Who I Am as a Communicator

Who I Am as a Communicator

This week, I was able to evaluate myself as a communicator. I was also able to see how other people see me as a communicator by having them evaluate me using the same tools I did to evaluate myself.

What I learned from these evaluations is that we all agree I am moderate on the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale (Rubin, Palmgreen, & Sypher, 2009) and people-oriented based on the Listening Styles Profile (Rubin, Rubin, Graham, Perse, & Siebold, 2009). All three of us scored me as moderate on the verbal aggressiveness scale. I was happy to see that my perceptions and the perceptions of others saw me as fair and balanced when it comes to respecting others’ viewpoints and not verbally abusive and attacking in my communication (Rubin, et al, 2009). I was also pleasantly surprised to see that we all saw me as people-oriented based on the Listening Styles Profile (Rubin & Rubin, et al, 2009). When I looked at the other orientations based on listening styles, I was okay with being classified as a people person over the other styles. I do have some action-oriented tendencies such as being more “to the point” (Rubin & Rubin, et al, 2009) depending on the context of the communication.

I was surprised the most by how different our evaluations were when it came to the Communication Anxiety Inventory (Rubin, et al, 2009). While I saw myself in the moderate categories, they saw me in the mild and low categories. When I looked at how I scored myself to how they scored me, I decided it had a lot to do with the context of the communication and how they see me or do not see me in these situations. I was able to look at myself in all contexts and experiences, whereas they only see me either in a personal context or in a professional context.

 I want to share two insights I gained based on what I learned this week. The first insight is I am a more effective communicator than I give myself credit at times. Although I may feel anxiety while communicating in certain situations, others do not see me as anxious. Another insight I gained from this week is that our communication styles not only rely on the situational context of the communication but also on our cultural context and our relational context (O’Hair & Wiemann, 2015). Understanding how all of these things are related will help me be a more effective communicator.

References

O’Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J. (2015). Real communication (3^rd ed). New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Rubin, R. B., Palmgreen, P., & Sypher, H. E. (Eds.) (2009). Communication research measures: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.

Rubin, R. B., Rubin, A. M., Graham, E. E., Perse, E. M., & Seibold, D. R. (2009). Communication research measures: A Sourcebook. New York: Routledge.