Friday, September 10, 2010
Communication Breakdown
Can you think of a interpersonal situation in which there was a breakdown in communication? Now that you are familiar with the elements of the communication model, can you identify where the breakdown occurred? Do you think that if you or the participants would have been knowledgeable of the communication process, it would have eliminated the breakdown or made a difference? Post your personal story and apply the communication model in your details. This post is due this Tuesday, September 14th at the start of class.
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The best example of this in my life occurred last year and the breakdown happened on multiple levels. I was trying to get premium housing in the new West Village residence hall. In order to be eligible for the housing lottery, I had to pay a deposit upfront of 200 dollars. The deadline had slipped my mind for most of the year, but I managed to get it in on the day it was due, which was a Friday.
ReplyDeleteHere’s where the communication breakdown begins. First, I had accidentally selected the wrong checking account to pay my housing deposit with, so the appropriate amount of money was not in the account. Second, I received an automated message from the Office of Campus Life saying they received my payment. All of the parties in this situation were using the linear model of communication, where a message was being sent to one person but there was no interaction or communication back and forth. My problems only grew from there as I learned after the weekend that the school had not received my payment, as their automated email led me to believe, and that my housing deposit was now late. I realized my mistake and then quickly paid the deposit. About a month passed and the housing lottery arrived; when I tried to check in they informed me that I was not on the list and therefore was not eligible to be entered. I was told that because I did not pay on time my entry into the lottery was void; communication breakdown again. The place where this entire breakdown occurred is pretty similar in all three situations, a simple lack of timely response and interaction.
These situations could have turned out very differently if I had better send and receive communication with my bank or with the Office of Campus Life. By having a better and quicker response to individual messages, a great deal of these problems could have been solved.
-Brian Long
Every day I face some sort of an interpersonal situation. There was a Sunday in this past June where the guy who I was “with” but not officially and I had an argument. It had to do with him going to see a girl (a friend who he has known for years) and we were communicating through texting on our cell phones. The breakdown occurred as soon as we were texting about each of our plans were that night. He had plans to go to the beach to meet up with this girl and I was going to a graduation party. It was really difficult; for I had a hard time understanding what was truly being said. He was trying to explain to me what the deal was with him and the girl and how it was nothing serious. His use of words in the text made it seem a lot worse then it really was. I on the other hand took it for what I saw and developed it in my head for what I thought it meant. It lead to us getting mad at one another and me getting all worked up. Girls and guys are very different; they have their own ways of thinking. And when you use text messaging it can become very complicated.
ReplyDeleteI do feel if we had a better understanding of the communication process, him and I could have had better results in our communication towards one another. In addition, I have learned to eliminate texting him with situations like this past one. Communication is very important I have come to realize. With texting it is very hard to read and understand the message of what the other person is trying to convey to you. How the message is exactly being said is never easy. There is no tone of voice, if any, it may include some marks, like exclamation points, periods, capital letters, etc. But not many people take the time now a day to include any punctuation marks let alone spell out the words in the text message.
Christina Potter
Interpersonal communication is always difficult when physiological noise occurs. I know that for me personally, when I am not in a good mood or am feeling sick, talking to someone is the last thing that I feel like doing no matter who the person may be. I feel that being physically and mentally sick will not help when it comes to proper communication. I remember a time when my friend wanted to come over my house to tell me about her wonderful weekend that she had. Even though I always look forward to hearing what my friends have to say, having to talk and listen when I did not feel well was certainly not going to make me happy.
ReplyDeleteI believe that due to the physiological noise, my friend (the sender) was communicating to me (the receiver) in a way that wasn’t going to appeal to me. I wasn’t able to give her enough verbal feedback because talking was the last thing on my mind. I would continue to give her non verbal feedback in order to indicate that something was wrong. The noise was getting in the way of properly sending feedback to my friend. Even though the feedback was nonverbal, it was not affective feedback for the conversation. Knowing about the communication process would have definitely helped both of us communicate properly. She would have been able to understand that something was wrong and may have communicated in a different manner. On the other side, I would have perhaps told her that there was something wrong and would have communicated to her in a different way. I see now that interpersonal communication is perhaps a bit harder than I had thought.
Taylor Cortina
Currently, I work at a childcare center. About a month ago, a coworker and I had a disagreement. I think that children should try to eat some of their vegetables before getting more of the food they want. However, she thinks that they should eat whatever they want as long as they are eating something. The communication model utilized in this case was the interactional model. The communication went in two directions from sender to receiver and from receiver to sender. Clearly she and I felt very different about this issue. The breakdown in communication occurred in the middle, after I sent the message that the child has to eat more vegetables and she sent the message that they shouldn’t have to. There was a lot of psychological noise. This prevented the receiver, the intended target of the message, from assigning the particular meaning the sender intended. She and I both had our own opinions and beliefs when it came to this matter. It is hard to hear someone when they already have a certain mindset or attitude. In addition, the external feedback was not positive. If my coworker and I were knowledgeable of the communication process I do not think it would not have eliminated the breakdown. However, it may have made a difference. Maybe we would have been more open to each other’s opposing viewpoints. If this situation occurs in the future I will be able to handle it differently.
ReplyDeleteA recent breakdown in communication that I experienced involved the financial aid office here at Rider. I was having a difficult time receiving the loans that I needed in order to be cleared for enrollment. However, not only was I speaking with the financial aid counselor, but so was my sister and my step-dad. My communication with the counselor was interactional, we were e-mailing back and forth and were not sending and receiving messages to one another at the same time.
ReplyDeleteWhen my sister and step-dad got involved, this created a lot of noise in my communication process with the counselor. Now she was very confused and could not keep track of who was saying what. This also caused noise for me as well because my sister or step-dad would tell me something different than the counselor, and I would become very confused as well. Not only was there this physical noise present, but there was also emotional noise present in my mind as well. I was very caught up in all of the things I had to do before class, and this took away from my ability to successfully communicate with the counselor.
What I have learned from this experience is that communication is best if it is simple. The more people that get involved, the more complicated things get and there is more noise created. I should have taken care of this problem on my own and it would have been much easier. The counselor and I could have worked together to reach a shared understanding without having to think about all of the noise coming from my family members. All in all, things work out, but this very complicated situation could have been avoided if I had just stood up for myself and taken care of the situation on my own.
Lauryn Goldstein
There have been many times while I was speaking with an individual where a breakdown in communication occurred. For example, I was speaking with one of my good friends about an issue that he expressed concerned about. I was trying to get a better understanding of what he meant by asking him to explain the problem. But, every time I asked him to clarify what was bothering him, he would start to explain and then forget what he was talking about. This made our conversation extremely difficult because it was obvious that there was something on his mind that was consuming his thoughts – a type of psychological noise. It was somewhat annoying to me since he had asked to talk to me so that I could help him out, but it ended up being him thinking about whatever bothered him instead of actually vocalizing his concerns, like he said he would. He also never acknowledged that fact that he wasn’t vocalizing his opinions at all.
ReplyDeleteAnother example would be when I called my boyfriend yesterday as I was driving back to school. I called to find out what he was up to during the day and if he was coming to visit me either Monday or Wednesday. Halfway through our conversation, something changed technologically and it suddenly sounded as if my boyfriend was talking from inside a foghorn. I tried to understand what he was saying, but it was difficult for me to focus on anything but the odd foghorn-like sound coming from the other size of the phone. The strange sound from the phone was an environmental noise that interrupted the flow of the conversation.
I believe that knowledge about the communication process would be helpful to many individuals who encounter a breakdown in communication. It would allow individuals to recognize what may be the cause of the problem as well as recognize “noises” that could be influencing the other person’s focus. It would also allow individuals to recognize different “noises” that affect their communication. Knowledge about the types of communication processes may also allow people to get a better understanding of other people’s perspectives.
Everyday we are faced with an interpersonal situation that can cause a breakdown in communication. Recently, I experienced a breakdown in communication this weekend at one of the events on campus. I was selling tickets for off campus Broadway play and when the tickets were sold out we offered people the chance to be put on a waiting list. One couple came up to me, who spoke unclear English and had a thick accent and were interested in buying tickets. However, I tried to explain that all the tickets have been sold but you can put your name on the waiting list. At this point in our conversation, they did not understand that they were sold out and I had to keep repeating the idea of a waiting list. At the end of the conversation, they finally understood and ending up putting their names down but there were many breakdowns in communication throughout the whole conversation. I think this had to do with the fact that the idea of a “waiting list” might translate into something different in their language, so in order to get my point across I had to describe it in many different ways to make them better understand.
ReplyDeleteThe breakdown in communication had a lot to do with the language barrier and the semantic noise between me and the other students. Through the feedback and interactional model, I felt that there was too much noise and two different channels of communication happening which caused the breakdown. Since I am familiar with other languages, I understood that English is sometimes a very confusing language with all our different slang's and phrases that if when translated, it does not make much sense. In addition, the students might have had psychological noise. For example, trying to translate and understand what I said into something they could understand. Not only was there a language barrier, but a lot of physical noise and distraction from the surroundings. At this event, there was food being sold, fun activities to do, and dozens of people around which added to breakdown of communication.
I feel that if these students had an idea of the communication process, it might have made the conversation go a little bit smoother but nothing too drastic. However, I feel if this conversation had taken place in a much more quiet and less distracting location, it would have been a lot easier to get my point across.
For some reason people tend to come to me with their problems. Sometimes people are looking for advice, or suggestions, but mostly they just want to vent. I have somehow turned into an emotional outlet for friends and family. I guess I'm just lucky. Knowing this a friend of mine called me up in tears asking if she could come over. It was clear that she was terribly upset and needed a friend to just listen.
ReplyDeleteShortly she arrived and proceeded to tell me about the latest argument she and her boyfriend had just had, which happened frequently. Fully prepared to listen to her woes, she received a text message. Now her phone doesn’t blink or vibrate when she receives a text, it plays about 15 seconds of some song of the week. Continuously throughout her endless story her phone would not only sing its little song, but she would pause to read and reply.
The nonstop singing of the phone and constant pauses throughout her story were extremely distracting. Not only was her phone providing a source of noise, but the frequent pauses gave me time to distract myself with my own thoughts. Who is she texting? Is it the boyfriend? Is he apologizing? If it’s not her boyfriend, and she’s talking to someone else, than why is she at my house?
The breakdown occurred due to the noise/bombardment of text messages. If my friend had simply come to my house with her phone on silent, she could have shared her story from beginning to end cohesively. The physical noise of the phone than enabled me to engage in my own physiological noise.
Needless to say after she had finally concluded her story and asked me for my advice, I made sure to first advice her to put her phone on silent the next time she needed to talk in a time of crisis.
An example of an interpersonal situation where there was a breakdown in communication was when I was unable to hear my teacher and classmates the other day in class. During class one of those air conditioners were on and made a lot of noise, and it was a pretty big classroom, which made it difficult for me (receiver) to hear the professor (sender) and my classmates. Also the teacher has a low speaking voice which did not help so when she was talking in front of the class it was very hard to understand her. The professor was putting us in groups and each group had a name. However, since I was having trouble hearing I had no idea what group I was in or what we were doing.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, because of the noise from the air conditioner and the teacher’s low voice, there was physical and physiological noise that got in the way of the message. As a result, since I had difficulty hearing, I had to go up to my professor to ask what group I was in and explain the assignment.
In this situation I do know that a better understanding of the communication process would have made a difference or prevented the breakdown. Without the noise it would have been easier to receive the message from the teacher and students.
My most major and recent breakdown in communication happened this summer. Three of my friends and I were on a cruise bound for Bermuda. On the sixth day of the cruise, traveling back to America, I experienced this communication breakdown. The day before, I put 286 dollars on my account. When I awoke and checked my balance I realized that not only was all of the money gone, but I actually owed the cruise line 30 dollars! Immediately I made my way to the reception desk accompanied by two of my friends to find out what went wrong.
ReplyDeleteObviously by the time I arrived at the reception desk I was already angry and I had my friends supporting me the whole way. It didn't help that the lady behind the desk was from the Philippines and had a thick accent. Nothing was resolved from this first encounter, I was angry and my friends behind me were chiming in the whole time, not to mention the receptionist's thick accent. Not until I went back to my room and counted the receipts did I realize that I did in fact spend the money.
The breakdown of communication in this particular situation happened due to the physical and emotional noise, along with the language barrier between the receptionist and myself. The physical noise was caused by my friends who kept talking during the interaction and the emotional noise was caused by my anger. No matter what the receptionist had said I would have continued on my furious rant.
I believe that if I had a better understanding of the communication process this particular situation could have been solved much faster. Although, at the time I was very angry and whether I knew about emotional noise or not, I still probably would have been rather rude to the receptionist.
During the summers, I work at a bakery where maintaining clear and concise communication between the manager and her employees is crucial to the ultimate success of our department. If she is not able to effectively dictate which task each employee should undertake, we are risking a monetary loss for the department if we are not able to produce the desired amount of product, and make profit as a result. Given that Sunday is our most profitable day, my boss, Maria, asked our baker, whose name is Seth, to pan-out 6 cases of bagels on Saturday night, for the following day. Thinking that he had agreed to comply, Maria left the department for the evening and came in the next morning to find that Seth had not panned-out the bagels like she had asked him to.
ReplyDeleteOn many occasions, statements are asked to be repeated in the bakery because certain environmental noises interfere with interpersonal communication daily. The whirr of the oven, the mixing of the whipped topping, and the music being blasted over the loudspeaker caused there to be a breakdown of communication between Seth and Maria at the time; therefore, Seth had not heard Maria ask him to pan-out the bagels, and as a result, he did not.
I believe that although Maria was aware that environmental noise was being created, she chose to ignore it because she believed that Seth had agreed, given that she believed that he had nodded his head in agreement after she had asked him to complete the task. This supposed head nod is also an example of psychological noise, because although Seth may have just coincidentally nodded his head at the same time she asked the question, she brought the preconceived notion that the nod served as a sign of understanding and acknowledgement into the conversation. Seth could not understand why Maria thought that his head nod indicated that he had heard her; if he had prior knowledge about the breakdown of interpersonal communication, he may have been able to understand her reasoning a bit more.
In my personal life communications breakdowns occur all the time. I am from Spain, so my mother tongue is Spanish. Last year, I was an exchange student at University of Oklahoma so I have several stories in which communication was really difficult because both cultural and language differences.
ReplyDeleteOne day I was talking with my American friends there, ultra conservative and I was telling them once that I "slept with my father". Their faces were just really weird and I wasn´t able to identify what was wrong. They looked at each other and then, one girl asked me if it is normal in my country. Then, I realized something went wrong and I asked them what they understood. In this case, the translation into Spanish is completely different so it was a language breakdown.
In the first semester, I was in a class where we have to do a team project. I was working with 2 girls and a guy. It was late and the girls went home because they have stuff to do. So, the guy and me went on working on the project. I did a mistake and I need to delete something I wrote, so I asked him "Do you have a rubber?". His face turned into a big surprised one and I was so confused. I was sure I said it ok. He asked me what exactly I want, and I told him that I want a rubber to delete something in the paper and he smiled and said "So, you want a eraser..." Later, my roommate explained me that rubber as an eraser is only use in UK but that was the only English that they tough as in school. So, in this instance, the breakdown was caused for a cultural problem (between UK and US)
I don´t think that having a knowledge of the communication system this could change because it is cause because of the lack of knowledge of language and culture
In my Intercultural Speech class we had to meet with a Sanda student twice a week spending at least an hour with them each meeting. These meetings were not only awkward and uncomfortable but they were difficult due to our language barrier. She would often have the correct words in mind to say but say them in the wrong order or end words with the wrong tense. These meets also exposed our cultural differences being there were only few things a female from Shanghai and a male from New Jersey have in common. The the things I was talking about doing over the weekend she would not have even considered. Just a small example I wanted to go to the beach to get a tan where as she walks around campus with an umbrella to protect herself from the sunlight. Overall we both grew from the experience because we each agreed that although we are totally different people coming from totally different lifestyles that we are still in fact people. People with friends, families, hobbies, interests and all the above.
ReplyDeleteI have learned about how communication between genders can cause many communication breakdowns. Because I have learned about the communication process and how men and women communicate differently, I understand that it is not always going to be easy to communicate with my boyfriend. We had a communication breakdown because he does not understand the differences between communication among genders. I had a problem that I wanted to vent to him about and express my feelings. He simply responded with a solution to the problem, however, I just wanted him to listen to me and understand why I was feeling the way I was. I was not looking for a solution, just for the opportunity to vent about it. I became angry when he gave the short response, which made sense to him because he is a male, but did not make sense to me because I am a female, and we communicate differently. Typically women want to have converstaions to build relationships, and need to vent when they have a problem. While males, on the other hand, think of solutions to the problems and do not view the conversations as bonding and building the realtionship. If he had know that my intent was to express my feelings and build our relationship, there may not have been a communication breakdown.
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