WEEK 8 – COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION

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Time to say GOODBYE.

       It is the final week of our communication course and it has been so good. I have seen myself learning from all of you my dear colleagues in unique ways. Communication is a vital aspect of our work as early childhood professionals and if we will work out miracles and make seemingly impossible situations become possible through collaboration with other stakeholders – community, families and young children, we must learn effective communication skills.

       In these few weeks, we have worked together to sharpen our communication skills. I really want to thank every one of you for being responsive and willing to share so freely. I am emotional about the fact that this is our last course together before we proceed to our specialization, even though we are online colleagues, we have linked together closely in discussions, blogs and our responses to posts, I am having it hard to say goodbye.  My intended specialization is Admin, Management and Leadership.    Thank you so much. I wish you all success in your future courses and hopefully catch up with you at other courses and early childhood conferences worldwide. I really look forward to such an opportunity.

        Although I intend to take next term off to allow me to face some other pressing issues that will not allow me enough time for online study within the first quarter of 2013, I wish to keep in touch with you all. My personal e-mail is moodunayo@yahoo.com. Thank you and God bless you all.

WEEK 6 : Teem Work and Adjourning

Week 6 - Communication and Collaboration.

        Anytime you connect with someone to work together, you have formed a team. Whether we admit it or not, there is an emotional and physical connection that takes place. I have been fortunate to be part of many teams and groups since childhood or college days, as a Girls’ Brigade, Scripture Union Pilgrims Group, through official office teams and now my professional online learning group. As a Church leader, I have led teams and groups to work on special projects and assignments. Each time the assignment is over, we generally celebrate our achievements of job well done and we dismiss the group and focus on the next line of assignment. I did not know the importance of adjourning in a group.

        I strongly believe that an effective high performing team will be the hardest to leave, this is essentially because the team members have connected together in positive ways, they had brainstormed and gone through some hardships to arrive at the success of the team, so there is a positive link between the individual members that will not be easy to pull out because the group has become a major part of their identity. There is clear vision, mutual respect and trust and the team members have invested time and energy in to the purpose of the team. Working with people builds new relationships and when we learn from each other and contribute together to achieve results, there is great fulfillment. According to Abudi (2010) in the "adjourning" stage the project is coming to an end and the team members are moving off into different directions. This stage looks at the team from the perspective of the well-being of the team.

      As I think about the group and the aspects I found difficult to adjourn, I remembered my team at Haggai Leadership Institute in Maui. We had been together for four weeks, did projects together and worked intimately as a team, even though we came from about 23 different nations, we had connected together very strongly for world evangelism. When it was time to depart, we realized how close we had become. There was valedictory message, closing dinner and celebration of friendship, photographs and speeches; it was a powerful connection that is still making impact on me till today.

       I imagine that adjourning from my colleagues will be not be too easy. As online colleagues, we have formed teams and friendship in a way that is not very visible but quietly there is a relationship. We have discussed and shared ideas in some ways that have linked our hearts together. I agree that a Performing team will keep in touch with each other as they have become a very close knit group and there will be sadness at separating and moving on to other projects independently (Abudi, 2010). Even though I will be happy to be through with the program, I am unhappy to miss my colleagues. Adjourning is important because nothing lasts forever, even life will end one day and so we need to move on to other things and focus on our next goals. It will benefit the organizations we work for and help us to grow up professionally if we can end a team and start to transfer the knowledge to something more significant.

Reference

Abudi, G. (2010). The five stages of team development: A case study. Retrieved from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-five-stages-of-team-development-a-case-study.html

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.