Friday, May 25, 2012

Perceiving the Self and Others


My husband and my friend Kelli were the two people I chose to evaluate me.  I was surprised to see how much my husband and friend actually knew me.  Their scores were very similar to what I scored for myself.  When I talked with both of them about their answers they both told me that the most difficult questions concerned how I felt about talking in front of groups of people, mainly the question about my heart beating faster.  Interesting enough, they answered the same thing I did.  They have definitely “listened” to my voiced concerns in the past.

I was also very surprised that my friend Kelli perceived me as being a much more effective communicator than I perceived myself.  This says a lot about my self-concept.    

My Family

This week I have gained a few insights about communication.  I feel these two are the very important and can definitely affect our personal and professional lives.

  1.  Self-concept can shape our communication skills with others.  Other may perceive you as a great communicator, but your lack of confidence can have an impact on your life.
  2. Our backgrounds and personal cultures can cause us to make assumptions about others, and can often affect our communication with those individuals.  We should resist to make assumptions of individuals until we have had the opportunity to meet and converse with them.      

3 comments:

  1. Hi Kristen,
    I too was surprised how similar my evaluations were. My boyfriend also had some difficulty with the questions about my heart beating faster or if my body feels tense, but he knows that I really dislike speaking in public. I usually feel that I need a lot of work on my communication, but these evaluations and my boyfriend and friend's comments show me that I do have a lot of good communication skills. This just shows how you view yourself can impact your communication.

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  2. Kristen, I too found it interesting at how well my mother and husband listened to me when it came to my emotions and heart beat getting faster. While asking my mother the questions, I found her justifying her reasoning. I think she was mainly making sure we marked the right answer, but I learned so much about myself in the process. To see how others view your communication skills is a great eye opener into how you see yourself and how others see you. Thank you for sharing!

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  3. You have a gorgeous family. I understand how those people's score would be similar to yours because I had the same result. It seems that people who know you tend to have insight that others don't have. I agree that we should allow assumptions to distort our vision when it comes to others because this could hinder us or keep us from knowing the people that we come in contact with.

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