1. Update me on your progress towards your goals. As you considered your goals this week, what new insights do you have? Are there any specific examples of situations where you consciously thought about or worked on some aspect of your goals?
I have created a little “meeting journal” to help me with my goals. This is where I will keep my discussion diagram, brief notes on discussion, and data points on my behavior. This is as long as I won’t be the notetaker in the meetings. As this is rotated and I’ve already done it this year (it's a big group), I don’t think that will be an issue.
I have only had one meeting since creating our goals as snow days have made an impact on the time we meet. I did a discussion diagram and my teammates were interested to see who talks the most. We reflected that some people look like they talk a lot but they are only interjecting a word or two as a bigger conversation is happening. We also reflected that some that look like they are not talking much are doing a lot of non verbal communication to acknowledge agreement and engagement. I was able to ask a quieter member to share their thinking. I would like to work on subtle ways of asking this. This week’s chapters in Friend and Cook have given me some ideas on how to do ask this in a more indirect, non threatening way. I look forward to trying those strategies out. The reading also included good information about paraphrasing that I hope to use in future meetings as well.
2. Refer back to the readings on the interpersonal skills of listening and giving feedback? How would you assess your skills as a listener? Provide examples and connections to the readings. What are your experiences with providing feedback? Do you find it challenging, if so why? If not, what strategies do you use to be effective in providing feedback? Were there other key ideas from the reading that resonated with you? Your response should include specific connections to what you are reading (in other word, include quotes or citations related to ideas you are addressing from the readings). For this post I expect a minimum of 3 citations or quotes. A citation is when you paraphrase an idea from the reading and then provide the author credit by putting their name in parentheses along with the date of the reading. If you use a direct quote, you should also include the author's name and date of reading. For example, (Friend & Cook, 2017).
I believe that my skills as a listener is one of my strengths. The auditory modality is my prefered way of learning. I appreciate how Friend and Cook (2017) break down the steps to active listening (p. 60). Listening is more than just hearing. Being present and thinking about the other person is crucial. Often people think they understand someone, but meaning is lost. I think that this happens when they place the information they hear into their own schema and prior experiences rather than thinking about where the other person is coming from. To truly understand, to have listening fidelity, one needs to have an understanding of context and perception of the person communicating (Friend and Cook, 2017, p. 60). Having empathy for the speaker helps make understanding their message easier. Of all the steps that Friend and Cook list, responding can often be my biggest challenge. For responding, I believe I do a good job with non verbal cues and prompting, but I’m not always good at voicing my thoughts. I would say I need to work on verbally acknowledging people.
I think due to my introvertedness, I tend to not be wonderful at giving feedback (besides to my students). If I know someone well, I am able to do it well. But if I’m not close with someone, this makes giving feedback very daunting. This comes back to the three questions Friend and Cook (2017) give for deciding to give feedback:
“In general, when giving feedback to others, ask yourself these questions:
Will this person understand me?
Will this person be able to accept my feedback?
Will this person be able to use the information?” (p. 75).
My biggest concern is that the person will not be able to accept my feedback and it might create tension in the relationship. I want to be able to work with this person in the future and do not want to create a barrier to the partnership. If it is a really important issue to me, and the other too answers to the question is yes, then I will risk it. An example of this was two teachers at my school were creating a whole school assembly to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. The presentation was, for the most part, wonderful. It gave a brief overview of who MLK was and why the day is celebrated. But one part had a video that claimed that racism was erased in our country due to King’s efforts. (Don’t we wish that it had!) I was brand new to the school and did not know these teachers well. One has a somewhat scary reputation too. I was not sure that they would appreciate my feedback on their hard work but I felt strongly about it so I worked up the courage to let them know and suggested a different video that might work better. They were grateful for the feedback as they had not thought about the message the video communicated and we changed it to Kid President. So they were able to understand me. They were able to accept my feedback. And they were able to use the information to make the assembly better.
Another part of the reading that resonated with me was the part of chapter 4 that talked about using questions to gather information. The reason that this struck me was because I teach my students a lot of this same information but in regards to research/inquiry projects. Being able to take these skills and transferring it to communicating with team members and others within my school, makes a lot of sense to me and helps make the process less scary and more practical.
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