Perceptions and How They Affect Our Lives
This week’s
exercises were a great way to examine the perceptions that we have of ourselves
and others and how others perceive us.
The one thing that surprised me the most about my communication skills
is that I am moderately verbally aggressive (Rubin, Palmgreen & Sypher,
2009). Everyone, including myself,
scored me in the moderate range for verbal aggression. In thinking about myself, I do not perceive
myself as being verbally aggressive at all.
I try to be respectful of the people to whom I am talking. I had not considered the passion that I have
for early childhood as making me come across as aggressive.
I also found
out that I have more communication anxiety at work than I do at home according
to a couple of my teachers. I think that
this might be because the expectations at work are much higher than they are
when I am with my family. Family
generally accepts you for who you are.
Sometimes at work not all information is shared. When I share information that I have received
with staff, there are generally more
questions that arise. This causes me to
experience anxiety as I share information with staff. In the future I will ask more questions to
gain clarity about information that is to be shared with staff. I will wait to share information with my
staff until I have all of the information that I need in order to accurately
communicate it. I will also share the
information in a variety of formats instead of just talking so that everyone
clearly understands the information.
Putting the information in an agenda type format would be helpful for
people who are visual learners.
I wish that I could sing every message that I have to say to others. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Moving
forward, I will strive to lift up my staff in their interactions with each
other to build their self-esteem and relationship as a team. This will strengthen our program as a
whole. I will also spend more time
listening so that I can give them the tools they need in the classroom to help
the children and families achieve success as well. I will also be mindful of my voice and tone
(O’Hair & Wiemann, p. 137-138, 2012) when speaking so that I do not offend
or put people on the defensive as I explain my passion about early childhood
education or any other topic for which I have passion.
References
Carol,
ReplyDeleteI too experience anxiety during question and answers sessions. In my mind it is the same as extemporaneous speaking, which is not my strong suit. I have found that the most effective remedy for this type of situational anxiety is to prepare as much as possible before the meeting. And, give yourself permission to not know all the answers.
Carol,
ReplyDeleteAs educators, we have to be careful not to allow perceptions to affect our communication with diverse parents.
Carol,
ReplyDeleteMy results from the communication aggressiveness inventory indicated that I also had a moderate level of communication agressiveness. I know that I am not an agressive person or communicator. I felt that this moderate level meant that when you do argue (arguing can be positive) that you use facts to support what you trying to share.
I really enjoyed reading your post. Thank you for sharing.
Crystal