Jennifer Gillespie

COM-2206

29 July 2017

The Three Greatest Lessons I Learned

Mothers’ and wives are multi-taskers. We juggle 20 different activities a day and take care of

everyone but ourselves. In my case, I work a full- time job and I am in school part time. I am raising an

eleven-year old son and some days I feel as if I am raising my husband as well. There are definitely days

when I neglect my family in the communication department. Am I guilty of slapping down a pizza and

barking, “Here is dinner!” as I rush off to the bedroom to fire up the laptop and start on a school paper.

Absolutely. While my son is regaling me with a long- winded story of the going price of a Joey Votto

baseball card on E-Bay, do I mutter “mmm-hmmm?” as if completely disinterested? Sure! Guilty as

charged. This course has enlightened me to the need for work on better communication skills. There

were several concepts that hit home with me, and the way I communicate with my family was

uppermost in my mind while taking this course.

Like many people, I have fallen into communication patterns that I was completely unaware of. In

an argument with my husband I feel that when we come to an impasse, my personality and my old

behaviors take over and I respond in way that truly aggravates him. The Silent Treatment. I did not even

realize that in anger I tend to completely shut down until I married Joe. Early in our marriage he pointed

out to me that during a disagreement, or for a time afterwards, I completely shut him out. I just quit

talking to him entirely. I did not realize that I did this, or how detrimental it really was. In other

environments, I am a fairly good communicator. At the office, I can work through disagreements

logically and collaboratively but for some reason, in my personal life, I tend to shut down when an

argument ensues. Maybe because it is so much more personal to me than work. This course definitely
gave me an ah-ha moment when I read about the silent treatment or the impervious response from the

communication climate chapter. And I realized how much more constructive it would be for me to

communicate to Joe my feelings and then to propose solutions to the problem rather than to just shut

down. As a matter of fact, I recently tried this tactic out on him and the end result was that he

apologized for his bad behavior. This made the lesson of the silent treatment very important to me

because after all, this is my marriage. Most couples at some point will need suffer bumps in the road but

I feel like learning about the disconfirming messages section taught me that supportive behaviors are so

much more productive.

Closely related to the silent treatment is the conflict style of avoidance. It makes sense to me that

is a person is utilizing one behavior then they may also use the other as they seem linked. It is truly an

eye opener when you see for the first time how bad you are at something. I have not dealt with conflict

well at all. If, for instance, if I find myself in a situation that could be uncomfortable I am the type of

person who avoids at all costs. I always believed that this was a mature reaction to conflict by not

engaging in conflict. What I learned from the course is that avoidance is a pessimistic attitude. Several

years ago, my daughter got married. My son in law’s family is quite different from our family and it was

a challenge for us all to be together. Their views on life and politics are very different than ours and this

raised some tensions. As a result, much to my daughter’s dismay, I avoided certain functions that I had

been invited to. I can see now that this can certainly be a lose-lose style. (Adler. Pg402) In the future I

will attempt to push myself to not miss out on activities just to avoid family conflict. This is especially

important because I do not want to miss any big moments in my daughters’ life and because I now share

grandchildren with these same people. A better style of conflict management is in order and I intend to

use this course material as a means to accomplish that.

I find that at work I am a much different person than I am at home. At work, I am all business. I do

not like to waste time, I am very task oriented and I find, I am a task oriented listener as well. This was
brought home to me in the chapter about listening. I have a co-worker who is very much a relational

listener, and while I generally like her I find that her behavior can be aggravating to me. I absolutely hate

to miss a deadline, while my co-worker will spend half of her day delving into the problems of others.

We work in the same office so it is hard to get away from her and her incessant dialogue with others can

seemingly drone on for hours. For instance, if I take a work call and it is a customer who needs to

confirm a bus pick up time I will ask them to hold while I look up the information and then I present the

needed information to the customer in a professional manner. I then thank them and end the call. My

co-worker, on the other hand will take the same call and it will last 25 minutes! From across the room I

can hear her telling the customer that she is so sorry for her illness and she will be praying for her. She

then proceeds to share with the customer some of her medical complaints and they commiserate with

each other for some time. I find this behavior very unprofessional and very unnecessary. However, I did

learn from this course that our listening styles are just different. We are very different personalities and

we approach people in a different way. This brings to me a better understanding of what motivates her

and while I might be more patient with her, I still disagree with her phone etiquette.

As a busy working mother, I am constantly pressed for time. In order to make it all work I am forced

to be very disciplined and regimented. But as an Interpersonal communications student, I am learning

that while structure is fine and necessary, moderation is also key. Communication is a challenge that I

will continue to work on daily, at home and at work. In regards to conflict I will strive to take the

approach that collaboration is much more constructive than avoidance and discussion will take place

over the silent treatment. I will take these concepts with me throughout my life and make it a priority to

utilize them. As for my co-worker who is irritating to me, I will keep in mind that I must be patient as

diversity is a part of life. This has been a very educational course and one that has served me well, now

and in the future.

Works Cited

Adler,Rosenfeld,Proctor.Interplay.New York. Oxford University Press.2015.print