Interpersonal Communication Competence Assessment

Communication is a natural occurrence between everyone around the world. People will use many different types of communication throughout their life, but interpersonal communication is the most common. There are many aspects of communication, and people do well or struggle in certain categories. During our in class activities I have realized that I do well in conversational effectiveness, conversational involvement, and appropriateness, but struggle in empathy. Interviewing a friend or family member is a great way to help you discover what aspects of interpersonal communications you are good at and what aspects you need improvement on. There are six main displays of interpersonal communication competency as seen in the table, and I plan to

When talking about communication, effectiveness means having the ability to accomplish interpersonal goals by using communication (McCornack 2016), or in other words, the ability or desire to reach a certain point in a conversation. On my Interpersonal Communication Competence Assessment I scored a twelve of fifteen available points. This score shows that I have a high effectiveness. The situations that I try to be most effective are usually when I am talking to adults or when I want or need something. As a kid every time my family would go shopping at the mall I would see something there that I just had to have. When I asked for that item I had to persuade my parents to get it for me. My parents would always ask “why do you need that”, or “what do you need that for” and most of the time there was no good reason besides the fact that I just wanted it. I would then come up with a lie or a good excuse that would favor their decision my way such as “I need it for school” or “I need it because all of my friend have it”. Although it didn’t work every time I was very good at communicating effectively and getting my parents to buy me what I

Many may ask “Why does that person talk like that?” or “Who taught him/her manners?” First impressions mean a lot to me, so when meeting new people or when I am out in public I try my best to speak appropriately. I was raised to be a gentleman, and when speaking to adults I say “yes sir, no sir” and “yes ma’am, no ma’am.” I come from a small country town, so when I found out I was coming to the University of Georgia with over 30,000 people from all different parts of the world I was super nervous. To meet new people and open myself up to more opportunities I had change the way I communicated a little. Eventually meeting new friends and having conversations with them I picked up on the way other people communicated. This has allowed me to understand how to communicate more appropriately. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to interpersonal communications, and personally I am week in the empathy catagory. Empathy is the ability to show understanding of one’s problem or to connect with them emotionally to that situation (Workbook, p.26). Out of all six categories on the competency scale, I scored the lowest on empathy with ten of fifteen total