WEEK 5 - Communication and Conflict management.

       Disagreements are real in every relationship. As I work with families, colleagues, students and other supporting staff, I see issues come up often that require my understanding, cooperation and intervention.

 Recently, our head of nursery section has had issues with her caregivers on punctuality and management of drop offs and pickups of the children on particular days. Some parents come in very early and unfortunately there are no care givers to receive the children because the staff on duty has arrived late. Despite her efforts to discuss and make a new roster that should work well with the caregivers, things have not changed much, and she decided to issue official warning which unfortunately has generated personal conflicts. She has been accused of lack of sensitivity and others too are accused of incompetence and inability to follow laid down procedures

My involvement was to do a basic analysis of what went wrong and why we are unable to cope with the scheduled time. My new learning of nonviolent communication paid off. I decided to be compassionate and listen to the needs of everybody while establishing the concern of the management. I found out the root cause of the conflict which in my opinion has to do with unclear needs, lack of fairness, and insensitivity. I had one on one discussion with the people involved and communicated clearly the expectation of the supervisor and management, and we were able to come to agreement on the way forward. I contacted the parents who have complaints and we resolved by providing alternatives, everybody was happy.

I was able to resolve this conflict because I learnt to pay attention to the needs of the people involved and did not ignore the pains of the other person or consider it not important. My focus was on compromise and not on punishment which helped everyone to cooperate. The 3Rs helped me in my approach. Being respectful and responsive to needs of the people really helped me to discover the depth of their personal problems which we were able to resolve.

Who am I as a communicator?

Blog week 4

 

Who am I as a communicator?

This week, we are assessing our levels of communication anxiety, verbal aggression and listening styles. Communication is vital and it is the key to success in all aspects of our lives. The self-assessment tests for this week are quite revealing and exciting. It involves areas that I could never have thought was important. Two other people evaluated me using the questionnaire – My husband and a professional colleague.

Communication    anxiety                          39                       39                34

Verbal Aggressive scale                         67                        60                64

Listening style                              Group 1              group 1          group 1.   

Even though they used the same questionnaire, the scores are slightly different but generally agree on some points. In communication anxiety, they agreed that my anxiety is at the mild level, which means that I feel uncomfortable in some situations but generally okay to speak.

 I have a moderate level of Verbal Aggressive Scale. I have a good balance of respecting and considering other people’s viewpoints, and arguing fairly without attacking people. As a people-oriented listener, I am empathetic and concerned with others. My listening style is very surprising as the tests revealed that I belong to group one, I am people oriented, I feel concerned about them and I build strong relationships.

The tests opened my eyes to the many aspects of communication. Same things can be said in many ways. Acquiring these skills is essential for success in the field of early childhood.

The insights I have gained include the fact that communication is a process and I need to concentrate on learning the appropriate skills to use in different situations for better results.

 I also see that other people perceive us differently. They are possibly seeing something that the speaker is not seeing. I thought that I should be in group two in the listening profile because I perceive myself as an ‘action oriented’ person but by the time we were through with the tests, I saw that my perception was different from the real me. I am people oriented; this means I even showed more empathy than I imagined and also gained insight into the fact that communication strategy should change according to the situation and the circumstances, making it easy to communicate with people at their level.

As an early childhood professional, my communication needs to improve, to care about children and their families and identify their needs and communicate appropriately to them how they may be helped.

 Making connections through effective communication is the foundation of success in any childhood program.

Three strategies of communication.

     WEEK 3 - Communication and Collaborating

  In life, working with different categories of people at different levels creates real cultural diversity. We are different from each other, even within the family setting, at workplace and interacting with the different families that make up our school family, every individual is unique and every group is unique with unique characteristics.

    My colleagues at school are from different races, biological background, with varying academic and social abilities. The same thing applies to my neighborhood where we have age variance and different classes of people and especially in the church where I work most of the time, it is really a mixture of different groups and classes of people. My family setting includes my husband and children and domestic helpers at certain times. With this kind of mixture and varying expectation at all levels my communication cannot be the same. I find myself communicating differently at all times because they are in different categories.

      First, when I communicate with my colleagues at school, it is professional and official. We respect our selves and work within the boundaries of our profession. There is no room for too much of familiarity, just a few pleasantries and we get to real business. In the church environment, this relationship is more familiar and a bit close, so my communication is open, it is a pastor teaching and training, counseling and listening to the people. I may have to be strict sometimes when I have to give definite instructions but quickly relax and draw the people close but not like a school setting.

     Communicating within my family setting is another experience altogether. These are my own people and no rules govern this at all. I think it is the safe place to be myself. Shout if I like, be distracted and don’t concentrate on what is been said, I think many things need to change here.

     My learning this week has been awesome. There are so many strategies to learn from and improve on my communication skills with everybody within my identified group. In view of this, I am looking at these three strategies:-

1.      I will implement the “platinum rule” by trying to understand everybody and look at issues from their perspective, put myself in their shoes and treat them the way they want to be treated. This will make me a more sensitive communicator, at workplace, with my colleagues and also family members.

2.      I will use more of questioning techniques to be sure I understand what is being said and that what is being communicated is what I understood. This means that I will probe more and reflect more without being judgmental.

3.      I will improve my non-verbal communication deliberately. My gestures, eye contact, and use of hands and body language must reflect what I am trying to say, not to confuse people by nodding my head when I mean to say no. This has to do with understanding how the other cultures read body language and consciously reflect the same.

Non-Verbal Communication

      

        I watched a family drama series which I am not normally used to watching. I watched an episode without voice and another episode with voice. The first episode without voice looked interesting but the purpose of the drama was not very clear to me. It showed a scene of a man, two women and some young ladies and boys, exchanging words. I observed that the man may be the father with non-verbal clues of anger and annoyance. He was talking and pointing to one of the women and then the ladies. One of the women sat down and crossed her legs out of frustration. I guessed that it is a polygamous family and the father was scolding the women because of the children. The way he was pointing his finger, expressed real anger and disappointment.

       By the time I watched the episode with the sound, I saw how interesting the drama was. It is a house of commotion. The man has two wives and seven children.  It is a house without control where they all live as they liked because there is no clear authority. The man was trying to establish his authority and control by telling the women to warn the ladies and the boys that are his children to come back home early and not keep late outs. My assumption of a father trying to establish control was correct, the woman crossing her leg is one of the wives who has been so defiant and permits the children to do what they liked and even though the father was angry she was not bothered.

       Body language is very powerful. As I watched the drama, even though I had not watched it before, I could pick some things from the actions – non-verbal communications and they turned out to be correct. Actions they say is louder than voice.

Effective Communicator

EDUC- 6165 : Communication and Collaborating in Early Childhood.

Week 1 Blog - Identifying an effective communicator.

Effective communication is important to living, professional success and peaceful communal living. It is the process where we use symbols, words, signs and behavior to exchange information. Ability to communicate the intended message in appropriate manner is a skill. I have met and worked with different people who are very effective in communication, but for this blog, my husband comes to mind as an effective communicator.

He is an engineer by profession but works as a pastor by calling. He is the president of Victory International Ministries and the Senior Pastor of our Church. He over sees a number of churches and leads a team of other Pastors. My husband is a very good listener. He pays close attention to what people are saying and he takes down some notes so that he can appropriately react to them. At the beginning of every year, he takes time to organize a business session and a development meeting where goals and targets for the year are set. I find him to be very clear and explicit in his teachings about the aspirations and expectations for the year. He uses very simple language which is clear to everyone; his voice is full of passion and conveys great push for success. He ignites vision for the pastors by giving live examples of successful men and makes it look impossible to fail. He is able to carry everybody around. He makes the sessions very practical and breaks down the group into smaller units for discussion and goal setting to ensure that everyone understands the teachings.

I love to develop some of these skills because he is able to articulate his points without getting confused and remain calm even in the midst of crisis. This skill is needed when we walk with young children in the early childhood setting. I love to learn to listen to people without being judgmental and biased. I hope I can develop those qualities and effectively listen to children and help them through the gift of positive and powerful communication.