For all my colleagues, I would like to discuss how the behavior of each of the members of the conversation at an office affected the end result of the conversation. Firstly, communication is supposed to be a back and forth process and each person involved in a setting for making a decision, needs to participate, voice their opinion and they are heard. Similarly, other people in that setting need to listen to the speaker while they are talking so that a message is conveyed properly. When everyone sat down with one person at the board jotting down the ideas pitched for the brainstorming, the attitude of the people involved was not exactly how it should have been. Rachel began by pitching an idea for keeping customers intact with the company, and her idea was a relevant and plausible one (Solutions, 2015). When written on the board, it was aggressively dismissed by Jane. Jane’s attitude was one reason why communication fails most of the time. In any impossible or difficult situation, members of a setting have to remain calm and composed and welcoming to each others’ ideas. More importantly, even non-verbal gestures are key to effective communication. Jane’s body language was just as indifferent and unconcerned regarding the ideas pitched by Rachel as much as Rachel was positive and eager with hers (Solutions, 2015). Even if Jane disagreed with her ideas, she could have been politer and could have dismissed then in a friendly and professional manner. Raising the voice and glaring with anger or frowning at another person’s ideas is discouraging and rude. It can become a hindrance to effective communication. At the same time, Kenneth and the other members were just as useless in preventing the unpleasantness between the two, in fact, Kenneth was not interested in the conversation in the first place. This attitude left the communication as a quarrel between two members while the rest contributed nothing to it (Solutions, 2015).
Teamwork is beneficial as it helps to solve problems by employing diversity and uniqueness contributed by everyone. However, it can become problematic if any member has a personal dislike or jealousy issue with one another which can become a barrier to communication (Gulkanat, 2016). Two strategies that can be applied in such a situation are the use of effective listening and hearing out the speaker. This can enable others to listen to them as well, and they could add on to that idea and help to enhance it. Moreover, it is important to have certain emotional barriers taken care of as well. If any person has something against another person or their idea, they need to inculcate the habit of listening and bearing with them, keeping the personal and emotional issues aside (“Overcoming communication barriers,” n.d.).
I learned a lot about communication and effective listening when I had a conversation with a friend of mine. She and I went to our favorite coffee place, and we sat there to chat for some time. The topic of the conversation was life after death, in context with the recent death we had experienced as her close relative passed away. Apparently she and I had very different views about life after death. I carried the view that there is life after death because the life in this world cannot be a meaningless venture where humans just come and go. She, on the other hand, believed that whatever happened with a person was restricted to the world and when a person died, everything ended with them. I disagreed by saying that people are encouraged to do good and restrain from evil for a reason. If that were not so, there wouldn’t have been this teaching established in the first place. She said that good and bad are just innate traits of a person and it depends on an individual what trait he chooses because, in spite of all the good in the world and the potential to do good, people still choose the world of evil and stick to it as well. I listened to her as she went on about the world being a bitter place where every human being had to struggle and in spite of the faith in God and his help that is promised, many people die without receiving any kind of consolation. She aided her argument with the example of disease causing death. If there was any kind of consolation in the next world, why did people have to suffer so much in this world, even when they had been good all their lives. She also got a little flared up during her argument when she raised her arms in anger trying to explain that life was only lived once, and a dead person was simply gone once their heart stopped. She also narrowed her eyes while reminding me how people were kept in morgues for days or weren’t cremated or buried for a while after dying, then what would their soul be doing in the meantime. Listening to her conversation, she seemed a little mindless to me because everyone knows that it is the soul which has the importance, and the soul experiences the life after death experiences. I told her the same but kept in mind that I had to be respectful of her opinions. I reminded her the same thoughts that the soul is released from the body once a person is declared dead. Soon after life after death begins and it might be emptiness, darkness, heaven or hell but it is not nothingness. There is definitely something lying beyond this realm. I felt very confident as I spoke my words because they made complete sense. Her thoughts lacked the weight, and she felt that too, thus it caused a few seconds of silence between our conversation. After a while, we dismissed the topic.
What I had learned in class was that effective communication was only possible through the process of listening and being patient. I was courteous enough to listen to her, even when she failed to make good sense of her ideas. This is when I was quietly listening to her speak and did not get enraged or cut her off while she talked. Moreover, I made sure I was emotionally neutral and respected her feelings and instead of berating her, I was sensitive yet logical. One of the action helping me improve my behavior would be perhaps choosing a different kind of setting for such topics since it killed out mood for coffee as the topic was close to home, and secondly I would try to adopt a more strict approach to my defense so that people would listen to me and my ideas would be deemed as effective.
Work Cited
Gulkanat, J. (2016). Strategies to overcome communication barriers in the workplace. Retrieved
http://www.academia.edu/10265855/Strategies_to_Overcome_Communication_Barriers_in_the_workplace
Overcoming communication barriers. Retrieved June 19, 2016, from
http://www.managementstudyguide.com/overcoming-communication-barriers.htm
Solutions, P. L. (2015). Pearson learning solutions. Retrieved June 19, 2016, from
https://media.pearsoncmg.com/pls/us/edmc/132319956X/conflict.html
