Week 4

For my blog this week, I thought about the similarities and differences between how I evaluate myself as a communicator and how others evaluated me. For instance, I view myself as being an easy listener who stands strong in what I believe in but yet I can agree to disagree and compromise. The feedback that I receive from my friends and even the families that I work with is that I am a good listener and that I do not pass  judgment on others and their situations and for that reason, I was told I am the one to seek out if someone “needs an ear” .

This assignment did help me realize that men and woman communicate differently. I have learned that the women I interact with are more verbal (some might say we talk too much) and the men that I interact with are men of very few words ( some might say they don’t say enough) and with that said, I often had to guess the true message men would like to convey when I interact with them and I don’t like to do that because I don’t want to misinterpret the message they are sending.

I even conducted my own personal experiment between myself and a few men in my life. I used text messaging as a way to document my findings. I sent out the same message to several men and women(how was your day and ect.….and I saw that men used “one or two words” when compared to the long responses from women; I began to wonder do men and women interpret messages differently or do women simply use a lot of words to express themselves while men just get straight to the point?

As a professional, I have learned that the mothers I interact with are more descriptive/informative in terms of giving me family history, stating the needs of their child, and the expectations when compared to the fathers that I interact with. As a result, I have a Daddy and Me breakfast once a month so that I can get the fathers more involved and so that I can develop more strategies for communicating with those who are not as vocal but yet want to be involved in their child’s education. For instance, I have learned that the fathers of the students I work with respond more when I can show them artifacts/work samples of their child(ren) oppose to me initiating a conversation.

As I reflect on this week’s assignment, I have learned that I often lose focus on the message the sender wants to convey if they ramble or use a lot of words to make a simple point. For instance, I find that many of my colleagues often ramble on before they get to the “meat” of their thoughts, and my schedule is so busy, I don’t always have the time or patience to really listen to what they are saying and as a result, I tend to pick the key points to interpret what they are trying to say which doesn’t mean that that is what they want to say.

Nicky