Gamarra Vargas 1

Patricia Gamarra Vargas

COMM 2110

Prof. Tamra K. Phillips

November 22, 2017

Final Report on Personal Change

The content of this assignment will serve as an outline of my personal change

project. My goal is to become more assertive when I communicate my ideas, thoughts, and

suggestions to my roommates. It is also an attempt to improve my skills on how to manage

conflicts in general. Therefore, to accomplish this goal I followed the steps of how to

communicate assertively. This new skills that I gained were successfully applied in my daily

interactions with my roommates, but was certainly not easy to implement at my workplace.

Regarding how to manage conflicts, I asked for clarification to my roommates and

supervisor to avoid pseudo conflict at work and home with this strategy I avoided some

conflicts. Additionally, during this project I noticed that the way I was communicating

before was not completely effective. But after implementing the strategies I learned from

the book, I noticed substantial changes in my behavior that positively impacted in my

interpersonal relations with my coworkers and roommates.

Unwanted Communication Pattern

My ineffective communication habit was to not know how to communicate assertively and

as well as never asking for clarification to others when I had a conflict. I wanted to change

this pattern because I want to learn how to stand up for my own opinions and do it in a

precise and respectful way. Though I tend to avoid conflict with people, I noticed that doing
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that was not helping me solve anything. To better illustrate my points, I have two examples

in the following paragraphs where I will explain the situations in detail.

One situation occurred when my roommates were talking about how to set up the

schedule to clean up our house. At first, no one was agreeing on whom would be the first

person that would start with the cleaning tasks, so they just decided that I would be first

one to start off cleaning. I did not agree with the decision because I had cleaned up the

house recently. And I felt that there were others roommates that did not try to clean at all,

so in my opinion, they were the ones that should have started first. Even so, I did not speak

up my mind just to avoid a conflict. Not communicating my thoughts in an assertive way

was eventually letting them to behave in an unfair way towards me. This pattern of

ineffective communication was affecting my self-esteem and a change was required. I

understood that keeping a good use of assertive communication should not to be confused

with aggressive communication.

Another situation where a conflict was present was at work. When I was talking

with my supervisor, I noticed that she was upset with me. She said that I had forgot to send

a few emails to our clients. When she finished her statement, I said to her, in a calm manner

that I had done, but I did not have the evidence. However, while explaining the situation to

her, I did not notice that I was smiling at her while speaking. I then realized this was a

mistake when my supervisor asked me to be serious about the matter. At that moment, I

did not keep the proper attention to my nonverbal messages, and consequently, a

misunderstanding aroused. She thought I was not showing seriousness and

professionalism in my work duties. And that was not the message that I was trying to

convey. However, after learning that monitoring nonverbal messages plays an important
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role in the way how others will interpret us, I now pay more attention to this particular

nonverbal signs when I talk with others. With this skill, I can now avoid some

misunderstandings in my daily personal interactions in both my coworkers and clients.

Strategies

To accomplish my goal to be more assertive when communicating with others, I

implemented the following steps from the book:

1. I changed the way of how I describe (Step one of how to be assertive) the situation

by expressing myself to my roommates in a confident and calm manner. (Beebe,

2013, p.181)

2. I expressed my feelings about the situation or problem to build empathy with them.

3. I identified the effects of their behavior. I told them how their actions make me feel

and how they affect me. (Beebe, 2013, p.182)

4. After these steps, I waited silent for their response. I avoided showing contradictory

non-verbal messages while I waited. (Beebe, 2013, p.182)

5. At the end, I paraphrased the explanation, thoughts and feelings that my roommates

told to me. When their answers were negative or unresponsive I started over from

step 1. (Beebe, 2013, p.183)

An example where I put these strategies into practice will be better explained below.

I talked to my roommate about how noisy she was the other night. I started describing the

situation by saying, I noticed that you like to watch movies late at night with a high

volume, and our rooms are very close. I felt uncomfortable and annoyed me a little bit

when you watched TV that day time with that high volume because you woke me up and I

needed to rest well to go to classes the next day. I immediately waited for her response.
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She stated that she was not aware of that issue and then apologized. I said, I understand

that you like to watch movies, and so do I. But at least, keep the volume down so both can

do our activities without interruptions. Being assertive, therefore, helped me to stand up

for myself in certain moments of stress like this one.

To avoid pseudo conflict at work and with my roommates, I followed the strategy of

Check Your Understanding of What Others Say and Do (Beebe, Beebe, Redmond, 2014, p.

246) This strategy is about paraphrasing the message that someone says to us to clarify our

understanding, and also to cheek if we are on the same page. I also followed the strategy of

Conflict Management Skills: Monitor Nonverbal Messages (Beebe, Beebe, Redmond, 2014,

p.243). This skill teaches us about the importance of the proper implementation of

nonverbal language while we are expressing our ideas. If we said something important to

someone but we are smiling at the same time the other person will take our message as a

topic without importance. An example where I put in practice these strategies and the

outcomes will be shown below.

My supervisor told me that my Power Point presentation was not complete. She said

that I needed to talk about the services we provide as well as the locations and hours of

service. Also, she did not like the font size and color of the letters. So, I said to her if Im

understanding right, Victoria, you are saying the Power Point presentation content needs

to have a change of color and font size, and that our new branch office information is

missing, too. In this example, I also monitored my nonverbal language while talking to her

to avoid contradictory messages in that situation. Little seconds later, Victoria stated, yes

those are the changes that needs to be changed and added, respectively. The other parts of

the presentation, nevertheless, are looking good. Checking up on my understanding and

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keeping my nonverbal actions on the same page with my message was very important in

this case because it helped me avoid misunderstandings at work.

Constrains

The challenge that I found to improve my communication skills was on the strategy of

checking my understanding of what others say and do. Asking for clarification during my

conversations with my roommates was sometimes stressful because they were

unresponsive; as a result, I could not clarify the message.

Implementation

Knowing the aspect where I have to put more work I started first working with the

clarification on the conversations with my roommates. I noticed that expressing my

questions short and in a precise way helped me improve on this aspect. Some of the

questions that I used were, Could I have more details about it? Could you explain it to me?

What are you referring to? I also remained patient when I was trying to perfect these skills

and was helpful too.

Results

After working on the strategies that I learned from the book, I can now say that the

outcome is positive because I can see a difference on the way of how I was communicating

before and now. These skills helped me to develop the knowledge that I gained from the

concepts of the book on my daily conversations.

Recommendations

I want to continue practicing these skills in my future interactions because I was able to see

a positive improvement in my communication process. I too want to implement some of

the practical suggestions from the Conflict Management Skills: Manage Your Emotions
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because my emotions are still interfering with the message that I want to communicate.

That, for sure, will be my future goal to improve my interpersonal communication skills.
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Works Cited

Beebe, Beebe, & Redmond. (2014). Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others. 7th

ed. Boston: Pearson Education/Allyn & Bacon.