Listening Assignment

I started off by actually taking the quiz on page 165 to figure out what my, "listening style" really is. After taking the quiz, I realized that I am a very good hybrid of three of the listening styles. I seemed to have gotten a four score on the; people-oriented, action-oriented, and content oriented listeners. I find these three orientations of listening to be very effective because I feel it brings the opportunity of learning something to its fullest potential. When you are people orientated, you help make the other person feel as comfortable as possible to have a dialogue. I feel that the action-orientated aspect of listening has its pros and cons. For the pros I feel as it's a great way to get the conversation moving along. The con however, I feel that it can offend people and cause noise pollution for the dialogue.

I also qualified to be a content-oriented listener. I love listening to facts and having intellectual conversations. I feel that opinions should be supported by facts, which is what content actually is. I love probing questions at people so I can figure out a new perspective on things. The con of content oriented listening would be that some people might get bored or annoyed by the questioning. Some people have different passions than others, but it is the job of the communicator to recognize the situation and base their communication moves from there. The one oriented skill I did not qualify for was the time oriented listener.  I never really tell my fellow communicator how much time I have to talk. I feel that it is rude to do so. I find myself being very calm and patient when talking to someone. If I find the need to get out of a conversation, I usually find a moment to transition out and leave the conversation in a polite way. The con of NOT being a time oriented person is that I might get in a long conversation and forget some other obligation I had to complete. The conversation could also get very circular and repetitive.

All in all I am not surprised on how I placed on this quiz. This is just another quiz to raise my awareness on who I am and how I communicate with others.

Communication Awkwardness

Well, I decided that I would do the awkward communication moment for this project. I didn't know where I was going to do it so I finally just decided at my job. One of my managers was working and I knew she would be a perfect target for the project. When I first talked to her, I just communicated with her normally. After about an hour into working, I finally decided to initiate the project. I started by just getting really close to her face while I was talking, you could tell by her facial reactions that she felt very uncomfortable in the situation. She kept smiling as well, but you could tell that she was smiling because she did not know what else to do. I then proceeded to take it to the next level and breath heavily/awkwardly when I was around her. This was really hard to do because I wanted to laugh so hard. She just kept laughing and smiling while I was trying to have a normal conversation with her. I eventually went back to normal and explained everything to her.

I noticed that laughing and smiling can be a non-verbal defense mechanism to feel comfortable in a situation. It's amazing how just the distance between two people communicating can really disrupt the process itself. I also find it peculiar that some cultures talk in really close personal bubbles. I now know if I want to make somebody feel really awkward all I have to do is get in their bubble ;).