Communication and Collaboration

     My next stop on my road to mastery is in a course called Communication and Collaboration in the Early Childhood Education Field.  The skill of communication is important in any professional field that requires you to have communication with others-requiring competency.  Wiemann & Backland, (1980) states  we do not mean merely adequate, average, or ”OK”: communication scholars use the term competent to describe communication that is effective and appropriate for the given situation, in which the communicators evaluate and reassess their own communication process

     This picture shows all of the emotions a person feels when they are a victim of incompetent communicator.  We should never want to intentionally make another person feel this way. 

     My first blog post for the Communication and Collaboration in the Early Childhood Field requires me to identify a person that I feels exhibits an effective communication style.  At first, I thought of all of the people that did not meet this category and then the person that I speak to most about any subject came to my mind.  This person is Pastor Jacqueline Bobien, my pastor.

     My pastor is a person that I believe is a competent communicator because she actively listens to you as you speak, restates what you have just said to ensure she understands, and responds to you in a way that never degrades you in any way.  If there is a time when she does not have an immediate answer, she will truthfully tell you so and ask you if you are okay with her getting back to you with a response so that her response will be accurate.  I can depend on her being honest and not being intimidating or distorting the facts to coerce anyone into doing anything.  However, she has the ability to influence you to make the decision of doing the thing that is deemed right and ethical in a situation.  “One of the most important functions of communication is the ability to influence people.”  (O'Hair & Wiemann, 2009, p. 7)

     I would love to pattern my communication behaviors to mimic hers because she communicates in an ethical way and her behaviors do not change in situations when someone is angry or acting irrational.  As educators, we might have moments when parents are upset and display behaviors that they normally do not display when they are in a good mood.  We cannot respond in the same manner but we have to control our emotions in order to effectively communicate with that person.  I honestly am working on control of emotions and my pastor is one that I have seen control emotions in situations where people are upset in settings that were in and out of the church environment.

     My goal for this course is to learn how to be an effective communicator and learn the art of communicating in professional settings.  This is the last course before I entering into my specialty program with is the Administration, Management and Leadership track.  I believe this course will teach me how to be a professional communicator, so continue on with me as I travel along my road to mastery.

Resources

O’Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication: An introduction (2nd Ed.). New York:

           Bedford/St. Martin’s Press.