not alone. In their study, young adults in the United States
In my personal life, I am more equipped to communicate effectively because I can actually see the people with whom I am communicating. Even then, it can be difficult. My son has ADHD, a condition that makes listening and responding predominantly difficult for him. I have to consider word choice very carefully. Not only do I have to use words that he will understand (he is six years old), but I have a very limited amount of time (the amount of time I can hold his attention) to get my meaning across.
I have a similar dilemma of which words to use when communicating with my mother. It is easier to speak with her when we are at work together, because she is always awake and alert. At her home, it is more difficult, as she is usually sleepy and aloof. She is disabled and taking medications that cloud her mind, and so is apt to judge before fully understanding what I have said. After spending some time with my grandmother, I discovered that this is learned behavior.
Despite her resounding opinions, my mother does give very good advice. She was the first to tell me that squabbles and spats in intimate relationships were not only normal and healthy, but necessary. There are no two people so alike in this world that they never argue. I have learned a lot of my relationship skills from her, and a lot more simply from being in relationships. My ex-husband and I got into some explosive spats, and we usually made up without bothering to actually address the cause of the argument. That is how we got into trouble. We moved back and forth in Duck’s dissolution model, from the intrapsychic to the dyadic phase, over and over (Trenholm, 2008, p. 157).
In my current relationship, we still blow up every now and again. Afterwards, we spend some time on a non-speaking basis, so that each of us has plenty of time to reflect on the cause of the disagreement. Only after we spend this “alone time” can we actually discuss the argument in a calm and rational manner. Most of our communication falls into a complementary pattern. We have to be careful, however, as we have been known to fall into fits of rigid complementarity, which is probably the cause of many of our disagreements (Trenholm, 2008, p. 148).
In one of my relationships, I am always placatory. My best girl friend attempts to start squabbles with me just to see what I will do, and most of the time I try to smooth from the outset. It is rare that I will lose my cool with her. She is a person I love and trust more than anyone else, and I simply cannot bear the thought of being cross with her. She asks for advice a lot, mainly because my new intimate relationship is successful and she is having a rough go if it, but I would never hurt her feelings by giving her an “unfiltered” opinion. I blame it on the men.
This conciliatory attitude tends to spill over into my group communication skills as well. I am usually the one to try to alleviate the tensions when I sense a potential blow up coming, which happens a lot in my work environment. There are very few employees, only eight, so our “organization” is more like a “small group.” My co-workers are a volatile bunch, usually rehashing Tuckman’s “storming stage” on every decision, from who does the billing this month to what we should order in for lunch (Trenholm, 2008, p. 192). I prefer not to be a leader, for not only this reason, but also that I often feel that I am unworthy or that my natural aloofness might get in the way and I will forget something. I prefer to have a small part in the group activity rather than being an organizer. If necessary, I will volunteer to be a sort of secretary to the leader, still taking a back seat. I am uncomfortable being in the limelight.
Still, though I am shy and usually introverted, I feel I have a genuine contribution to make to a group to which I belong. I try to be anti-political, though I tend to sort people subconsciously into either liberal or conservative groups based on the opinions they offer. I can be persuasive and passionate, depending on the subject, and I enjoy researching to prove wrong and opinion with which I disagree. However, I will not present such information up front, but rather quietly, such as creating a report and passing it around, or suggesting a website for other members to visit.
It is through these methods that I show territoriality in my work. When I create something and display it, I am sharing something that is all mine. Even if someone else did the creating, i.e. a website, I was still the one who found it, so I take the same pride as if it were mine. Graham Brown (2005) believes most people in organizations dismiss territoriality as merely “fighting over resources” (p. 3), and sometimes it can come to that. However, he continues on to list some benefits of territoriality, such as a “sense of belonging” and clarification of social interactions (p. 8). In my office, I show territoriality simply by choosing to sit in the same chair when I come in. In a larger corporation, this is obvious. In a tiny establishment such as my office, with eight employees and only three workstations, one is not guaranteed to be at the same place every day. If I arrive and someone else is in “my” chair, I am very uncomfortable and disoriented until I get it back.
“My” chair is part of my “personal space bubble” at work. The size of this bubble depends largely on where I am and whom I am with. At work, I have a fairly large bubble, even though I have known and worked with these people for several years. I tend to tense if someone bumps my chair or puts their coat on it, forcing me to put my coat on a different chair or on a hook. In the same manner, I am uncomfortable when others come to take pages from or put pages into the printer that sits on “my” desk instead of asking me to pass them. Generally, I try to ignore a person who has entered my bubble. If they are speaking to me, I tend to have difficulty responding until they have backed away a bit. At home on my sofa with my boyfriend, my bubble is almost nonexistent. We enjoy one another’s touch and often entwine limbs while watching a movie or reading. In this manner, I have no trouble communicating, oftentimes nonverbally.
My “personal space bubble” changes size similarly in my family group as well. It is much smaller with my son, siblings, and parents than it is with aunts, uncles, cousins, and extended family. I have already described my communication difficulties with my mother and son, and I find I have similar difficulties with the rest of my family. I prefer to be appeasing rather than aggressive, so I chose my words carefully. Reading those words now, it seems as though this process may take quite a bit of time, but in reality, it takes only a second or two. I have learned throughout my life how to communicate effectively with the members of my family. I know their nonverbal communications nearly as well as my own, and I have become skilled at not “ruffling feathers.”
In a family as large as mine, even organizational communication skills can come in very handy. My text defines an organization as “a system consisting of a large number of people working together in a structured way to accomplish multiple goals” (Trenholm, 2008, p. 214). That is exactly how I would define my large, extended family. I will admit that comparing my family to a functional organization may be a bit far-fetched, but if so many organizations can compare themselves to a family, then I argue that I can compare my family to an organization.
The functioning head of the family is my uncle Mark, and therefore formal communications from him flow downward (Trenholm, 2008, p. 220). My family reunion is run like a staff meeting, with the President (my uncle Mark), Vice President (my father), Secretary (my father’s cousin Cathy), and Treasurer (my uncle Budd) all presiding. Outside of the formal communication arena (family functions), my family communicates as any tightly coupled company (Trenholm, 2008, p. 225) would, keeping one another informed through electronic media, telephone, and occasionally face-to-face conversations.
Having been raised in this system, I have gained a number of organizational communication skills. Organizational communications have a path they need to follow up and down the hierarchy. From an early age, I understood that I would first complain to my teacher, then the principal, then the superintendent, and finally the school board. Still, it is my opinion that the best way to get something done quickly is to go straight to the top through informal channels (i.e. Uncle Mark is on my Facebook, and so is my boss). I try not to “step on toes,” but there are times when it is called for, and I understand those times, even when my “toes have been stepped on.”
It is also through this family organization that I learned a variety of working skills. My communication skills just skim the surface of the list. I learned time-management skills from having to spend all day Sunday doing homework while my siblings played (since they spaced theirs out over Friday and Saturday). I learned punctuality by being forced to eat cold food at family gatherings. I learned customer service skills through a myriad of school fundraisers throughout my childhood, during which I sold products to my own “organization.”
I learned persistence in the way that many children do: I annoyed my “superiors” (my parents) until I got what I wanted. My favorite quote from the film The Shawshank Redemption reinforces persistence, which applies to most areas of my life:
Andy was as good as his word. He kept writing to the State Senate. Two letters a week instead of one. In 1959, the folks up Augusta
For those who have not seen the film, Andy has to go through the proper organizational channels to get funding for the prison library. He asks the warden, who wants no part of it, but tells him to write a letter a week to the Senate Appropriations Committee. This applies directly to organizational communication in particular, and to communication in general. In many cases, communication is all about persistence.
In my study of communication thus far, I have been able to pinpoint ways in which my communication skills may be improved, and ways in which they have been lacking in the past. I had not realized what vital roles communication skills can play in a person’s life. I have, through the preceding exposition, examined and assessed my skills in interpersonal, group, and organizational communication. Though I do not believe I have “bad” skills in these areas, I have found a few places where I can develop my skills to enhance my own understanding as well as that of those with whom I am communicating.
References
Brown, G. (2005). Territoriality in organizations: Theory and measurement. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of British Columbia (Canada ), Canada
Darabont, F. (Director). (1994). The Shawshank Redemption [Motion Picture]. United States
Kiewitz, C., Weaver III, J.B., Brosius, H.B. & Weimann, G. (1997). Cultural differences in listening style preferences: A comparison of young adults in Germany , Israel , and the United States
Tiffan, B.. (2009). Dealing with Difficult People. Physician Executive, 35(5), 86-89. Retrieved December 17, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1867686481).
Trenholm, S. (2008). Thinking Through Communication. New York