Interpersonal relationship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Interpersonal relationship - Essay Example It wasn’t hard for me to listen actively with interest in what the other person was saying as I was quickly involved in the other person’s issue, but I found it difficult to restrain my mind to listen to just what they were saying instead of trying to jump out with twenty questions. Another one of the more difficult skills for me to implement was paying attention to the nonverbal cues such as body language and ‘reading between the lines’. I got caught up in the narrative of the moment and then thought more about what was communicated later. At a later time I was able to understand many of the nonverbal physical and emotional cues, meaning I must have taken note of them at some level during the conversation, but I was not sufficiently aware of them enough to take advantage of the opportunities for greater communication when it mattered. For example, when the other person expressed that not everyone was doing their fair share of the work and was looking direc tly at me, I failed to recognize the hint and assumed she was speaking generally. Later reflection of other people’s schedules forced me to realize the other person might have had a point. The conversation I had with a focus on developing my nonverbal listening skills was different from typical conversations I’ve had in that I really focused on trying to listen to what the other person was saying instead of assuming I knew what the issue was going to be. In attempting to listen, I began to realize that the questions that I was suppressing for the moment were all geared around this assumption that I was already familiar with the problem. This effort to constrain my tongue was difficult for me because I tend to interrupt in order to clarify a point or to understand a specific element better, but it was noticed by the other person. The other person, able to finish out the main points of the issue before I began