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Hello, welcome to my Interpersonal Communication blog. The purpose for making this is to give my own personal feedback on what I believe the most important lessons are when learning about Interpersonal Communication. These three things to me are managing conflict, listening styles and nonverbal communication. Please feel free to subscribe and leave your own feedback!

Conflict Management

The first important lesson that I mentioned was managing conflict. Although it may appear to be simple and easy to understand, there are actually a few steps in this concept that one must follow. These steps consist of: defining your needs, share your needs with the other person, listen to the other person’s needs, generate possible solutions, evaluate the possible solutions and choose the best one, implement the solution, and lastly follow up on the solutions. By following this process it can lead to a win-win situation for all the people involved rather than one person only receiving satisfaction. Not only is it possible to benefit from this sort of concept, but you also have the ability to perceive and evaluate people’s perspectives on the same issue.

Listening Styles

There are four main types of listening and each of them have their own traits that differ from the others. The first type of listening is Task-Oriented. This means that the person is most concerned with efficiency and accomplishing the job at hand. In other words that they tend to avoid getting off subject. The second type of listening is Relational. This means that the person is mainly concerned on becoming emotionally close with others. Instead of becoming impatient they tend to focus on how the other person is feeling. The third type of listening is Analytical. If someone were to be strong in this specific category it would mean that they try to hear the full message before coming to their own judgement. Lastly, the fourth type of listening is Critical. A person with a strong sense of this style is mainly concerned with the accuracy and the consistency of the messages. It is said that some people can get annoyed with this type of listening because people who use this tend to find faults in minor details.

Nonverbal Communication

When people hear the term “Nonverbal Communication,” they may think it sounds silly. This could potentially result from the knowledge that the word ‘communication’ means to speak or present the message, so what does it mean when someone uses Nonverbal Communication? If you think about it, what we do often conveys more meaning than what we might say. For example if someone is saying “I understand where you’re coming from,” but then rolls their eyes after words it can be communicated that they don’t actually understand what you are trying to say. Some of the ways that Nonverbal Communication can be expressed is through: facial expressions, body movement, eye contact, posture, touch and space. By learning how to see and analyze all of these signals you might be able to tell the way someone is reacting to the conversation next time you are speaking with them.

Personal Analysis

Throughout my experience while taking the class Interpersonal Communication I have learned a lot about myself. Whether it was what type of listening style I was strongest in, or simply how to manage arguments better than I usually do. I believe that I have also learned how to analyze other peoples perspectives and compare them to my own on a number of different subjects and concepts. Although I have learned many lessons about the class and what communication truly deals with I have mostly learned a lot about myself and how I can become better at listening to others in the future to avoid conflict and more arguments that could potentially occur.