#131
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to learn about different communication styles and identify your primary style.
Overview: Complete the Discover Your Communication Style questionnaire to help you identify your style. Deliver a 5- to 7-minute speech at a club meeting about your communication style and its impact on your professional and/or personal relationships. If you are uncomfortable discussing your communication style, you may speak about the communication styles you have encountered and how they impact you. Your speech should not be a report of the content of this project.
Script:
Fellow TMs and guests, a very good evening to all of you once again.
In my previous project I had to understand my leadership style. After reminiscing several anecdotes from my experiences I concluded that I didn't have one style. Instead I had a few, which I had to pick and choose from, depending on the scenario. in that process I also got to reiterate that leadership is indeed an action and not merely a position.
With communication however, I don't think it's that straightforward. I often tend to think: "Ah yes I am communicating very effectively because if someone would have spoken to me the way I spoke to them, I would easily understand." Doesn't work that way.
After analyzing some of my conversations I realized that you understand your own style much better when you record and listen to them or if someone else evaluates you and points you in the right direction what they thought went well and what didn't.
If you've observed some of my previous speeches you'd know that I tend to dramatize the wordings and gestures a little bit more and try to enact the things I'm talking about.
For today's speech though, I thought why not try something different? after all, it's about communication. Let's experiment. Why don't I adopt a style that makes it seem as though I am casually talking to a bunch of people in front of me rather than giving a speech? Well, I just hope this works and that the intent is achieved.
Coming to understanding styles of communication we must try to understand other factors too. Apart from knowing yourself more via recording or feedback, another thing is that everybody's level of understanding is different, their background, culture, the things they read about, who they hang out with, everything is different. so we must try to understand that and then decide how to communicate with them rather than simply assuming they're on the same level as us.
Just like the previous project had a questionnaire this project had one too. I felt like one of those facebook quizzes we used to take years ago wherein it'll tell you answer these questions and then magically reveal which friends or disney character you most resemble and stuff like that.
The first style it showed was analytical communication style
the moment I read this you know whom I got reminded of? A toastmaster evaluator! Which role better suits this style?
You analyze someone else's speech and try to scrutinize certain aspects of it like structure, delivery and content.
Similarly in real life, I try my best to interpret what the other person is saying and play by ear.
Regarding the supportive style - well I can say that I try to make the other person feel welcome.
If it's a new person I'm trying to get to know, I may be a little shy at first but I'll try to listen to something I can build on and support them with.
I of course cannot do it for everything because my contextual knowledge is limited to where I've grown up and the exposure I've had over the years. For example, if you tell me you're from Bombay or if you tell me you're an avid reader I'll have lots of follow up questions because it appeals to who I am.
What I feel is that though I have come across various kinds of people in my life I think I have still been able to strike up a conversation with them that might make them feel welcome. Please note this is just my perspective. I may be wrong.
Next on the list was initiative style of communication it's somewhat similar to supportive. here the only difference is that if I'm sitting in a place where I don't know anyone and I want to make small talk like the time I wanted to make new friends when I joined college, I would start off - hey what's your name? where are you from, where did you grow up, what are your likes, your interests and continue the dialogue from then on.
Once I got to know them and they became my friends, they started to see me slowly switch to the direct communication style. If I wanted some information I would just ask for it
If I had a criticism to make i'd just say it, good or bad. Even today, if I want to confront someone on something it depends actually. Depends on who it is, what it is that I am approaching them for and its consequence and so on. It all depends. However, if you look at the overall set of instances and zoom out to the big picture, I can definitely agree that on most occasions I do adopt a slightly direct style of communciation.
That's all from my side on corroborating on all the styles the questionnaire labelled me with. In conclusion, I would like to say that I joined toastmasters to help improve the way I communicate and I definitely feel I've improved in the right direction in certain aspects while on others, I think we can get that feedback from my evaluator today.
Thank you. Over to you TMOD.
Video:
A casual chat: https://youtu.be/I1VDaZn1EdM?t=1607
Evaluation: https://youtu.be/I1VDaZn1EdM?t=4270
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