WK4: Similarities and differences between my evaluations and other people’s

I asked my coworker who is the lead teacher in the preschool class I am assisting and my husband to evaluate my communication. The scores are below.

 

Person who evaluated--- Communication Anxiety Inventory, Verbal Aggressive Scale, Listening Styles Profile

Me   41, 55, People-oriented

Junko(Japanese)---34, 57, People-oriented

My husband(American)---53, 55, People-oriented

 

The scores are slightly different but the categories I was evaluated into were all the same.

 

I have a mild level of anxiety in communication and communication is not a problem but I have some situation I feel unconfident in (public speaking). I have a moderate level of Verbal Aggressive Scale. I have a good balance of respecting and considering other people’s viewpoints, and arguing fairly without attacking people. As a people-oriented listener, I am empathetic and concerned with others but this may interfere with proper judgment by trusting them too much.

 

The surprising thing is that the evaluations are so similar even though Junko and my husband are form different countries and I have relationships with them in different areas. I had expected to find that people from different cultures perceive my ways of communication differently. It is interesting that I can tell why the scores were a little different. I need to hide and overcome my anxiety towards communication at work and I try to have and show my opinions more clearly at work than at home.

 

One of the insights is that from the similar results from people with different backgrounds, I noticed that I slightly change my ways of communication unconsciously depending on who they are. I believe that we need to pay attention to the changes we make unconsciously.

 

The second insight is that there are many ways of communication that are appropriate. By reading comments that were not applied to me too and found out it is not a right-wrong topic but about styles and preferences. I believe that we can learn from other people and choose to use the styles we do not usually use in certain cases if we think these ways will work better.       

Three Strategies

I think I tend to hide my feelings especially negative feelings such as anger, sadness and frustration more than people from different groups because I do not want other people to feel bad. However, this is not a good thing for effective communication. I also try to say things vaguely because I do not want to sound blunt or bossy. I feel that having these tendencies from Japanese culture and the Japanese language make me ineffective sender of messages here in the US.

I would like to make three changes for better communication. First, I would like to use nonverbal communications intentionally so that listeners will know what I feel and think easily or people won’t misunderstand my actions as displaying indifference to them or their feelings. Second, I would like to say what I want before giving the reasons why I want them because I often feel that that is the way people in dominant culture here communicate and get confused by my approach. Lastly, I would like to imitate ways other people communicate and see the reactions of others for better understanding of different ways of communicating.

WK2: Watching a drama with and without sound

I watched the drama called “Furi-ta- ie wo kau” This title is difficult to translate but it means a person who only have low wage part time job buys a house. When I watched it without sound, I thought I understood their relationships and what kind of topics they were talking about. After I watched it with sound, I found out that I got most of the relationships right even the details like a couple whose relationships are not going well even though they like each other. However, what they were talking about was rarely right and sometimes completely different from what I guessed. One interesting fact is that I didn’t remember some of the short scenes I watched without sound.  

For me the “aha” moment was in recognizing how the non-verbal messages still fit what was going on in the story, even though I had not gotten them right.  This means that we really should avoid acting as if we can understand what someone means with their non-verbal messages alone.  Most of the time knowing why someone is feeling the way they feel is just as important as knowing that they feel that way.

WK1: Good communicator

I think my husband is good at getting mistakes fixed at stores. He talks more professionally than usual and never talks emotionally even when he is really angry. He explains what happens accurately gets the person to confirm what should have been expected and gives reasons why he thinks things are not done properly.  He also focuses the conversation on how the situation can be fixed instead of accusing the person who of not doing the job properly.

 

I would like to model this because he often gets what he wants without upsetting anybody. I think his talking professionally invisibly encourages the listeners to speak and act professionally in return and his not getting emotional and not accusing any particular person puts the listeners on his side and helps them want to help him out.