Who Am I As a Communicator?

 

For this exercise, I asked my husband and a long time friend to answer the three questionnaires and to evaluate my level of anxiety, verbal aggressiveness, and listening when I communicate. The thought that their answers would be different than mine build up some anxiety since I knew I would interpret the results as reflecting the truth with more accuracy.  
Although I was a little concerned that my husband’s results would differ from mine and reflect recent disagreements, his results lined up with my friend’s and mine, to the exception of communication anxiety that my husband evaluated at a moderate level whereas my friend and I entered the mild category. The similarities of results surprised me the most since I have a tendency to doubt myself.

   

According to O’Hair, & Wiemann (2012) “We all have a unique way of perceiving ourselves, others, and the world around us, and we communicate with others based on those perceptions” (p. 36). This little bit of information explains a lot about the hardships of this world. Whenever my sisters and I speak about our childhood, we always chuckle because it seems that we have had three different mothers and three different fathers. Today, we are able to speak about our childhood peacefully when unnamed/unknown emotions, feelings, and sensitivities prevent us from talking about our different points of view. 

With the goal of communicating more fairly and accurately, I must make sure that my personal schema or “mental structures” that are used “to connect bits of information together” does not get in the way of truly investigating who people truly are (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012, p. 37). I, as educator, must be aware of my how I assess the world and sift through personal schemas that prevent me from developing a meaningful relationship with families (O’Hair, & Wiemann).

 

 

In the end, self-monitoring or “watching our environment and others in it for cues as to how to present ourselves in particular situations” appears the best strategy to follow to establish positive relationships (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012, p. 55)

 Reference

O'Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication: An introduction. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.