Communication Self-Concept Paper
The world in which we live undergoes quick successive changes. One aspect that helps individuals to cope with the rapidly changing world entails the concept of understanding human communication. Understanding communication provides individuals with skills and insights for everyday contexts and contents drawing from the many sources of communication we are exposed to like the videos, other cultures and academic scholarly works.
Human communication remains complex and draws from a variety of backgrounds. It focuses on several dimensions including cultural diversities, role and sexuality of gender and the effects of technology and social media. For effective communication, in various situations including at work, individuals have been making efforts to adopt a number of strategies to help them engage in self-assessments and evaluations aimed at improving personal communication. They have involved themselves in practices especially for public speaking. They use technologically aided real life communications from videos, TVs and the internet to help bring communication concepts to life. Technologies in communication may present both opportunities and challenges in communications. While communication may largely be understood to serve two principal purposes of persuasion and passing of information, packaging oneself and the language labels including body language cues may underlie a complete set of cultural inferences. This may be laced with biased perceptions from the target audiences. Often times, these biases have not been limited to plain misunderstanding of intended messages but occasioned even conflicts.
Although many definitions of communication have been used by a number of writers, the central theme and concepts remain almost constant in the motives to form a common ground of understanding as speakers or writers share information or ideas over a communication medium. This common understanding is regularly picked out through a feedback mechanism obtained from the recipient of the information. It is worth repeating that information is transmitted for a purpose, and in the variety of definitions of communications, this essential element of transmission of information has not been lost. If the message originator, also called the sender of the communication, is misunderstood by the other party, the receiver, then the communication has failed to achieve its purpose. This implies, therefore, that the concept of communication is of mutual good or common understanding between the communicating parties. Perhaps it is so rigid to permit common errors or careless outcomes.
Whichever the mode of communication, objectives have to be met in each circumstance of the communication. For effective communication, every individual makes an attempt to meet these objectives through the writing or speaking modes, and always looks forward to being understood, accepted or actually influencing actions like a behavior change. Many areas like psychology affect communication and the associated feedback system. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been a long time principle, which is now being used in communication outside the traditional domain of motivation where it was often practiced. The psychological principle is based on the need theory where once a lower need is satisfied human beings strive for higher needs. This when applied to communication, would look into a situation where a person, who for instance, could not originally be perceived as a competent communicator, overcomes that barrier by proving that the perceptual ratings can be higher. One begins to stare up the pyramid towards self actualization where the communication influence is at maximum. The feeling is that the audience is to be conducted into some direction though the messages or actions of the speaker or the writer.
In my own specific case as an international student of communication, self analysis has showed that I am a shy. I also do not really like to talk in unfamiliar circumstances or initiate communication with strangers. The encouragement I get, however, is that should one start an interesting communication, then I will join. I like to create a win-win situation in my communications with even those who may not agree with my point from time to time. My qualities have been observed in group discussions and public speaking exercises among students of my class and the larger student body. My consolation is the fact that I feel my regular group interactions in a number of cases with same groups has given me confidence with the assumption that they know I can prove my point in spite of not being aggressive in starting communications. Enjoying this basic confidence, I am making positive efforts to improve my standing especially in the area of shyness which, I believe, if sorted may enable me to freely engage with colleagues, begin conversations and even assert myself. I am beginning to see shyness as an impediment to winning communications in the first levels of exposure to audiences. My engagement in dealing with shyness has begun to look at it as a bad way, possibly misinterpreted as pride. I now propose to initiate discussions in a slow paced step-by-step communications involving greetings, basic exchange of pleasantries and possibly onwards to more assertive positions during communication. Additionally, I am viewing shyness as being associated with the possibility of considering what others are thinking about me or truly what I say. My focus is to disregard this attention seeking concept and live to appreciate myself as a human with all the flows that any other human may be exposed to. After all, as I already observed that communication emanates from various sources. A research among Americans revealed that many people fear public speaking even preferring death. My consolation is that I am not alone. I have to start from somewhere with focus and practice believing this will help someday.
Although I consider myself not entirely a communication’s novice, I am still ranking lower in the Maslow’s model. I clearly appreciate the gaps in my communication skills and the need for hard work in improving my skills. I can fit myself at level 2 of Maslow’s model. Specifically, I am out of the safety and security levels of the Maslow’s hierarchies and headed into the self-esteem level. My intention is to quickly actualise and I have embarked on self-training programmes and signed to the You-tube channels for tutorials on public speaking and etiquette. In these efforts the focus is on the 5th level of communication and high impact of influence as implied in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is need based and focused on developing more skill sets for structured communication, clear objective setting, the choice of medium, cultural considerations and level of satisfaction of the audience. The key objective is to make the audience receive or do what is primarily intended in the communication.
Works Cited
Adler, R. B, G. Rodman and D. P Athena. Understanding Human Commuinication. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN.
Koltko, Rivera. Rediscovering the Later Version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Self-Transcendence and Opportunities for Theory, Research, and Unification. New York: Cengage Learning, 2006.
Nelson, Debra and James Quick. Organizational Behavior.: Science, the Real World, and You. New York: Cengage Learning, 2010.
Wagner, John and John Hollenbeck. Organizational Behavior: Securing Competitive Advantage. New York: Routledge, 2009.
