Sunday, February 12, 2012

Interpersonal Communication... say what?


Interpersonal; (adjective) - of or relating to relationships or communication between people: you will need good interpersonal skills.

Did you catch it? It’s like the example sentence was directed to us! (Weird^2)
            
(yeah yeah…. I know it looks long but I just couldn’t stop myself J)

A huge shout out to Lauren and Dylan on a job well done, I very much enjoyed your learning session was well put together and the execution was superb.  It also got me thinking about another class I am in right now, and if you’ve taken a presentation class you’ll probably know what I’m talking about. 
In this course the professor drills into our heads the difference between a lecture/speech and a presentation.  A presentation is different because it requires audience involvement.  This just happens to be oh so very important, especially for us as peer mentors.  Getting people involved during a presentation can have a tremendous impact on the desired outcome. 
Dylan, Lauren, and Amy all did an excellent job of encouraging discussion with our neighbor and then facilitating discussion as a group.  Talking with your partner first can help build confidence and takes away the stress of maybe saying the wrong thing as a group.  Discussing gets us to regurgitate the information and this forces us to think about the topic and eventually process the information.
Processing is by far one of my favorite parts of an activity, it might be the engineer coming out in me but we can all appreciate its value.  It’s the point in a presentation where you can challenge the audience and really drive in the message. I know we have all had those “huh… that makes a lot of sense” moments, I think I do every other day in EM 274.  It’s the point where we take all the knowledge, material, terms, ideas and “process” it into what matters and why we should care.  Real powerful stuff -> use with caution ;).
Since they did such a great job of putting this elements together I know I was able to walk away with a greater understand of interpersonal communication and its importance.  The “Tips for Sending Messages” on pg. 118 of our text really stuck out to me as some things to always keep in mind. Things like taking personal ownership by using “I” and “my” shows that they really are your thoughts, ideas, and feelings and our peers can have no doubts that we do in fact feel that way.  We can always look for feedback to be sure our messages are being received in the way we intended.  The one in particular that I am personally going to work on is to describe behaviors without evaluating or interpreting.  Instead of identifying how somebodies actions may seem or makes me feel, I would be wise to identify their action and let them know how it is affecting others or myself.
I don’t know about you guys, but I am looking forward to some awesome lessons from the rest of our group. See you Wednesday!


~Easten

3 comments:

  1. I am really nervous that when it is my turn to teach the class I wont do as well as Amy, Lauren, and Dylan have, they did rock! I also like how you can incorporate this class with your other ones.

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  2. I remember the good old days when things didn't move in my classes, that was when i had "aha" moments, now I have shoot this stuff makes no sense moments. Carly and I are doing the lesson this week. Let's just say I'm a bit nervous.

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  3. Great blog - you put a lot of effort into it. We definitely have a couple of standard bearers to try to match when we give our lesson plan in a month.

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