“Reflect on the importance of communicating effectively. Think about your own communication skills. Write down what you think your strengths and weaknesses are, communication-wise. This will allow you to review and reflect when you get to the end of the course. You may like to discuss the questions above in relation to your communication skills” (Costigan 2014).
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-09-24/
Should I ever decide to return to work in the corporate world, the above scenario is one I see playing out for myself. It’s not that I would consider myself a poor communicator by any means; I simply lack enough enthusiasm to care who I’m communicating with and how the message is received. If I were to attempt to analyse and break down specifically what my strengths and weaknesses were, I would struggle.
I have never enjoyed, nor understood self-analysis exercises in any context. If for example there was a reward for achieving a high result, (albeit a self-assessed high and largely falsified grading) why would you not give yourself a perfect score? Transversely, in an exercise such as this with no positive or negative outcome, I tend to express an apathetic and self-loathing response. For the sake of fulfilling the criteria, a brief pros and cons list of my own communication tendencies has been produced.
| Pros | Cons |
| – Direct | – Blunt |
| – Honest | – Too honest |
| – Well spoken | – Speech can become superfluous |
According to Cohen’s translation of Newton (1726), “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction”. Although only a small sample size, it is clear how mathematician Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion can also be applied to communication.
I view communication as a complex mathematical equation looking something like this.
(A + X) x (B – Y) = Z
Person A (myself/the sender) adds input X (the intended message), Person B (the receiver/audience) subtracts Y (whatever message they wish, because I’m not overly loud and have no desire to repeat myself), equalling Z (purple monkey dishwasher?).
My model can be likened to the very influential Shannon and Weaver, Sender-Message-Receiver/SMR model (Eunson 2012).
Only in this case, with less regard for the recipient.
In conclusion, you probably don’t want to converse with me.
References
Costigan, L 2014, Lesson 1: Introduction to communication concepts in a professional context, course notes, COMM11003 Communication in Professional Contexts, CQUniversity e-courses, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au
Eunson, B 2012, Communicating in the 21st Century, 3rd edn, John Wiley & Son, Milton, Australia
Newton, I 2014 (1726), The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, viewed 13 January 2015, http://www.todayinsci.com/N/Newton_Isaac/NewtonIsaac-Quotations.htm
Anthony Norris CQU Student Blog 