Seven Steps in Communication

Applying the 7 steps to ME, as a Communicator

There are numerous pressures that surround many individuals and by talking to others we are able to feel better about the situations. Through communication we are able to express how we feel in various ways. I can think of several occasions where I have been upset, stressed or angry and I needed someone to talk to. When encountering these emotions it is not always the best idea to talk with an individual right away because you could end up pushing these emotions towards the person you are talking with. I can remember a specific example of being irritated and upset about a certain situation and talking to my mom about what I was going through. The conversation was not very successful, in the way that there was a lot of disagreeing and arguing, which took place.

After reading the seven steps in chapter one from Compose Design Advocate it occurred to me that the confrontation that I had experienced with my mother could have been prevented. If I would have known about these seven ideas I could have applied them to my communication skills and I would have been more prepared for the conversation with my mom. Many of times people don’t think to “practice” or “rehearse” what they would like to say to an individual or how they could use various kinds of communication strategies to say what they would like. There are many ways in which can help make a conversation more productive and I can now see that through the steps I have read about.

The first step is to make the content of the conversation have a specific purpose. When I talked to my mom about my frustrations I didn’t have a specific topic or purpose, for that matter. Now looking back at the situation, it seems that I just wanted someone to vent to and I now understand that it is not always a good idea… By making sure that there is a specific purpose to what you want to say, it helps to eliminate that urge to vent. The authors asked these questions at the end of the reading, “Why are we communicating?” and “What do we want to achieve?” I think that if individuals asked themselves these questions before jumping into an important conversation then there would be a lot less arguing and disagreeing.

The next two steps are to consider your audience and to think about the larger context. When talking to an individual I now know that you should think about whom you are talking to and how what is said can affect them. If I would have considered what my mom expected from our conversation and how the place and time could have affected the outcome, our talk would have been much more productive. The forth step is to be aware of your communication strategies. Many people don’t realize that they possess a variety of strategies that help them in communicating.

The fifth step in improving one’s communication skills is to think of the medium of communication. You should ask yourself questions like, “What is the audience expecting about the medium we are using?” and “Is it the best medium?” The sixth step is the order in which you arrange and combine your communication strategies. If I would have kept this step in mind through the duration of my conversation with my mom, I believe that I could have avoided majority of the confrontation. I think that if I had known these steps in communication prior to my conversation with my mom it would have ended up much more differently. We probably would have been calmer and I would have been prerpared.