INDIVIDUAL PROPOSAL: IMPROVING INTERPERSONAL COMMUICATION THROUGH LISTENING SKILLS

Submitted by: Abril Castro Salt Lake Community College Communications 1010 4/8/2014

Overview: Listening is an essential component of interpersonal communication that needs to be carefully managed and practiced. Unfortunately for many people, listening is one area of communication where success is a struggle. I have witnessed this struggle in my own communication, within many areas of the broad subject of listening, but most specifically I fight to pay attention and remain patient. With my proposal of learning to gain control of the conversation from a listening position, I will be able to effectively pay more attention and keep myself from losing patience. Habits are not easy to break, but with the right consistency and determination even the worst of customs can be replaced. Description of Problem: I have seen the difficulties of being an effective and active listener overwhelmingly reflected in my own communication. I struggle greatly with keeping my attention on the speaker and maintaining patience throughout the conversation. Specifically, when it comes to where my focus is positioned, barriers carry an overwhelming influence, especially environmental barriers among others. Environmental barriers include background chatter and the racket of activities going on outside of the conversation (Adler & Elmhorst 62). Personally this barrier is the one that carries the heaviest influence. It is incredibly difficult for me to focus on speakers words when there is background noise also demanding attention. On many occasions I have asked the speaker to repeat what they have just stated because I didn't hear, or just wasn't paying enough attention to hear. To this the speaker responds with annoyance and reluctantly repeats him or herself, but I've noticed that after a few repetitions of similar occurrences, the speaker no longer wishes to engage in conversation with me and the friendship quickly deteriorates, as is expected when the communication cycle is not functioning correctly. This has also been a burden to me in my career as a student. I become easily distracted by things going on either in the background of the situation or in my mind, and often end up missing important sections of the lecture. This brings me to another type of barrier. Although environmental barriers carry the most weight for myself personally, the second type of barrier that also has a considerable influence in my communication are those of physiological nature. The barrier I have most clearly noticed is that like the text explains, the human mind can process words more quickly than it can say them, allowing the listener some mental free time, which my mind usually uses to daydream (63). Because of this when recalling the conversation had, I often mix up ideas, confused on whether they came from the speaker them self, or from the day dream I had while the speaker and I were conversing, in the same manner I also have trouble remembering who said what. As a result, I often tell the same story to a conversational partner twice, or repeat to them a story they themselves already told me, to which they often respond with hurt or annoyed feelings, thinking that they were not important enough to me for me to remember what I said to them, or what they said to me. It is often because of this very issue in combination with the fact that I am a taskoriented listener (66) that I quickly lose interest in and patience with a speaker, especially when the conversation derails and goes off topic. When a conversation or presentation goes off track, the environmental and physiological barriers become easier to yield to.

Resources and Constraints: Thankfully, I do not face this communication issue and journey of self-improvement alone. I have been able to identify things in my life that, if used correctly as resources, can be great helps to me as I work to fix my communication errors. The first is the text Communicating at Work, which contains useful insight when it comes to recognizing the communication error and issue that exists and also how to remedy it. Another resource that is easily identifiable, are the adults in my life that are exemplars of communication. One person is specific that I've noticed is my high school counselor. She always listens to what you have to say and doesn't ask questions until you are through speaking, and the questions she does ask directly pertain to making your point clearer to her so she knows exactly what she needs to do in order to effectively assist you. In noticing her exceptional communication and listening skills I am already taking the first step in fixing my own issues. Even thought I am blessed to have excellent resources at my reach, there are unfortunate constraints in my life that can very easily impede me from excelling in my communication journey. First of all, I am a full time high school student taking on four concurrent enrollment classes on, along with all 7 of my regular high school classes. And while working on graduating high school with my Associates Degree is time consuming, it is not the only thing that demands my attention. I am also actively involved in dance and band programs in my school as well as service projects through my church. These conditions make so that getting everything done on time takes is first on my list of priorities, while striving for effective and fluent communication takes a second place. Recommendations: Although the communication weakness I have is apparent in just about every conversation I have, there is no wrong beyond fixing. There are many things I can do to remedy the issue I have with keeping my attention on the speaker, beginning with eliminating distractions. Just as the text suggests, the simplest way of keeping my focus on the conversation is to remove all distractions before sitting down to listen (62-65). First of all there are the most obvious of communication barriers: the environmental kind. Even though these are obvious, they are the most distracting for me. The first step I can take in my journey of more effective communication is begin to recognize the environmental barriers as they arise. Most notable for me, are people. Other people are extremely distracting for me, so the best thing I can do is move an important conversation from a people cluttered room to a quieter location, making it easier to focus and hear the words the speaker is saying. However, this is not always possible, such as in a classroom setting. In this case, if the conversation is important enough, I can ask the speaker if it would be possible to reschedule, in order to ensure all the essential information is captured. These principles don't need to be only applied in the professional aspects of my life, but can be applied to all areas of my life, including the communication I engage in with my friends and family members. When I suggest moving meaningful conversations to less distracting locations it will add the rapport building part of the relationship (87) by giving across the idea that what they are saying does matter to me, also eliminating the issue of accidentally making people think I don't care about what they have to say when I don't pay attention. Also, by removing the most basic of distractions, I will be more likely to hear what the speaker has just said, and will have an increased chance to remember it for future reference. With the principal issue out of the way, comes the second type of barrier, one that is not as present but harder to treat: Physiological and psychological barriers. First come the physiological struggles,

namely the ability of the human brain to process information more quickly than it can receive it (63). Because of this, I often find myself thinking about other things while simultaneously attempting to capture the essence of what the speaker is saying. Although the brain can process items more quickly than it can distribute them, I have noted that mine is not as capable when it comes to multitasking. So while my mind seems to think it can go off and think of other things while at the same time capturing, processing, and understanding everything the speaker is communicating, it is mistaken. As stated in my description of problem, I often miss crucial information because of this. A remedy the text suggests (63), is using this "mental spare time" to explore the speakers ideas, and prepare what you plan to say next. To accomplish this, I propose to clear my mind before entering into a conversation whose subject I know will be challenging for me to dive into. An excellent example of this would be my biology class. I struggle with keeping my mind focused on the subject at hand when so recently as minutes before the class I was involved in pondering subjects of much more interest to me. Now that I know that I am subject to daydreaming, it would be a good idea to take time before the class to clear my mind and prepare myself for the learning experience. Going back to my biology class, something I could easily do is arrive ten minutes early and review the notes from last class, readying myself to study biology once again. Even though I am more likely to daydream in a classroom than anywhere else, I struggle with staying focused and remaining patient in everyday conversations with friends, family, and teachers. As I learned from the text, I am a task-oriented listener (66) meaning that I appreciate it when people I am speaking with get right to the point, and don't beat around the bush, if you will. Because of this, I become easily frustrated when someone doesn't arrive at the bulk of the idea they are trying to communicate as quickly as I would like them to. From reading the text, there are two main things I can do to improve my skills in this area. First of all, I can spend weeks at a time by developing my strengths in the other types of listening styles, including relational listening, analytical listening, and critical listening, because after all "an effective listener is a flexible listener" (65). Essential to this type of flexible listening is being able to identify the purpose of the speakers message. If they came to you in search of emotional support, relational listening would be the best way to go. It is easy to identify the purpose of the speakers message by simply asking questions to clarify what they are trying to get at. As soon as I am able to identify the purpose of their communication, with careful study of the different types of listening, I will be able to match the type of conversation with the correct type of listening. More importantly than this though, I can learn to conduct everyday conversations as if they were interviews, and guide the conversation the way I want it to go by the questions I ask. The text explains that it is the interviewers job to ensure that the conversation stays on track and achieves its purpose (150). One of the things it suggests interviewers do is ask leading questions, or questions that probe for more important information. As soon as a conversation derails and I begin to lose interest, I can ask a question such as "but what about..." to get the conversation back on track and nudge it back to the path I want it to take. Summary: In all, the role of receiver is perhaps the most important role we can take on in the communication cycle, even more so than that of sender. But, when the skill of listening is neglected communication comes to a screeching halt and is no longer effective. Even though I personally struggle with maintaining focus and keeping patient

throughout conversations, there are many things I can do to improve my role as a listener. I can remove whatever distractions exist to facilitate the receiving process and then prepare myself for vigorous listening endeavors by reviewing the soon to be discussed material. With these newly adopted recommendations, I expect to see improvement in my ability to recall who of my colleagues, teachers, friends or family members said what, understand more fully the messages sent to me, and strengthen relationships with those around me by successfully building rapport with them through genuine interest in what they have to say. I look forward to seeing my results after implementing my plans and then seeing what I can improve on still, because communication is, after all, one endless round of improvement and progression. Works Cited:

Adler, Ronald B., Jeanne M. Elmhorst, and Kristen Lucas. Communicating at Work. 11th ed. N.p.: McGraw Hill, 2013. Print.