Communication is an important factor in all of our lives, but knowing the way in which you will correctly communicate a message for the audience that you are communicating to is a more refined and challenging concept. Within the American culture, there are hundreds, if not thousands of differences in the ways in which we all communicate. This could be how we were raised, the industry that we work in, or the way in which we perceive sounds or others communication. After all, we as humans, are all different in a variety of ways with communication being a big one.
This lesson really hit home with me, as I can personally relate to it with my current role at my company. It all began with my interview, where the interviewer is an owner of the company and she had asked, “can you tell me where the intersection between Short Term, Long Term disability, and FMLA is”? My response at the time was, “can you rephrase your question, I am not sure what you mean by an intersection”. She had rephrased the question, but it did not suffice, eventually leading to her explaining that the intersection is how an organization can modify its policy to ensure that these policies interlock so that when you go on Short Term Disability, the time you have for FMLA leave kicks in at that time too.
Luckily, this disconnect in communication did not cause me to not receive a job offer for the position. However, I began to notice more and more disconnects in our communication as my employment with the company grew in age. I would constantly beat myself up about it, I would ask myself, “why can’t you understand, why is it that everyone in your past said you were a great communicator and now you can’t communicate”. I immediately analyze myself as I do not ever want to land in the area of being a person who is considered a narcissist or an egocentric communicator, that being someone who is overly confident about the way that they communicate and thinking that their way of communication is the only way (PSU, 2019).
Well, after analyzing myself, I realized it was not just a disconnect with this owner’s communication, it was a disconnect with a few other owners of the same company as well. This causing me to notice that the owners all knew each other for 28 or more years and they all worked in the healthcare industry. This made me wonder since I come from a manufacturing environment and the owners at the company I work for come from health care environments, do these differences in industry make a difference in how we communicate? I had found that within the first month with this employer, I was either over delivering or under delivering on tasks, I felt disconnected from the in-group, and was very stressed out.
In the article, “3 Common Communication Challenges”, it is said, “A sure way to set both sides up for confusion and disappointment is to not know what you want, when you want it, and how you expect it” (Saunders, 2013). This coming to mean that communication is a two-way street, so therefor I need to improve and solve the disconnect and help the other side resolve their disconnect. Whether or not this was due to the industry differences or the fact that the owners had all known each other for over 28 years was the issue in the communication disconnect, I am not sure, nor does it really matter. How I resolved this issue was vocalizing my concern, defined our differences, and began to repeat the expectations of each assigned task back to the assigner to confirm an understanding had been made. Almost immediately communication improved, expectations were met, and I was no longer questioning my communication skills or stressed out.
Work Cited
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). OLEAD 410 Lesson 04: Global Communication. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026965
Saunders, E. (2013, August 15). 3 Common Communication Challenges (And How to Handle Them). Retrieved from https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/3-common-communication-challenges-and-how-to-handle-them/
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