Fundamental of Interpersonal 8 Week i
Week 8: Week Eight - Individual Work
Only 100 words
Instructional Objectives for this activity:
Illustrate how a positive communication climate contributes to sustaining social, personal and professional relationships.
Of the five guidelines listed in your textbook reading on pages 209-214, please select and describe the ones you find most valuable in creating and sustaining your current social, personal and professional relationships.
Actively Use Communication to Build Confirming Climates:
The first principle is to use what you’re learned in this chapter to enhance the communication climates in your relationships. Now that you know what fuels confirming and disconfirming climates, you identify and curb disconfirming patterns of talk, such as evolution and superiority. In addition, you can actively use confirming communication, such as problem orientation and tentativeness.
Accept and confirm others:
Throughout this chapter, we’ve seen that confirmation is central to healthy climates and fulfilling relationships. Although we can understand how important it is, ir isn’t always easy to validate others. Sometimes we disagree with others it doesn’t like certain things they do. Being honest with others is important because we expect real friends to be sources of honest feedback, even if it isn’t always pleasant to hear (Rawlins, 1994).this implies that we should express honest misgivings about our friends and their behaviors.
Affirm and Assert Yourself:
It is just important to affirm yourself as it to affirm others. You are no less valuable, your needs are no less important, and your preferences are no less valid than those of others. It is a misunderstanding to think that the interpersonal communication principles we’re discussed only concern how we behave toward other. Equally, the pertain to how we should treat ourselves. Thus, the principle of confirming people’s worth applies just as much to oneself as to others.
Although we can’t always meet the needs of all parties in relationship, it is possible to give voice to everyone, including yourself. If your partner favors greater autonomy than you do. You need to recognize that preference and also assert your own.
Respect Diversity in Relationships
Just as individuals differ, so do relationships. There is tremendous variety in what people find comfortable, affirming, and satisfying in interpersonal interaction. For example, you might have one friend who enjoys a lot if verbal disclosure and another who prefers less.
There’s no reason to try to persuade the first friend to disclose less or the second one to be more revealing. Similarly, you may be comfortable with greater closeness in some of your relationships and with more autonomy in others. Differences between people create a rich variety of relationship.
Respond Constructively to Criticism:
A fifth guideline is to learn respond effectively when others offer constructive criticism. Sometimes, others communicate criticism in language that fosters defensiveness: you’re selfish.” We tend to react negatively to such judgmental language, and we may dismiss the criticism or just think that other person is being mean. Others criticism may make us aware of our blind spots in interpersonal communication.
Could you help me understand what I DO THAT YOU SEE AS SELFISH? Asking such a question allows you to get concrete information.
If, after reflection, you don’t think the criticism is accurate, offer your interpretation of the behaviors the other person perceived as inconsiderate selfish of me to go out with my friends so often, but to me you because I care about them, just like I spend time with you because I care about you.” Notice that this response not only offers an alternative interpretation of particular behavior but also affirms the other person.
Chapter Summary:
Perhaps the most basic requirement for healthy communication climates is confirmation. Each of us wants to feel valued, especially by those who matter most to us. When partners recognize, acknowledge, and endorse each other, they communicate, you matter to me.
O close the chapter, we considered five guidelines for building healthy communication climates. The first is to use your communication to enhance the mood of a relationship. Second, we should accept and confirm our friends and romantic partners, communicating that we respect them, even though we may not always agree with them or feel as they do. The third guideline is a companion to the second one: we should accept and confirm ourselves just as fully as we do others. Each of us is entitled to assert his or her own thoughts, feeling, and needs. Doing so allows us to honor ourselves and to help our partners understand us. Fourth, we should realize that diversity in relationships is a source of personal and interpersonal growth. People vary widely, as do the relationship patterns and forms they prefer. By respecting differences among us, we all expand our insights into the fascinating array of ways that humans form and sustain intimate relations. Finally, personal growth and healthy relationships are fostered by dealing con-attractively with criticism.
Reference:
Wood, J. (2013). Interpersonal communication: Everyday encounters, (7th Ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.