I have often been in situations where miscommunication occurs. I feel that miscommunication happens often when I first meet people, because I am shy and sometimes people interpret my shyness as snobbery. Another example that used to happen often occurred between my sister and me. My sister will often make dry jokes that I have trouble distinguishing as being jokes. If her comments were not jokes, they could be offense and this is where our miscommunication lies. I would sometimes get offended when she intended her comment to be funny and it was funny once I examined it in a different light. My sister is good at keeping a straight face when she makes these jokes and so I was never able to read her body language or facial expressions to interpret the meaning she intending to send. These miscommunications offer occurred when I was younger and I had not developed all of my communication skills. Also, I was not as close to my sister when I was younger and so I did not know her as well. Now that we are close, I am able to recognize her joking facial expressions versus her angry or serious facial expressions. We would always immediately recognize when we interpreted things differently, because I would get upset and my sister would be confused. She would explain that she was joking and then we would realize that we miscommunicated the comment. We would try to talk about it so that it would not happen again. I think that the best way to communicate is to use language that is clear and appropriate to the situation.
Have you ever experienced miscommunication? How did it affect you and your relationship with that particular person? What techniques or methods did you use in order to overcome this miscommunication? Does it happen anymore with that particular person?
Yes, I have had a specific miscommunication that I will never forget that I actually wrote about in this weeks blog. It happened with my mother and it was a misunderstanding of words. We had to talk about the situation afterwards because we were both confused about what happened. This has never happened with my mom again though, now we are great with communicating with each other.
ReplyDeleteI think I have very sensitive and if someone besides people I am very close to made jokes about me, I would be hurt easily. I normally take people seriously until I get to know them. In addition, I am very VERY gullible and can be tricked quite easily. For example, a new co worker whom I didn't know every well said "Shut up!" to me. I seriously thought she was insulting me and I confronted her about it. Now we get along great, but at the time I did not like her AT ALL!
ReplyDeleteYes, I have had this happen numerous times. I actualy have this problem a lot with my boyfriend. It seems like we are always gong and sometimes say things that are meant completely differently than they are interpreted. We usually do not get mad at each other, but will talk out whatever we need to in order to clear the air.
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