Communicating wtih Different Cultural Groups

I do not think that I communicate with people from other cultures differently.  My husband is from Venezuela so I deal with a different culture daily.  As I think about the others including race, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation and varying abilities it has caused me to pause and reflect on my behaviors.  In our last class on diversity we learned about the Christian privilege and it was eye opening for me due to my lack of awareness. 

Because of my aha moments regarding lack of awareness I feel confident that I have probably communicated differently with people from other groups than myself.  It is not that I have purposefully set our to treat them different or communicate with them different, but I am sure it has occurred. 

The strategies that I will incorporate into my daily life will be as follows:   first, social decentering, which is a cognitive process in which you take into account the other person's thoughts, values, background, and overall perspective.  Second, becoming other oriented, focusing on others rather than yourself.  Lastly, develop a third culture, which is created when the communication partners join aspects of separate cultures to create a third, "new" culture that is more comprehensive and inclusive than either of the two separate cultures (Beebe, et al., 2011).

References

Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. V. (2011). Interpersonal communication: Relating to others (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Non-Verbal Communication

Nonverbal behavior is like a secret code that is understood but not talk about (Gonzalez-Mena, J., 2010). Watching a situational comedy without the sound seemed like an easy task to interpret the behaviors of the characters in the show; however, I was only able to successfully determine that a man and women were a couple based on their behaviors. When I turned on the sound they were actually arguing about a contract and I would have never guessed an argument was occurring. The behaviors that I saw was two people pointing to a page in a book, but they did not look angry so I did not interpret anger. I thought they were trying to show each other something in the book, but in all actuality it was a lawyer and a person arguing over contract language. The assumption I took away from this assignment is that for me without words I am not very good at interpreting body-language. I thought that I was good at reading people, but it seems that I need the verbal cues to go along with the actions. It really surprised me because I am a visual learner and always have to visualize things to remember them, but I am guessing that auditory learning is also important for me as well.

I think if this was a show that I was more familiar with it would have been easier because I would have known the roles of characters so then when I saw the lawyer looking at something I might have thought she was reviewing a contract. I am interesting in doing this again with a show that I am familiar with to see if there is a difference.

Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2010). 50 strategies for communicating and working with diverse families. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Competent Communicator

The person that I personally think is the greatest communicator in the modern day is Bill Clinton our 42nd President of the United States.  He is extremely articulate and has a tremendous vocabulary.  He is very posed every time he speaks.  He makes personal connections with the audience when  he speaks.  The part of Bill Clinton that I want to most emulate as a public speaker is the ability to connect with the audience while captivating them with an intellectual vocabulary.  I think he will be known in history as our greatest communicator as an American President.  One thing that always amazed me about former President Clinton was the fact that when he uses his hands to talk he never point out into the audience he has a special way of holding his hand so that he does not send the wrong non-verbal message.



This is his official picture as the 42nd President.  I think the Barack Obama would have to be the person that I think is the second best communicator in the modern day and he has some very similar skills to former President Clinton in that he is very articulate and makes personal connections with his audience.  I think the second term Barack Obama is much better at the personal connections than was the first term President Obama.