Individual Proposal

Austin Miller
Salt Lake Community College
Communications 1010
November 18, 2015

The overview
Effective communication is a key concept for success in peoples lives. There are many
different options we can choose from to communicate effectively, as well as many ineffective
options available to us today. One of these communication habits that I plan to improve on is my
nonverbal messages during interactions with family, friends, and even employment interviews.
At times during different situations with certain people I have found that my posture and
movement wasnt always the best that it could have been. Other times I have found that the
environment, and time of day the communication took place could have improved as well. So to
improve overall at my nonverbal communication in many different settings, I have come up with
a proposal that will help improve my appearance, posture, movement, environment, and eye
contact during these situations. And I am confident that if this proposal is applied, that nonverbal
communication will overtime improve drastically for me and for readers of this proposal also
seeking to improve their nonverbal communication.
Description of Problem
Verbal communication is obviously not the only way that we can effectively
communicate with people around us. Nonverbal communication is just as important and very
powerful when trying to communicate with someone (Alder & Elmhorst, P. 91). If a persons
nonverbal communication isnt very good, it can be extremely hard to communicate in a way
where both sides understand exactly what message is trying to be sent to the other person. There
are many problems with nonverbal communication that can send a wrong message to your
receiver. One of these problems can be your physical appearance (Alder& Elmhorst, P.93-94).
For example in job interview, to send a good nonverbal message to your receiver, a male should
probably dress nicely by wearing a collared shirt and tie with slacks, and a female could wear a
nice dress to also send a good professional nonverbal message to the receiver. However the
problem for some people at times is that they may not wear nice clothes to these interviews,
sending the message that they dont take that interview seriously.
Now I have been pretty good with the appearance part when communicating nonverbally
with people in the past. But the places that have been a problem for me in the past are my
posture, movement, environment, and eye contact. All of these types of nonverbal
communication are very important (Alder & Elmhorst, P.93-100). If someone does not have good
posture and movement they could come across as someone who is nervous or uninterested. For
example I remember in my first job interview I was kind of slouched while sitting in my chair,
which didnt send a very good message to the interviewer. Also if no eye contact happens in
nonverbal communication, a person might send an unwanted message of dislike to the receiver
or once again an uninterested feeling towards that person (Alder & Elmhorst, P. 95). Sometimes
when communicating with my family and friends, I seem to be looking at something else that I
am doing instead of looking at them. I have found out that this doesnt make them feel very
good, and doesnt make them feel part of the conversation. Also if a sender chooses the wrong
environment to send a nonverbal message, the message could be seen as a very negative thing
even if it wasnt meant to be so. There have been multiple times in my life where I have seen this
happen, where I have approached someone in bad environment where it would have just been

better to wait and approach them later. With all of these areas to improve in, it is clear that a
problem exists with nonverbal communication. But with a strong plan in place, these bad habits
of nonverbal communication can definitely be fixed.
Resources and Constraints
There are many resources that can help me in the process of changing my nonverbal
communication. One of the great resources that can help is our text book. The Salt Lake
Community College Communications 1010 textbook gives many different plans and ideas on
how to improve nonverbal communication. Some of the sections that can help include
monitoring your nonverbal communication, demonstrate interests in others, and observe
conventions (Alder & Elmhorst, P. 101-103). These different sections can help me improve as I
read through the examples they have and then apply them to my life and current situation with
nonverbal communication. Another great resource I have that can help me improve is my family
and friends. I can let both my family and friends know about the nonverbal communications
skills that I am trying to improve on, and then ask them to stop me and let me know if I am
presenting myself in a poor way when I communicate with them. This way I will be able to
receive a lot of feedback on the progress I am making with nonverbal communication with
others.
It seems like there wouldnt be too many constraints to impede my progress to improve
my nonverbal communication. However I do work about 25 hours a week at my current job, and
I am also a full time student at Salt Lake community college, which means that I dont have very
much time on hands to constantly be asking family and friends for feedback on how I can
continue to improve. But improving my nonverbal communication skills can bring lifelong
benefits to me and my family. So because it is so important to receive this feedback from my
friends and family, I could create a journal log showing the days and times that I have been
improving with my nonverbal communication. By creating this log it will help me overcome the
constraint of not having very much time to ask people for feedback, because I will have a journal
log that I can continue to look at on my own time and see the dates and times that I started to
improve on specific types of nonverbal communication.
Recommendations
To improve my nonverbal communication skills in everyday life and also for future
interviews, I have come up with a plan that will involve using my family and friends in the
process of helping me become better at nonverbal communication. The first step in my
recommendation of how to improve is telling my immediate family and friends of the areas I
want to improve in, which includes my appearance, posture and movement, environment, and
also eye contact and facial expressions. The people I plan on helping me in this proposal within
my immediate family are my mom, dad, brother, and two sisters. I will also be having three of
my close friends included in this plan as well. Once I tell them about the four categories I want to
improve on, I plan on asking them to pay attention to at least two times I communicate with them
in person throughout the week. I plan on having them do this for about two months so I can
receive accurate feedback. They will be specifically focusing on the points I mentioned about
nonverbal communication. As they are keeping track of how I use my nonverbal communication
during each week, they will report to me on Saturday of each week by just giving me a phone

call or talking to me in person, and letting me know how I did in each category. The first
category I want them to monitor is my appearance (Alder & Elmhorst, P. 93-95). Whenever I
communicate with my with my family and friends throughout this plan, I want them to score my
appearance on how well my appearance is for the current situation we are in on a scale from 110, with one being not very appropriate and ten being the perfect appearance for the situation. As
I receive this feedback I will be able to see each week if I am progressing at having a good
appearance.
The second category involves my posture and movement (Alder & Elmhorst, P. 96-97).
My family and friends will still pick two times during the week that I have communicated with
them in person, and then they will also use the scale from 1-10 to let me know how my
movement and posture was. A one would indicate that my posture was really slouched and
sloppy, and a ten would indicate that I had a firm posture with strong and effective movement.
The third category that they will be looking for is my choice of environment and distance
between us while communicating (Alder & Elmhorst P. 97-100). The 1-10 scale for this category
will have a one represent a poor choice of environment to communicate a certain message, as
well as a poor choice of distance between us while communicating. A ten will indicate that the
environment chosen was perfect to communicate in and the distance between us was also
appropriate.
The fourth and final category consists of my eye contact and facial expressions (Alder &
Elmhorst, P. 95-96). The people helping me will monitor the amount of eye contact and facial
expressions that I use in our face to face conversations. For eye contact, they will give their
opinion on the percentage of the conversation that I spent while maintaining eye contact. For
example, 10% of eye contact during a conversation would definitely need improvement. Then for
facial expressions they will give their opinions on how well I was using facial expression to
communicate by either saying it was great, good, average, or needs improvement. These two
indicators will help me see how much I need to improve in my overall eye contact and facial
expressions.
On each Saturday as I collet the scores from my five family members and three friends, I
will record the data that I receive from them into a journal for the two times they were keeping
track of my nonverbal communication during the week. As I move on from week to week I will
be able to look in this journal and see where I started at, and also if I am improving in any of the
four categories. The overall goal by the end of the two months is to have mostly tens in each of
the first three categories during the final three weeks of this plan, and then have close to 80-85%
eye contact during our different conversations with also each person reporting great for my
facial expressions. As I am able to look at my scores from each week, I am sure that I will be
able to focus on the things that need improvement so I can reach my goals for each category by
the end of the two months.
Summary
The importance of nonverbal communication cannot be emphasized enough. To
accurately send messages to someone that you are trying to communicate with, we must learn to
develop good appearance, posture and movement, environment choice, eye contact and facial

expressions. Without learning how to improve in these areas it will become difficult to send a
face to face message to someone without them receiving some sort of different message from
your own body language. To improve my own nonverbal communication, I will be following the
steps that I have proposed by having my family and friends monitor my nonverbal
communication for two months. As I keep record of my progress from week to week, by the end
of the two months I will have had a lot of practice to improve on all of the categories that my
friends and family observe weekly. And I will be able drastically improve on my appearance
when communicating, the environment I choose to communicate in, my posture and movement,
and finally the amount of time during a conversation that I spend communicating with eye
contact and facial expressions. I am really looking forward to implementing this plan to improve
my overall nonverbal communication. And by following up with my family in friends every
week to see what my progress is, I am expecting constructive results that will overall help me
become much more effective at using important nonverbal communication skills while
communicating with others.

Works Cited
Alder, R. & J. Elmhorst.(2010). Communicating at Work. Comm 1010 Salt Lake Community
College Communicating at Work (pp. 9-12). Boston: McGraw Hill.
Alder, R. & J. Elmhorst.(2010). Delivering the Presentation. Comm 1010 Salt Lake Community
College Communicating at Work (pp. 319-321). Boston: McGraw Hill.
Alder, R. & J. Elmhorst.(2010). Principles of Interviewing. Comm 1010 Salt Lake Community
College Communication at Work (pp.143-145). Boston: McGraw Hill.
Alder, R. & J. Elmhorst.(2010). Verbal and Nonverbal Messages. Comm 1010 Salt Lake
Community College Communicating at Work (pp.90-103). Boston: McGraw Hill.