Who Am I as a Communicator?

This week, I chose to have one of the teachers on my staff and my oldest sister to evaluate me through the assessments. My teacher's results were almost the same as my own, the only difference was she did not sense any of my communication anxiety. My sister, however, scored me higher on my verbal aggressiveness in the sense that she feels I get aggressive in conversation when I don't agree with someone. I have heard throughout life that we tend to give people different versions of ourselves, and that is what I believe these assessments mostly revealed.

Diversity in the Workplace

The staff at my current place of employment is quite diverse. We have a large mix of racial and religious backgrounds presented throughout our teaching and administrative staff. At times, I do find myself speaking to individual people in different ways, yet it is not because of their cultural background. I do however have an awareness of each person on staff and how they best receive information. Just as we cater to the children and their individual learning styles, I cater to each person whom I come into contact with and their communication styles. This takes a while to master, and it takes for one to get to know people on both a personal and professional level. Catering to communication styles and reception in each and every person can continue to foster healthy lines of communication and overall effectiveness.

Communication through "Friends"

I chose to evaluate communication cues through the show "Friends". I have never really watched the show, so I chose it due to the fact that I am unaware of the relationships amongst the characters.

In the episode I first viewed the opening scene in silence. The characters are all sitting around talking in a group setting. The conversation seems to be light hearted and genuine between friends. Everyone's non-verbal cues speak to their strong bond as friends. Each of the five characters in the scene seemed relaxed in nature and their body language signaled me to believe that they all got along within the group. Another character enters the room and seems sad. Many of the characters reach out to touch and comfort him, while the others seemed confused as to what was going on with him. One character in particular seemed unbothered with the other character's emotions, as he continued to read a magazine with his feet propped on the table throughout the encounter.

After watching the scene with sound, I now know that the scene does consist of a group of friends sitting in a coffee shop discussing topics such as relationships and past experiences. The group was grilling one of the female characters regarding a date with a new guy. The conversation was indeed light-hearted and consisted of light banter and jokes between friends. When the sad character walks into the coffee shop, he is visibly upset and only one friend in the group seems to know why. The uninterested friend attempts to lighten the mood by offering him a cookie. I learned that the character is sad due to someone named Carol (a former girlfriend) moved her things out of his home earlier that day and left him. The group continues to banter on and the uninterested friend makes jokes pertaining to how he should have known his girlfriend was a lesbian all along and he wouldn't be hurt.

It would be much easier to interpret the scene if i'd seen the show prior to this moment and knew the characters as well as their situations.

An Effective Communicator...

One person in my life that I have always viewed as an effective communicator was a previous director of mine. I was young and of course, bullheaded, when it came to receiving feedback and understanding the operations of a high quality childcare center. Back then I viewed this person as a nitpicker, as I thought she was targeting me out of the group. I can now look back and appreciate the ways she communicated feedback with me, and I now even utilize some of her methods with my own staff. First, she never belittled me in front of a group or even one-on-one. She also made it a point to always communicate what she liked to call "the why" behind everything she corrected me on. She also modeled a lot for me, demonstrating how things should be done instead of just telling me or expecting me to know. I always reach out to her and let her know how much of an influence she was on me, and we both laugh because we realize how unaware of all of this I was back then. I can now appreciate and even reflect what she taught me and how she communicated with me with others, which is such a benefit for me.