Question
With the help of a family member, friend, or colleague, practice using Petersen’s Talker-Listener Card and the five different ways of responding described by France and Weikel (Chapter 2). Share what you discovered about yourself. How do conversations change when using different response strategies and when violating versus adhering to the rules of effective communication? Instructions: Please write a thread that is between 300 and 350 words answering the questions mentioned above. The thread must demonstrate course related knowledge and assertions must be supported by references in current APA format. Thread must be well written, well organized, and focused. When addressing each assigned topic, you must incorporate relevant ideas from at least two of the required course texts in the thread. Please use information from my DISC assessment attached and the following text books; Chapters 8-9 France, K. & Weikel, K. (2020). Helping skills for human service workers: Building relationships and encouraging productive change (4th ed.). Charles C. Thomas Publisher Inc. ISBN: 9780398093051. Chapters 25-27 Petersen, J. C. (2015). Why don’t we listen better? Communicating and connecting in relationships (2nd ed.). Petersen Publications. ISBN: 9780979155956. Carbonell, M. (2008). How to solve the people puzzle: Understanding personality patterns [e-book] (Bundle). Uniquely You Resources. SKU#: 1878948.
Communication Skills
In the course of my study, I have realized that I am not a good listener and I have a problem of always interjecting other people when they speak. I never thought that it was a communication flaw to always interrupt people when engaging in a conversation. It wasn’t until the other day that my good friend opened up and pointed that I had an irritating behavior of interrupting her when she is speaking to me. Most often, I interjected her and even changed the topic of our discussion. Surprisingly, when my friend spoke about my poor communication skills, I ignored her comment and went on to explain other things. However, some of my family members also gave a similar opinion and I was forced to listen and try to address my communication flaw. Peterson’s (2015) concepts were instrumental in helping me discover the problem of poor communication, and particularly the listening skills.
After reading the text provided in the course, I was able to analyze my personality traits and even considered myself as a pool grabber. Although I don’t exhibit the tendency of a pool grabber because I don’t use my friends story to change the topic. I only ask relevant questions to get to understand their point of view and make honest remarks after words. However, it was a positive thing that my friend pointed out my weakness because now I have taken the initiative to change and became a good listener. Otherwise, I don’t my friends and colleagues to think that I am terrible listener and don’t care about other people’s point of view.
Accordingly, I have decided to learn to be a good listener. I want to engage with my friends and listen to their views without disagreeing, advising, defending, and or agreeing. I will not justify my behaviors and make excuses for my poor listening skills. Instead, I have chosen to seek assistance in learning to be a good listener by demonstrating effective communications skills. According to Peterson (2015), the talker’s main goals is to share their thoughts and feelings while my duty as a listener is to provide safe environment, demonstrate patience and understanding and only seek clarity when appropriate. That way, I will be able to connect better and create healthy relationships in the future.