What I Can Offer My Group

The skills that I can offer my group for our group project are my Leadership skills, Computer skills, and Proofreading Skills.

Leadership Skills: I can help organize a group meeting by setting up documents in Google drive and making sure those involved in the project have access to the document.

Computer Skills: I have the ability to create and organize the editing functions in a wiki and Google Docs that our group can use to edit, create projects, and communicate back and forth to accommodate our busy schedules.

Proofreading Skills: I can help our group by proofreading our project for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  I can also watch for discrepancies that could possibly raise a flag in the record.

A proposed code of conduct for my group would be; do not act in a manner that is deliberately hostile and insulting to other participants.

Everyone handles conflict differently to find out how I handle conflict I filled out a questionnaire on how I respond to conflict.  It states that I typically resolve conflict by collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and lastly avoiding the situation in the future. To compromise means to make a deal between different parties where each party gives up part of their demand.  In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms-often involving variations from an original goal or desire.  To collaborate is working together to do a tasks when two or more people in organizations work together to realize shared goals.  By sharing knowledge, leaning and building consensus.  Most collaboration requires leadership. Accommodating means to bring it into reconcile or harmony by settling the problem and then competing or striving towards a goal to receive victory. 

Conflict and relationships

The way we handle conflict and our feelings affects our relationship with others.  In some cases, when we relate to others, we tend to bury our real feelings, hesitate to express them, or unleash them uncontrollably, and this is called suppressing or censoring our feelings. Healthy relationships do not consist totally of positive feelings.  Other feelings are also important.  Many of us lack the commitment, courage, and skill needed to express our own feelings, when those feelings are not positive-or to allow other people to express their feelings to us.  Many people are reluctant to work their feelings through; instead, they ignore or deny a feeling until it eventually becomes unmanageable.

For example, a time I suppressed or censored my feelings during a conflict was while I was at work.  Something I did created a conflict between me and a co-worker.  I was still new to the company and I was not sure how to fix the problem that I was having with one of the machines, and everything seemed to be going wrong for me that night and I started getting upset and frustrated.  Instead of going to my supervisor to explain the problems I was having and asking for help I decided to suppress or censor my feelings without telling others about the problems I was having I just walked off.  The result of me walking off was not only hurting production but it was also creating conflict between my co-workers and I.  Most businesses probably would have fired me due to my personality conflicts, but instead they gave us the chance to work through our differences and resolve the conflict in a positive manner.   

Our supervisor approached the conflict by calling us into the office to speak to us one-on-one to find out exactly what the problem was.  We spoke with each other about the feelings we were having and ways we can improve our behavior in order to prevent conflict in the future.  The reason I chose to speak up about the feelings I was having is because of the importance of letting others know how you are feeling and tell them about the things that are bothering you so we can prevent conflicts from arising in the future.   If the supervisor would not have approached me I probably would not have said anything and that is not good because when we suppress our feelings we become emotionally isolated or we seek to avoid situations that may require the exchange of feelings.  But becoming emotionally isolated from others can cause problems with relationships.

Handled appropriately, conflict can help each participant involved develop a clear picture of the other person and strengthen a relationship.  Handled poorly, conflict can create schisms, inflict psychological scars, inflame hostilities, and cause lasting resentments.  A conflict free relationship shows that you really have no relationship at all, not that you have a good relationship.  If a relationship is healthy, conflicts will occur regularly.  If a relationship is healthy, conflicts will also be handled effectively.  

This conflict was a low-intensity conflict which the persons involved worked together to discover a solution beneficial to all parties.  In a medium-intensity conflict each person feels committed to win, but winning is seen as sufficient.  No one feels that the opposition must be destroyed.  If conflict is not handled correctly, or there are suppressed or censored feelings the conflict can quickly turn into a high-intensity conflict which one person intends to destroy or at least seriously hurt the other.  It is also important that conflicts are approached in a calm manner by being assertive when we express our feelings and display respect for the thoughts and feelings of others.

Listening skills facts

Introduction

The video Ted Talks located on you tube describes how effective your listening skills can be if they are used correctly.  The very first message in Julian’s Treasure video is that many of us are losing our listening and that we only spend 60% of our time listening and we are not very good at it we only retain 25% of that information we hear.

Ways to listen better

Ted explains that listening means making meaning from sound and it is a process of extraction.  Techniques used to do this is pattern techniques that we us to distinguish noise from signals and then there are a range of filters down to what we actually pay attention.  Attention is very important in sound.

I agree with what he said in his main message because many of us do fail to listen to what the other person is saying and we tend to end up with a completely different meaning of what the speaker is trying to say and many tend to ignore crucial facts about what is going on around them.  By ignoring crucial facts when it comes to listening we are not only affecting our life, but also the life of everyone else around us.

Five Simple exercises to increase listening skills

1.       Silence- taking three minutes a day of silence to recalibrate in order to hear the quit again.

2.       The mixer-Go in a noisy environment listens and listen to see how many channels of sound you can hear.

3.       Savoring-enjoying mumbling sounds of one thing such as a dryer.

4.       Listening positions and filters- Move your listening position to different places using active and passive, reductive and expansive, and critical and empathetic listening positions. Filters- culture, language, values, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and intentions.

5.       Using the acronym RASA which stands for

Receive meaning pay attention to the person,

Appreciate making little noises like hm, oh, ok

Summarize using the word so is very important

Ask- ask questions after words to be sure you interpret the meaning of what is being said.

I used one of the five simple exercises in order to improve my listening skills.  I tried the mixer by listening in a noisy environment you can channel sounds you hear.  You can hear many of different sounds at once and we only take in so much of that sound at once.  So it all depends where we channel our brains.  I could hear machines and I could also hear others trying to tell me something from a distance.  I just kept on listening to what I was hearing and I then started to have many memories of life situations that I have not heard in a very long time.

Conclusion

I think that these listening habits could improve my life by getting a better understanding of what is expected of me, what others are telling me, and what needs to be done in the future.  I plan to do this by asking the appropriate questions needed in order to understand what is being said.

Non-Verbal Communication

Artifactual Communication

Artifactual communication is a way we express non-verbal communication through judging others by their appearance.  People also make inferences about our age, social and economic status, education level, group membership, athletic ability, personality, and relationships to others by the way we dress, our use of artifactual communication provides important nonverbal clues to a person.  Many people react to us on the basis of our clothing which impacts first impressions and exert influences that lead to acceptance and rejection.  Either way you look at non-verbal communication, the truth is that it communicates information about you. 

           
The environment and social and cultural artifacts are vital for understanding of nonverbal communication.  The environment is the physical place in which communication takes place.  The objects in the environment can provide a form of stimulus to the communicators.  This all plays a role in something called proxemics which can be defined as personal space and what we do with our personal space.

The choices we make in the colors we wear, clothing, hairstyle, and makeup are all means of nonverbal communication.  Different colors can invoke changes in mood and affects humans psychologically through their emotions and acceptance of colors.  Color psychology has demonstrated that different colors can invoke changes in mood.  Physiological reactions of others, their judgement and interpretations can be altered by our appearance.  Just think of all the subtle judgments you quickly make about someone based on his or her appearance. These first impressions are important, which is why experts suggest that job seekers dress appropriately for interviews with potential employers.  

Nationality is another way we communicate non-verbally.  It shows us the nationality we belong to and our appearance is another way we use communicative artifacts.  The picture shows an example of how someone might judge another person based on their nationality just be looking at their personal appearance.  Tattoos and the jewelry we wear is another type of artifactual communication.  Notice this man has put different a gage in his ears and his body is full of tattoos that all communicate a variety of messages to others.  Some people may react negatively to body art and some may see it as a sense of creativity.  But, most humans tend to treat others based on these stereotypes.  This type of space decoration informs others about their working status, interest, and priorities.  One way to get to know each other better is to pay attention to artifactual communication to get a better understanding of each other and what our interests are.

Language

What information did you find interesting in the article you chose? Why?

I found the article The Truth About Change interesting because it talks about the influence that Language change has in social circumstances.  The reason I found this to be interesting because they speak about a person’s accent having such an effect on social context such as their fixin to move.  I believe that some hesitations could also fall into the change of language and how we perceive what other’s are telling us.

What did you learn that you did not previously know?

I learned what I previously did not know about American society and the English language is now following a single path of change under the irrepressible, homogenizing influence of mass media.  But, language is far too resourceful and social culture is far to complicated to follow any single path and that change is one of the inevitable facts in life of any language.

 What information did you find fascinating and wanted to learn more about?

I found that women often lead the way when it comes to change and my be different from the popular concept.  Most language change starts subtly and unconsciously among middle-class speakers and spreads to other classes and women often lead the way, and we also use language to  separate ourselves into social groups.

Finally, how will you use this new information in the future? Where? How?

I will use this new information in the future when speaking with co-workers and I will pay more attention to the grammatical changes that influence the way we speak.

Stereotyping to me is when someone makes a judgment about someone that isn’t true because they do not know the person.  I would most likely be stereotyped by the class I belong to because I may not always dress up or brag about what I have it does not mean that I do not have anything.  Many stereotype me on the clues they see around them about my particular class and not what the true facts are.  Many say that we grew up very poor and that there was no money.  But my great grandfather was a wealthy man and my grandmother inherited that wealth.  So I don’t want to say we do have a lot of money and I don’t want to say we don’t.  I believe stereotypes can be harmful because they could lead society to believe something about the particular group I belong to be untrue.  Stereotypes can be helpful to try and benefit from society’s views on a particular group.

Self Concept

This photo symbolizes that others see me and I see myself as a mother.  This part is the open part to my Johari, because everyone sees me as a mother.  

The second photo symbolizes the area of my Johari I keep hidden.  I have always had this feeling or a need for peace within my life and my relationships. It is hard for others to see the peace within me and my need for peace from others.  I always feel like I am trying to keep peace with everyone.