Friday - End of Class

Friday - Our group has submitted the group project. It is nice to have that completed. I would just like to reflect on this class. I enjoyed this class. I learned about a variety of ways to communicate. This class also opened my eyes to the types of communication that takes place online each day. I found the book for this class very helpful and informative. It was easy to understand and read. I enjoyed interacting with my classmates and look forward to my next online courses. I will definitely look for ways to communicate with my next set of classmates through online. The one thing that online courses lacked was the interaction with other classmates. The discussion boards are the main place that I interacted with my classmates but there is something about being able to see what the person looks like versus just seeing a name. It was also nice to talk with a few of my classmates over the phone. While it seemed time consuming and difficult to determine the best time for the interaction to occur the rewards were great. I believe this class worked to breaking down those barriers which is the lack of interaction among the students. I believe all online classes should encourage class interaction the way this class did. I am also excited about my new found friends from this class.

Chapter 15

Thursday - I was unable to attend a toastmasters Club meeting this week. The one closest to me was meeting at 12pm on Tuesday. The next meeting that I may be able to make in future weeks is about 20 min away. It begins at 7pm which is possible. I may look at going to one in the future. I know that my place of employment has encourage many of our team member to attend.
Today, I read over chapter 15. I found this chapter very helpful. The chapter covered the importance of outlining your upcoming speech or presentation. A well organized and thought out presentation flows in a natural manner. The three organizational structures that I am familiar with are chronological , cause and effect, and problem and solution. I was not as familiar with spatial order. This type of order would be used when talking about an earthquake-prone area. When giving a speech about a particular topic the introduction and conclusion are important. The introduction must hook in the audience so that they continue to listen to the entire presentation. It is also important when giving a presentation to avoid topics or words that turn people off. Anytime someone in church begins talking about “the end times” and how everyone is going to fly off. I immediately stop listening. The conclusion is also important because the speaker is summarizing the key points that he/she wants the listeners to retain.

Project and Ch 14

My group project is almost finished. Yesterday we all reviewed the project and made our finishing changes. It is almost ready to be submitted. My group is very excited.
Yesterday and today I have been reading over chapter 14. It works along side Ch 13. Ch 14 talks about researching a topic that you may speak about in public. Conducting research is essential. You don't want to give a public speech on an area that you have little knowledge on. Should someone ask a question that you are unsure how to answer they can discredit your entire speech. There are so many ways to research to conduct research in this society. The internet opens the doors to many portals of knowledge. A person can also send emails to credible sources for more information as well as get in touch with different newsgroups online. Conducting research is also a great way to gather information. When conducting research a person can observe, conduct information surveys and interviews. Once your research has been conducted the next goal is understanding how to make these statistics have meaning for your audience. The use of visual aids can help the audience make sense of the statistics from your research. I have found that most people like to see various graphs. Many people are able to grasp the material being presented with the use of different graphs such as pie and bar graphs.

It's Monday

I reviewed the rough draft of my groups presentation. I am very happy with the way everything is turning out. It is looking really good. It looks like we are close to being finished. It has been a bit of work but very helpful. My friend actually will have a job interview on Thursday for an internship teaching position. The power point presentation that my group developed has helped me assist her in preparing for this upcoming interview. We are going to get together by phone in order for her to practice with the interview.

I reviewed chapter 13 today. I found it very interesting since public speaking is not my favorite thing to do. In preparing a speech for the public it is important to know and understand your audience if possible. I also found that a self analysis may help in preparing an effective speech. A person can review their life in order to find potential topics to discuss. I think this may also be helpful when getting prepared for a job interview. One can review their life and recent accomplishment then look at creating a short summary should the interviewer ask questions of that nature.

Do you understand me?

We don't always understand people because people have different way of communicating. We also leave a lot of room for interpretation when we don't say exactly what we mean. Often when talking with close friends I don't say everything and most things are picked up because of facial expressions. Normally this is effective but sometimes it does not always work. Recently I played a game at work with a few team members. One person had a picture of shapes and was told to describe the picture to the person sitting at the table. The person describing the picture had to face away from the person drawing. I found in this exercise that each person thinks differently and that if we have a message to pass along we have to be very precise by giving specific instructions such as draw a circle in the middle of your paper. The circle should be 2 inches in diameter and 2 inches in length.

Thursday

This evening I learned about the qualities of a great leader. I actually made a connection about qualities that I felt were in great leaders. My director - Virginia is a great leader. The qualities that stand out the most is that she listens, has compassion, and works to see both sides of a situation in order to find the best solution. I have not actually taken time to think about why I admire her until I was working on the discussion this evening. The fact that she listens and has compassion draws me to her. I want to be a person that listens and shows compassion.

What is communication?

Communication is the transmitting of information either verbally or non-verbally. It is also listening and understanding what another person is transmitting. Communication can be done in a variety of ways to mention a few: email, memos, verbal, and non-verbal.

My group has continued to communicate effectively. This evening I will be calling one of our team members to assist with the power point. They shared that they were having difficulty.

The advantages of group work is that a variety of minds and ideas can work together to make a presentation better than it may have been had it been made by one person. The disadvantage to group work is that not everyone works at the same pace. This can cause confusion and frustration. The other disadvantage is a person that realise on others to do their work. This also would cause frustration.

Blog Experience

My experience with my group have gone very well. I have found this class challenging because it requires several hours of my time. I have found this class enjoyable and meaningful. The communication between my group has been great. One team member has taken the role of organizing and seeking out volunteers for different parts of the project. During the chat I was able to share a few ideas that were received well. When a team member in my group has an idea it seems that we all work to make it happen. Another team member felt we should have some key points that were found in chapter 10. I volunteered to provide that along with another team member. I made one PowerPoint slide for our presentation and another group member put together two more pages that matched my page. The power point presentation is looking good. My group seems to easily reach consensus, it seems that we all go with the flow of things and we all care about our grade. Earlier today I sent the summary off to be added to the presentation.
To be honest, my previous experiences working in groups have not ended well. I usually get stuck doing most of the work and then the teacher grades us down because not all team members participated. My faith in working in groups has been restored. This has been a very positive experience.

Group B - Communication

This evening group B had an online chat. It went well. We had some great ideas about recording our voices in the power point to give it a personal touch. We also will be adding some info from chapter 10 to our presentation. Steph and myself will email our info to Bea on Wednesday. I will be reviewing the pp tomorrow. Gabriel and Steph will record themselves asking the interview questions. Then email it to Bea, who will insert it into the PowerPoint. Bea will also insert the info from chapter 10 into the pp. The last phase - Justin will answer a few questions by recording his voice and the remainder of questions by writing the answers down. That will be inserted into the PowerPoint. Each person will give it one more final review before we turn it in to the instructor. I have a great group.

Working

Today - I worked on my group project and emailed my part to another team member. It will then be entered into a power point. I also checked Yahoo answers and assigned the best answer to my questions to the people that had what I thought were the best answers. I also looked at a few people's questions and answered one. I am really glad this week is over. It has been really busy.

Interview Questions with Jayme

I spoke with Jayme yesterday evening. We had a good conversation. It was fun to practice interviewing and being interviewed. I found out that Jayme works very effectively under pressure and actually likes to have deadlines. She had some great answers in regards to being a team player, which I will actually use next time I am interviewed. After we conducted our interviews we talked about what we could improve upon and then talked about the class and the different assignments. We both were feeling that this class was challenging because it demands a large chunk of our time. We rejoiced in the fact that the class is about half over. Our conversation was about 45 min. It was fun!

Yahoo Answers

It is amazing how small the world can feel at times. I met a person whose cousin lives in my area. It was neat to talk with this person. I have not yet had any strange encounters; however, I know it is possible. With the use of Yahoo Answers I believe my social network is expanding because it allows various people to respond to my questions. Those people have different beliefs and ideas which I am finding interesting. I am working on keeping an open mind.

Thoughts for today

Today- I will be working on reading the three different articles about tribal nature. I will also be talking with Jayme regarding the interview question assignment. This morning I received three interview questions from Beatriz for our group project. My group has agreed that Justin will be the candidate who will be interviewed for a teaching position. Beatriz's questions were really good especially since I am thinking of going into that profession. I will really have to think about her questions because someone may ask those same questions to me when I go on job interviews once my schooling is completed.

Emotional Intelligence

I was surprised to find that according to the score my emotional intelligence is excellent. I believe that is because in my job I have many opportunities to practice. When working and supervising people I learn how to be empathetic and help other's understand one another. I have also read a few books on different personalities and how to help people work with one another. I think my experience as well as the knowledge that some books have brought has helped me learn and understand people. However, I would not say that I am a people person expert.

Yahoo Question and Answers

I posted a question under news and current events. My question: Virginia Shooting?
I have not heard much about the school shooting. Was the shooter a student?

I have already received a few responses. I have copied the responses below. This is very interesting. I didn't realize that there was this kind of communication going on. I had these 6 responses to my questions in about 20 min. It was neat to see immediate results.

1. Yes. He was apparently here on a student visa from Shanghai.
2. Some say he was a student from Asia.
3. They haven't identified the shooter. We don't know anything about him yet.
4. He was a Chinese student here on an Student visa.
5. What ever he did before today doesn't matter.If he was a student or a drug dealer or a possible saint, it doesn't matter.I hope the focus is on the victims.
6. OMG that was soooooooo freaky, but i dont' think theyve identified him yet. He didn't have any ID or anything, and his face was pretty messed up after he shot himself in the head, so the police haven't found anything.

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Interpersonal Communication

I called and talked with Justin from our class. The conversation was fun. We talked about a variety of topics such as how we were enjoying the class, how lost we were with this blog stuff. We both better understand the blogging since we read the note from the professor about posting daily. We both were a little nervous to talk with someone we had never met before so we started by telling each other a little about ourselves. We talked about our major and the goals we are working towards achieving. I feel that we both used the same language and terminology. This could be because we both live in California. Justin is in southern California while I am located in northern California. I didn’t notice any communication barriers during out call. My overall assessment of the conversation is that Justin is very easy to talk with. He seems easy going and we both were able to ask each other questions and gain clarity on the different assignments we are working on. I found that Justin is in my group so we were able to talk a little about our upcoming group project. We also had some common ideas regarding a need to have a fulfilling job. Justin’s goal is to become a probation officer and work with at risk youth. My goal is similar in that I want to work with children either teaching them or counseling children that have been through traumatic experiences. Overall, I am not sure what type of communication style Justin uses most often, I will be interested to see what his assessments show. I am going to guess that he may be more dominant in using the visual communication style. It is kind of difficult for me to determine a person’s communication style based on one conversation.

Using Persuasive Communication to Build Consensus

I began this assignment by asking each person to think about what they would rather do. Have a high paying job that was not very desirable or have a job that one was very passionate about but had a less desirable salary.

My mom (a kinesthetic person) and I agreed. We would rather have a job that we were passionate about with a less desirable salary because one needs to feel satisfied going to work each day. One can budget in order to do the things they desire and enjoy doing.

My husband a visual person felt a job that pays more was better even if it was less desirable. He believes that a person can make a job fun. I then explained that not everyone could do that. Many people let their circumstances dictate their feelings. I then reminded him about this show he watches called “Dirty Jobs.” He then mentioned that it would really depend on the job.

My sister an auditory person felt that it is important to have a job that paid well even if you didn’t like it. She said that it is good from people to feel passionate about their job and it was their decision to have a lower paying job. I asked my sister to hear me out. I began describing some less glamorous jobs that are high paying. She then agreed that it would be better to have a job that you were passionate about than one of those jobs. My sister is very concerned about the way things look and what people outside her circle will see when they look at her. She only decided because the jobs I describes would not agree with her social standing.

My Co-worker Sarah is a kinesthetic person. I asked her what she would rather have and she stated that it would be better to have a job that you were passionate about and less money. She stated that money doesn’t buy happiness and if you have a job that you don’t like you are not going to want to go to work each day. You will end up calling in sick and or quitting the job. I didn’t have to persuade Sarah.

Overall, I found my husband to be very persuasive. I do feel that a person can make most jobs fun. I have been reading The Seven Steps to Highly Effective People. In this book the author talks about a man that was in the concentration camps in Germany for many years. He was able to find hope and strength from within. He loved to teach and was a previous professor. While in this concentration camp each day he would take some time to escape into his mind and teach a class of students. This allowed this man to find hope and happiness while in dire circumstances.

I found the most difficult person to persuade was my sister. Part of that could have been because she was my sister. I also know some of her thinking and because she tends to be more material, I was able to use this material thinking in order to persuade her to my reasoning. I found this very interesting.

Difficult Behavior

Managing Difficult Behavior – I found this hand out very helpful. In my group of 20 people I have 1 person that falls in each of the areas listed.

Communication Assessment

My organization and communication:
Internal communication – The organization that I work for has a web site that gives up date information on a daily basis. When I communicate with other supervisors I work on communicating verbally before email. I have found that email can be impersonal and work towards keeping a personal relationship up by verbally communicating when I have something to discuss.
Downward communication - This is done mostly through memo’s. This is somewhat impersonal. The staff does meet once a month for a staff meeting in order to have that verbal and visual communication.
Communication in meetings - In meetings all communication styles seem to be used. Notes are handed out. Different people talk about different items and a lap top is used to show step by step process of research and or diagrams and charts.
Feedback- When someone is not performing at their best potential the feedback is there. That employee is aware of their short fall and is informed of what they need to do in order to better themselves. I find that Feedback is lacking for the top performers. I meet with my supervisor about once a month and at that time she talks with me. Within my team I give good feedback through email. Recently I took my top 4 performers bowling to show that I appreciate all their hard work. I think my team would say I do a fairly good job with feedback.
External Communication - My organization communicates with it’s customers verbally over the phone and through email. If the customer calls in we talk with them over the phone. If the customer emails then their email will be responded with an email. In the past we have seen a few difficulties with email and when those issues arise we stop emailing and give the customer a call.
Cultural/Gender Communication – I have experienced gender communication in my place of work. The men like charts where the ladies like to make decisions based on feelings. My organization is working towards teaching the ladies to think more fact based. I have a group of ladies that will receive 5 complaints regarding a song in a row. I then ask them to see the big picture, 5 complaints when we have 2 million listeners is not a lot. We do have a complaint procedure set up as well. We take note of all complaints and complete a quarterly graph regarding complaints for the board of directors.
Electronic Communication – We have a lot of electronic communication. Most people communicate well with electronic communication; however, there are a few people that have difficulty. Their emails often come across short and inappropriate. I encourage those people that have difficulty communicating through email to work on verbally contacting the person either face to face or on the phone.
Nonverbal Communication - When my boss is stressed her nonverbal communication makes you think something is wrong with me or I am not doing a good job. She doesn’t smile and seems stiff. I have learned that she is just overly stressed and when I see this I ask if she needs help with anything in order to alleviate some of her stress. I work on presenting my nonverbal communication in a relaxed manner and try to always smile when I walk by my team members.
Written communication- I find that when using written communication in the work place it must be very detailed. It should not leave room for guessing. The employee handbook is a form of written communication. Team meeting notes and a write up is a form of written communication. All areas must be clearly explained and outlined.
Interpersonal communication - The management team has a strong communication network. There is one manager that has difficulty communicating verbally. She does great through email, but needs work on the face to face interaction. My team works very closely with one another so a few negative interpersonal communication has occurred. When this does occur it can be very damaging for the team. This class will help me see where the communication breakdown is occurring in order to help solve the situation.
Visual Communication – This occurs mostly in meetings or when talking about reports. In meetings we use the laptop to place important things on the screen for all to see. When putting together board reports we use a lot of graphs in order to show volume of calls and what type of customer service we are providing.