Communication Evaluation of Me

When completing the evaluation test I thought it was very interesting that among everyone who evaluated me including myself, that there were a lot of similarities. I asked my teacher assistant and my boyfriend to evaluate me.  I had them each to take all three test because I was curious to see how others viewed my communication skills in comparison with my self.

When it came to the listening styles profile all three sores from myself, TA, and boyfriend it all ended up being in group one. Group one says that I am empathetic and concerned with the emotions of others. This listening style helps build strong relationships, but it can interfere with proper judgement because I tend to be very trusting of others. I agree with this part of the way I am very empathetic and concerned with the emotions of others when I talk to them because I would not want to say anything that would offend them or their character. I do believe that this helps me to build positive relationships, however I'm not quite sure if it interferes with my judgement. I feel as if though I will trust you until you give me a reason not to trust you.

After reviewing the scores for Verbal Aggressiveness I found this to be the most interesting of all of my results.  When I looked at the scores from myself and my boyfriend it indicated that I was at a score of moderate. Which means I maintain a good balance between respect and consideration for others viewpoints and the ability to argue fairly by attacking the facts of a position rather than the person holding the position. I believe that this is true about my self because I feel that you should not directly attack person personally for their viewpoint, but instead put facts with facts to kind of show the person how both their an your viewpoint could be similar and different by presenting facts. What I found interesting was that in the evaluation that my TA did because her score came back putting me under significant. Significant says that with little provocation, you might cross the line from "argumentative" which attacks a person's position or statements, and verbal aggression, which involves personal attacks and can be hurtful to the listener. I do not agree with this statement, but I wonder if with certain situations that have occurred at work if I become aggressive before thinking it all the way through. It is very interesting to see a result like this because it makes me step back and look at myself and how I handle certain situations. It could also be because we work in the same environment all day long she may be more receptive to things than I am not which may indicate that I may be more aggressive. This is a great eye opener for me.

The last set of scores were interesting to me as well. The results of  Communication Anxiety from both my TA and my boyfriend came out to Moderate. Moderate indicates that I feel somewhat concerned about a number of communication contexts, but probably not all.  It says that mid-point level of communication anxiety is what we call "situational." When I evaluated myself I had a score of mild which states that I feel a bit uneasy in some communication situations and somewhat more confident in others contexts. Communication does not seem to be something that you worry a great deal about. In this instance I would have to say I agree more with the evaluation of my boyfriend and TA I do worry about some of my communication skills. I also feel that it depends on the type of situation I'm in when communicating. I may respond differently to different situations.

This week the overall activities that we have been doing with communication show me that there are some areas of communications that I need to improve on myself. Although it does not show when when I have to talk to large group of people or a small group of people I do become very anxious and nervous when communicating in certain situations. I have also learned that at I sometimes let my emotions get into the way of me listening to others. I have learned that I have to need to be come confident in what I am going to say when I say it. I have also learned that I communication better when I am talking in one on one situations. It is hard to communicate with a large group of people because you do not know how others are going to criticize you.  Nonetheless the information I have gathered this week has helped me to learn a lot about myself and it has shown me the areas that i need to work on in order to become a more effective communicator.