Public speaking course reflection essay

Self-reflection Essay: Interpersonal Communication

This essay is a self-reflection analysis of my communication skills based upon information generated

from the five diagnostic tools presented hereafter and focusing on two communication issues drawn

from the results of the diagnostic tools. The two communication issues in need of my personal

communication development are public speaking anxiety, more precisely giving a presentation and

low tolerance for disagreement. Moreover, this essay consists of literature review focusing on key

concepts and theories related to the communication issues. Through this process of reflection, I have

gained knowledge of activities I can implement to tackle the communication issues. These activities

are reflected in an action plan after the literature review.

I have used five different diagnostic tools to analyze my communication in various communication

situations. First tool was a Self-Perceived Communication Competence Questionnaire which is an

indicator of how people analyze their own communication competence when confronted with a

plethora of communication situations with an array of receivers (McCroskey & McCroskey, 2013).

The second tool was a Personal Report of Communication Apprehension which measures an

individual’s feelings towards communication by asking the individual to analyze diverse

communication situations and how one would behave in them (McCroskey, 2007a). The third tool

was a Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety which gives, as the name entails, an estimate of

individual’s level of anxiety towards public speaking (McCroskey, 2007b). The fourth tool was the

Willingness to Listen Diagnostic with which one’s orientation towards listening can be examined

(Richmond & Hickson, 2001). Lastly, the fifth tool was a Tolerance for Disagreement providing

information on how well people can tolerate disagreement and conflicting ideas which one believes

to be true (Teven, Richmond & McCroskey, 1998).

The results from all the questionnaires where quite accurate and I recognize my communication style

and preferences from them. As the results from Self-Perceived Communication Competence show, I

am at my most comfortable when talking with friends and having interactions on a one-to-one basis,

whereas, I am somewhat uncomfortable talking in public, in large groups of people or meetings. The

results from the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension further verifies that I have a slight

apprehension when it comes to public speaking or speaking in meetings. My overall communication

apprehension score was 70 which falls in the category of a moderate level of communication

apprehension. The public speaking anxiety score of 115 demonstrates that I experience moderate

levels of anxiety when giving a presentation which is aligned with the scores from the apprehension

report. The fourth diagnostic tool, Willingness to Listen provided me with a score of 72 indicating a

moderate level of willingness to listen. Lastly, the tolerance for disagreement score puts me also in

the moderate scale with a score of 42.

Although the scores for public speaking anxiety and tolerance for disagreement fall in the category

of moderate, I perceive myself needing to improve those areas of communication and I strongly feel

that by doing so, it will be beneficial for my business communication to reduce the level of anxiety

from moderate to low. When it comes to tolerance for disagreement, I have always had the tendency

to avoid conflicts and disagreements in my interpersonal communication and try to solve any issues

as diplomatically as possible. However, I believe disagreements are inevitable in business context

and especially in decision-making and finding the right way to communicate when disagreeing

opinions arise, is crucial.

Reflecting on the public speaking anxiety, giving a presentation in a meeting, I would like to provide

the following example of what happened six months ago while I was working as a Legal Assistant in

one of the business law firms in Finland. I was given a task to present findings of what could be

improved in the procedure of sending responses, claims and pleas to courts on the designated due

date. I was to present the findings of the survey in the partner’s meeting. Prior to the meeting, I felt

quite nervous because I knew I needed to articulate my findings in a comprehensible way as the

partners, all of whom are lawyers, had a limited amount of knowledge of the administrative tasks

assistants do. Furthermore, judging by my previous experiences, lawyers are a demanding audience,

and this only added the pressure to communicate and deliver the presentation as clearly and accurately

as possible. Although I was prepared for presenting, I found it difficult to concentrate and remember

what I was meant to communicate.

The second example of a communication issue is related to tolerance for disagreement and it took

place in the same law firm. I was given a task which I knew did not belong to me, however, to avoid

arguments with one of the managers, I ended up completing the task. This is a classic example of my

behavior to avoid communicating my disagreeing view of the issue to the other party. I was clearly

trying to avoid a possible interpersonal conflict by submissive behavior and communicating to the

manager what she wanted to hear. Now, reflecting on the situation, I could have presented a solid

argument with evidence to support my view, where it might not have led to a conflict at all.

Communication apprehension (CA) can be defined as an anxiety or fear towards expected or

unexpected communication situations with a person or group of people (McCroskey, 1977). Due to

these negative associations towards communication, an individual with elevated levels of CA will

abstain from voluntarily engaging oneself in oral communication as identified by McCroskey (1977).

Furthermore, McCroskey (2001) identified four types of CA which are anxiety related to trait,

audience, context and situation. Trait related anxiety refers to the individual who is avoiding public

speaking because of lack of knowledge or experience but with practice will be able to perform in

public speaking situations. Audience anxiety is to do with the people in the audience causing the

nervousness of the speaker, whereas, context anxiety is caused by, for instance, novelty or uncertainty

of the situation. Lastly, the situation anxiety is created by combination of factors such as cultural,

social and psychological factors (McCroskey, 1977). The ability to communicate is conceptually

distinct from communication apprehension, however, there is strong negative associations between

the two and the cause for this phenomenon is believed to be individual’s ability to momentarily

overcome anxiety and continue to perform in an unpleasant situation in which the negative

associations evolve (Gardner, Milne, Stringer & Whiting, 2005).

Public speaking competence is a necessity in business life as researched by Marinho, Mesquita de

Medeiros, Gama and Teixeira (2017). Their research also concluded that a predominant element for

success in professional life and establishing creditability and is the ability to communicate fluently.

Another research conducted by Russ (2012), found out that in an organizational setting, the level of

CA individual has effects on the interpersonal workplace relationships and effectiveness as a

manager. Another research conducted by Russ (2013), concluded that managers who have prominent

level of CA, are less likely to include others in their decision-making process, moreover, they are less

likely to propose collaborative communication with their subordinates. From these research results

can be concluded that the extent to which communication apprehension influences individual’s

actions is significant and, subsequently, how important it is to lower the levels of CA so it does not

pose far-reaching negative implications for one’s professional competence at the workplace.

The tolerance for disagreement was conceptualized following research conducted of group

communication and communication in an organizational setting (Teven at al., 1998). Disagreeing is

circumstantially dependent meaning that the way one disagrees differs depending on who is the

opponent in the disagreement, for instance colleagues or family members, where the disagreement is

taking place, and in addition, whether it is disagreeing face-to-face or online (Marra, 2012). The

background of the participants, their position in the company and the communication style are factors

further identified having an influence on the formation of disagreement by Angour (2012).

The theoretical framework around interpersonal communication regarding disagreement and conflict

is not unambiguous since there are many components affecting the situation, whether a discussion

evolves into disagreement or conflict (Education portal, 2016). Education portal (2016), identifies

four interpersonal communication factors affecting the emergence of possible disagreement or

conflict at the workplace which are verbal communication, non-verbal communication, emotions in

communication and listening. De Vries, Bakker-Pieper & Oostenveld (2010) studied different verbal

communication styles and identified several factors affecting communication which were

preciseness, expressiveness, argumentativeness, assuredness, supportiveness and verbal

aggressiveness. These factors have an impact on communication and especially in the business

context, the factors dictate how employees perceive their managers. Within a company, knowledge

sharing and team commitment are largely influenced by manager’s communication style (De Vries

et al., 2010). According to another study conducted by Hartman & McCambridge (2011), the

effective communication is the number one skill companies seek in managers and it is directly linked

to team efficacy and it increases the opportunity for promotion. Hartman and McCambridge (2011),

also found that when communicating in different types of situations, one should identify the needs of

the audience and adjust communication style accordingly.

Positive non-verbal communication, for instance nonverbal immediacy, may prevent disagreement

due to its effect of bringing forward positive signals and attitudes (Jia, Cheng & Hale, 2017).

Nonverbal immediacy can be defined as an act of expressing positive signs such as smiling or nodding

when listening or talking (Jia et al., 2017). Another component of interpersonal communication

affecting the emergence of disagreement in negotiation is emotions as identified by Van Kleef & De

Dreu (2006). According to Van Kleef’s and De Dreu’s findings (2006) in a negotiation situation,

those individuals who expressed disappointment or worry in their interpersonal communication

persuaded the opponent to adopt the opposing view. As stated above, individual’s ability to listen is

one of the factors constituting interpersonal communication. As commented by Roberts and Vinson

(1998), there are individual variations in the individual’s ability to listen and to which extent one lets

external stimulus subconsciously effect listening.

After identifying the two communication issues needing development, I have created an action plan

for the next six months to overcome these issues. Firstly, keeping a personal journal would be

beneficial throughout the process to keep me on track with what I have accomplished and where I

can reflect my own progress. At the end of the six-month period, the journal would be a useful tool

to identify the areas where I have improved and if there are issues I need to work on, the journal

would act as a framework for future planning. Secondly, having a mentor to oversee the process and

using the mentor’s expertise to overcome the speech anxiety issues and learn confidence strategies

for presenting, would make the process effective. I am going to hire Peter Dhu as my mentor who has

a Diploma in Professional Coaching and he has accumulated 20 years of experience working with

people over various communication issues (Peter Dhu & Violet Dhu - Corporate Communication

Experts, 2016). I would participate to his six-week training program and receive advice on how to

give presentations with confidence and reduce communication apprehension.

Mental practices and strategies have been used successfully to improve athletes’ performance (Cocks,

Moulton, Luu & Cil, 2014). Based on this evidence, I would like to integrate these practices to my

action plan to reduce the communication apprehension by visualizing in my mind the upcoming

communication situation that I feel anxious about and to relief the stress level. I would also like to

get acquainted with the literature regarding communication apprehension and interpersonal conflicts.

I have chosen the following three books to read “Communication Apprehension, Avoidance, and

Effectiveness” by Richmond, Wrench and McCroskey (Amazon.com, 2017a), “Umm . . .: A

Complete Guide to Public Speaking” by O'Loghlin (Cengage Learning, 2017) and “Managing

Interpersonal Conflict (Interpersonal Communication Texts)” by Donohue (Amazon.com, 2017b).

I will participate in an interpersonal communication course “Effective People and Communication

Skills” conducted by Odyssey Training (Odyssey Training, 2017) to improve my professionalism and

effectiveness in communication at the workplace. Furthermore, this course enhances the ability to

change communication style depending on the communication situation, one of the skills that the

research showed to be highly valued in managers by companies. I will also take part in another course

“Public Speaking - Individual Training” by The Voice Business (The Voice Business, 2017) to reduce

the public speaking anxiety and gain more knowledge of how to prepare for the presentations in an

effective manner. This course also provides advice for how to monitor and become aware of the non-

verbal communication I am using. Moreover, I am given advice on how to structure the speech. All

these aforementioned activities and the time of conducting them are illustrated in Figure 1.

I believe the best way to evaluate my progress after completing the six months, are the future

presentations at university and in the workplace and the feedback received from them. I also believe

that learning about communication is a lifelong process, hence, interpersonal communication skills

should be practiced whenever one is given a chance.

Figure 1. Gantt chart of the action plan

In conclusion, this essay gave a brief insight to the five communication diagnostic tools I used to

gather information of my communication issues. The two key communication issues I identified

where public speaking anxiety and the tolerance for disagreement. These two issues relate to the

theories of communication apprehension and disagreement in interpersonal communication.

Interpersonal communication being a vast area, the literature review focused on the components of

verbal and non-verbal communication, emotions in communication and listening, whereas the

communication apprehension addressed the distinct types of CA and the ability to communicate as

well as public speaking competence. Lastly, an action plan was created based upon the results of the

analysis.

1-Jun 26-Jun 21-Jul 15-Aug 9-Sep 4-Oct 29-Oct 23-Nov 18-Dec

Maintain personal journal

Mentor Peter Dhu

Mental practices

Read books

Communication course

Public speaking course

Gantt chart of the action plan

Days to complete

References

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Amazon.com. (2017b). Managing Interpersonal Conflict (Interpersonal Communication Texts) 1st

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Communication-Texts/dp/0803933126

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