A Self-Reflection Essay on Effective Communication

Running Head: EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
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A Self-Reflection Essay on Effective Communication
Student’s Name
University’s Name

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION 2
Self-reflection helps individuals to understand themselves better, familiarize with their
strongholds as well as their weaknesses, therefore providing a basis for self-improvement and
consequently development. This essay reflects and provides an in-depth analysis and evaluation
of my communication skills, identifies my weaknesses in terms of communication skills and sets
an action plan that will enable me to improve on my communication weaknesses. The reflection
is based on five diagnostic tools and which are dedicated to assisting me to realize any issues
relating to communication that need significant improvement and development. The two major
issues relating to my communication skills that I have identified to require notable improvement
are anxiety when communicating with strangers, particularly that I might have never
communicated to nor interacted with any time there before.
The other issue covers my low tolerance when it comes to disagreeing, be it with my
friends or any other individuals. The diagnostic tools identified that, even though I hate
arguments and disagreements, I significantly hate when other people propose contrary to my
opinions and I love it more when everybody else shares opinions and views similar to mine. The
literature review provided in this essay covers the theoretical and behavioural concepts that relate
to my communication skills and issues highlighted. The main purpose that this reflection has
served is to provide a number of activities that if applied and employed over time, could help me
to improve my communication skills by paying special attention and consideration to my
weaknesses and communication issues. The action plan at the end of this paper addresses these
activities specifying on their timelines and success measures.
Communication is an everyday activity that takes place almost in every aspect of life. An
individual’s ability to communicate effectively is able to affect their life from the way they

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION 3
casually interact with their friends and family members at home. Moreover, in business,
communication holds an integral part in facilitating and ensuring the goals of an organization are
achieved. Managers play important roles in controlling and supervising all the activities taking
place in the business and workplace (Eunson, 2012). They interact with the workers and seek
ways through which they can motivate and inspire them. They are involved in the process of
ensuring that the workers are well trained and they acquire the necessary skills required to handle
the specific tasks assigned to them. Moreover, they delegate authority and duties to their
subordinates so as to equip them with the necessary managerial skills, and in doing this, the
subordinates are prepared for any future promotions. The ability of such managers to
communicate effectively and efficiently is very crucial to the overall growth and development of
the businesses as explained by Rahmani (2017). Analyzing my communion abilities would help
me to work on and improve on those areas that I will perceive to be weak yet crucial for my own
personal development. This, moreover, helps to enhance me with the positive communication
skills that I critically require to excel in my business profession (Williams, 2013).
The different diagnostic tools employed paid special attention to different issues and
skills and they focused on assessing my skills on the independent areas that they covered. The
specific diagnostic tools used include Self-Perceived Communication Competence scale, which
assesses the people’s communication abilities when they are confronted with different situations
that call for a communication reaction such as talking to strangers, friends or even presenting a
talk to a group of individuals (Grant & Borcherds, 2015). Another diagnostic tool employed was
Nonverbal Immediacy Scale Self Report that focuses on behaviours and cues signalling
optimistic mindset towards another party during a communication practice (Liu &

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION 4
Reeves, 2017). The third tool employed was Personal Report of Intercultural Communication
Apprehension which addresses communication in an intercultural context, assessing individual’s
abilities to effectively and efficiently communicate with other people who do not share a
common cultural and ethnic origins as them (Davids & Waghid, 2017). Talkaholic scale
diagnostic tool was the fourth tool applied. This scale provides a measure of compulsive
communication, evaluating the differences in people when it comes to verbality and talkativeness
(Dewaele & Wei, 2013). The last diagnostic tool was Tolerance for Disagreement, a scale used
to measure and assess people’s tolerance and ability to put up with other people who hold
different beliefs and opinions as the ones perceived by them (Hain & Jassal, 2016).
I filled all the questionnaires as required by the diagnostic tools honestly so as to obtain
accurate and honest answers to the analysis of my communication skills. Different tools came up
with different results and conclusions basing on my assessment. The Self-Perceived
Communication Competence Scale indicated that my communication skills are more competent
when I am engaged to a conversation with a friend or a smaller group of friends, especially when
compared to my communication abilities when talking to an acquaintance or a group of
acquaintances. My abilities were also confirmed to be lower when addressing a large group of
people, including friends, but they were even lowest when engaging with a larger group of
strangers. I scored an overall score of 78 in the Self-Perceived Communication Competence
Scale, which was quite a good performance, indicating that I did not have any strong issues in
that field which required any remarkable improvement. The Nonverbal Immediacy Scale-Self
Report’s 92 scores proved that I was had moderate abilities when it comes to integrating various
verbal and non-verbal cues in my normal communication practices. An in-depth analysis