Self-Understanding Is Fundamental to Communication
Read these sections, which focus on how you can become a more effective communicator by understanding yourself and how others view you. They also discuss the centrality of attitudes, beliefs, and values for one's self-concept, and how self-fulfilling prophecies can influence decision making. After you read, try the exercises at the end of the section.
Self-Understanding Is Fundamental to Communication
Learning Objectives
- Describe the factors that contribute to self-concept.
- Describe how the self-fulfilling prophecy works.
In
the first of the Note 3.1 "Introductory Exercises" for this chapter,
you listed terms to describe yourself. This exercise focuses on your
knowledge, skills, experience, interests, and relationships. Your sense
of self comes through in your oral and written presentations. Public
communication starts with intrapersonal communication, or communication
with yourself. You need to know what you want to say before you can say
it to an audience.
Understanding
your perspective can lend insight to your awareness, the ability to be
conscious of events and stimuli. Awareness determines what you pay
attention to, how you carry out your intentions, and what you remember
of your activities and experiences each day. Awareness is a complicated
and fascinating area of study. The way we take in information, give it
order, and assign it meaning has long interested researchers from
disciplines including sociology, anthropology, and psychology.
Your
perspective is a major factor in this dynamic process. Whether you are
aware of it or not, you bring to the act of reading this sentence a
frame of mind formed from experiences and education across your
lifetime. Imagine that you see a presentation about snorkeling in
beautiful Hawaii as part of a travel campaign. If you have never been
snorkeling but love to swim, how will your perspective lead you to pay
attention to the presentation? If, however, you had a traumatic
experience as a child in a pool and are now afraid of being under water,
how will your perspective influence your reaction?
Learning
to recognize how your perspective influences your thoughts is a key
step in understanding yourself and preparing to communicate with others.
The
communication process itself is the foundation for oral and written
communication. Whether we express ourselves in terms of a live,
face-to-face conversation or across a voice over Internet protocol
(VoIP) chat via audio and visual channels, emoticons (:)), and
abbreviations (IMHO [In My Humble Opinion]), the communication process
remains the same. Imagine that you are at work and your Skype program
makes the familiar noise indicating that someone wants to talk. Your
caller ID tells you that it is a friend. You also know that you have the
report right in front of you to get done before 5:00 p.m. Your friend
is quite a talker, and for him everything tends to have a "gotta talk
about it right now" sense of urgency. You know a little bit about your
potential audience or conversational partner. Do you take the call?
Perhaps you chat back "Busy, after 5," only to have him call again. You
interpret the ring as his insistent need for attention, but you have
priorities. You can choose to close the Skype program, stop the ringing,
and get on with your report, but do you? Communication occurs on many
levels in several ways.
Self-Concept
When
we communicate, we are full of expectations, doubts, fears, and hopes.
Where we place emphasis, what we focus on, and how we view our potential
has a direct impact on our communication interactions. You gather a
sense of self as you grow, age, and experience others and the world. At
various times in your life, you have probably been praised for some of
your abilities and talents, and criticized for doing some things poorly.
These compliments and criticisms probably had a deep impact on you.
Much of what we know about ourselves we've learned through interaction
with others. Not everyone has had positive influences in their lives,
and not every critic knows what they are talking about, but criticism
and praise still influence how and what we expect from ourselves.
Carol
Dweck, a psychology researcher at Stanford University, states that
"something that seems like a small intervention can have cascading
effects on things we think of as stable or fixed, including
extroversion, openness to new experience, and resilience". Your
personality and expressions of it, like oral and written communication,
were long thought to have a genetic component. But, says Dweck, "More
and more research is suggesting that, far from being simply encoded in
the genes, much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing that
changes over the life span and is shaped by experience". If you
were told by someone that you were not a good speaker, know this: You
can change. You can shape your performance through experience, and a
business communication course, a mentor at work, or even reading
effective business communication authors can result in positive change.
Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values
When
you consider what makes you you, the answers multiply as do the
questions. As a baby, you learned to recognize that the face in the
mirror was your face. But as an adult, you begin to wonder what and who
you are. While we could discuss the concept of self endlessly and
philosophers have wrestled and will continue to wrestle with it, for our
purposes, let's focus on self, which is defined as one's own sense of
individuality, motivations, and personal characteristics. We also must keep in mind that this concept is not fixed or
absolute; instead it changes as we grow and change across our lifetimes.
One
point of discussion useful for our study about ourselves as
communicators is to examine our attitudes, beliefs, and values. These
are all interrelated, and researchers have varying theories as to which
comes first and which springs from another. We learn our values,
beliefs, and attitudes through interaction with others. Table 3.1
"Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values" defines these terms and provides an
example of each.
Table 3.1 Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values
Definition | Changeable? | Example | |
---|---|---|---|
Attitudes | Learned predispositions to a concept or object | Subject to change | I enjoyed the writing exercise in class today. |
Beliefs | Convictions or expressions of confidence | Can change over time | This course is important because I may use the communication skills I am learning in my career. |
Values | Ideals that guide our behavior | Generally long lasting | Effective communication is important. |
An attitude is your immediate disposition toward a concept or an object. Attitudes can change easily and frequently. You may prefer vanilla while someone else prefers peppermint, but if someone tries to persuade you of how delicious peppermint is, you may be willing to try it and find that you like it better than vanilla.
Beliefs are ideas based on our previous experiences and convictions and may not necessarily be based on logic or fact. You no doubt have beliefs on political, economic, and religious issues. These beliefs may not have been formed through rigorous study, but you nevertheless hold them as important aspects of self. Beliefs often serve as a frame of reference through which we interpret our world. Although they can be changed, it often takes time or strong evidence to persuade someone to change a belief.
Values are core concepts and ideas of what we consider good or bad, right or wrong, or what is worth the sacrifice. Our values are central to our self-image, what makes us who we are. Like beliefs, our values may not be based on empirical research or rational thinking, but they are even more resistant to change than are beliefs. To undergo a change in values, a person may need to undergo a transformative life experience.
Self-Image and Self-Esteem
Your self-concept is composed of two main elements: self-image and self-esteem.Your self-image is how you see yourself, how you would describe yourself to others. It includes your physical characteristics - your eye color, hair length, height, and so forth. It also includes your knowledge, experience, interests, and relationships. If these sound familiar, go back and look at the first of the Note 3.1 "Introductory Exercises" for this chapter. In creating the personal inventory in this exercise, you identified many characteristics that contribute to your self-image. In addition, image involves not just how you look but also your expectations of yourself - what you can be.
What is your image of yourself as a communicator? How do you feel about your ability to communicate? While the two responses may be similar, they indicate different things. Your self-esteem is how you feel about yourself; your feelings of self-worth, self-acceptance, and self-respect. Healthy self-esteem can be particularly important when you experience a setback or a failure. Instead of blaming yourself or thinking, "I'm just no good," high self-esteem will enable you to persevere and give yourself positive messages like "If I prepare well and try harder, I can do better next time".
Looking-Glass Self
In addition to how we view ourselves and feel about ourselves, of course, we often take into consideration the opinions and behavior of others. looking-glass self reinforces how we look to others and how they view us, treat us, and interact with us to gain insight of our identity. We place an extra emphasis on parents, supervisors, and on those who have some degree of control over us when we look at others. Developing a sense of self as a communicator involves balance between constructive feedback from others and constructive self-affirmation. You judge yourself, as others do, and both views count.Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
In a psychology experiment that has become famous through repeated trials, several public school teachers were told that specific students in their classes were expected to do quite well because of their intelligence. These students were identified as having special potential that had not yet "bloomed". What the teachers didn't know was that these "special potential" students were randomly selected. That's right: as a group, they had no more special potential than any other students.
When people encourage you, it affects the way you see yourself and your potential. Seek encouragement for your writing and speaking. Actively choose positive reinforcement as you develop your communication skills. You will make mistakes, but the important thing is to learn from them. Keep in mind that criticism should be constructive, with specific points you can address, correct, and improve.
The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which someone's behavior comes to match and mirror others' expectations, is not new. Robert Rosenthal a professor of social psychology at Harvard, has observed four principles while studying this interaction between expectations and performance:
- We form certain expectations of people or events.
- We communicate those expectations with various cues, verbal and nonverbal.
- People tend to respond to these cues by adjusting their behavior to match the expectations.
- The outcome is that the original expectation becomes true.
Key Takeaway
Exercises
- How would you describe yourself as a public speaker? Now, five, and ten years ago? Is your description the same or does it change across time? This business communication text and course can make a difference in what you might write for the category "one year from today".
- How does your self-concept influence your writing? Write a one- to two-page essay on this topic and discuss it with a classmate.
- Make a list of at least three of your strongly held beliefs. What are those beliefs based on? List some facts, respected authorities, or other evidence that support them. Share your results with your class.
- What are some of the values held by people you know? Identify a target sample size (twenty is a good number) and ask members of your family, friends, and peers about their values. Compare your results with those of your classmates.
- Make a list of traits you share with your family members. Interview them and see if anyone else in your family has shared them. Share and compare with your classmates.
- What does the field of psychology offer concerning the self-fulfilling prophecy? Investigate the topic and share your findings.