Communication Profile

For this week blog assignment we had to take three test; each test evaluated my communication skills in three areas: verbal aggressions, listening style, and communication anxiety. I selected to people to evaluate me as well my sister in-law and my brother. I selected the both of them because I thought it would be interesting to see how they would rate me because of our diverse relationship. I am older then my brother by three years and he is also the youngest child. I wanted to see how he would rate me since I am his big sister and sent most of my life bossing him around. Whereas my sister in-law and I have a very different relationship. We communicate often and spend lots of time with each other, she is in the early childhood field, a teacher, and we have common interests. I also wanted to see if how their husband and wife relationship might reflect in the evaluation scores.  

When I took the tests I scored a 31 on the communication anxiety, my listening style is group 1, and my verbal aggression score was 67 (Runbin, 2009a) (Runbin, 2009b). These scores tells me that feel comfortable communicating with others, I'm empathic to needs and desire of others, I can be too trusting, and that I maintain a good balance with respecting others viewpoint (Runbin, 2009a) (Runbin, 2009b). When my sister in-law took the assessment I fell in the same categories for all areas. Surprisingly, when my brother took the assessments he scored me in the same categories except in the verbal aggression we he scored me in the moderate category (Runbin, 2009a). I was shocked about that because I thought that my brother would rate me as having poor communications skills across the board. Don't get me wrong we have a great relationship but we also play a lot with each other and pick on one another and I thought that aspect of our relationship would impact his interpretation of my communication style. 

I know that I put in extra effort to ensure that I am communicating effectively in a professional setting but when I'm around family I don't make the same conscience effort. I was shocked to now that my family feels that my communication style is effective and that I have learned communication skills that translate in both my personal and professional life.

Reference

• Communication Measures: Rubin, R. B., Palmgreen, P., & Sypher, H. E. (Eds.) (2009a). Communication research measures: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.
• • "Communication Anxiety Inventory"
  • "Verbal Aggressiveness Scale"
    Copyright 2009 Taylor & Francis Group LLC Books. Used with permission from Routledge via the Copyright Clearance Center.
• Communication Measure: Rubin, R. B., Rubin, A. M., Graham, E. E., Perse, E. M., & Seibold, D. R. (Eds.) (2009b). Communication research measures II: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.
• • "Listening Styles Profile-16" 
    Copyright 2009 Taylor & Francis Group LLC Books. Used with permission from Taylor & Francis via the Copyright Clearance Center.