Group and Organizational Course Summary

What is your understanding of how communication should be in groups and in life in order to communicate successfully? Well it is never clear to us exactly how to communicate effectively, whether it be in a group or in life especially when you have diversity that surrounds us daily, conflicts of interest and overall differences of opinions, but with some knowledge of the basics, one can easily be guided in successfully communicating in life and when we become a part of the business world. Through the Effective Personal & Organizational Communication class, a lot of these basics were shared with us, but I will like to focus on three factors I feel surrounds us daily and by going in depth into them will help us all understand the communication process a lot better. In De Janasz, Dowd, and Schneider (2006) Interpersonal Skills in Organization, there were many chapters that focused on how to communicate and through them I have been able to better understand communication itself and will be able to better explain my recently gained knowledge on communication and organization.

For starters, diversity surrounds us all in our daily lives and we must learn how to understand it and its place in communication. Diversity basically describes the reality of a national and world communication made up of people from cultures with languages and social customs very different from our own. This affects us all, especially when trying to communicate with others who come from backgrounds different from our own. There will be many times, if not always, that you will encounter a conversation with someone that has a hard time understanding your views because they have a different understanding from you due to their background. The key is to understand diversity, and keep it in mind when getting your point across to others. Diversity has its good and bad traits, but knowing that can help you have a more effective communication in life and in the business world. When you have poor communication, or miscommunication, it opens up that door for stereotyping and assumptions, therefore you must be very careful when you try to discuss any issue especially if dealing with a group of individuals. This is often the case in social groups, which we deal with often in life. As human beings, our relationships within social groups begin at birth. We tend to follow in what we have been taught and know no different from it, which leads us to stereotyping. Personally I deal with this on a daily basis. I work in a very diverse environment and have experienced both sides of this. I have been part of a diverse small group, were I have been stereotyped and I too have stereotyped which causes a break in the communication process. There was this one incident not too long ago, in where I was part of my first staff meeting and we were asked who wanted to take the minutes for the meeting. I automatically assumed that I would probably be volunteered since I was the “new girl” and looked around at my co-workers seeing who would be the first to look my way. Surprisingly one co-worker did, but as she did, she sat up in her chair and said, “Oh don’t worry, I’ll take them, I mean, we don’t expect this youngster to know how to take minutes in her first meeting!” I was left in shocked. She stereotyped me as being young and inexperienced as if I was there by luck. I had never been in a position like I was that day. But I handled myself well, and by communicating what I felt was able to let them know that I was able to take the minutes. I told them that just because I am young, it does not mean I am not able to take minutes, and offered to take them myself, but she insisted in taking them, so I let her. I have never been in a situation like that before in my life, but then it dawned on me, this happens every day, and sometimes we don’t even notice it. And in some cases people don’t speak up because of their lack of communication and let themselves be talked down to in life. We assume and stereotype because of a person’s culture, gender, or age and it sometimes causes conflicts which are all cause of lack of communication. Now how we deal with these conflicts is what makes or breaks us.

When dealing with conflicts within small groups, we must learn how to handle them in order to communicate effectively. There are five styles of conflict management that I feel a of great importance when communicating. Two that are assertive, two that are cooperative and one that is neither or. When dealing with a conflict in an assertive manner, you are either a collaborator, one who seeks maximum gain for all participants in the end or you are a Competitor, one who is only interested in winning their argument, which in some cases can become destructive because you are willing to win at any cost. Then you have the cooperative approach, in which you either avoid the conflict before