Skill Application Proposal

Skill Application Proposal Very recently, my roommate and I had a disagreement about allowing an individual to stay in our home rent free for a few weeks. An acquaintance told my roommate that her 17-yearold daughter was needing a place to stay for several weeks due to a difficult living situation with an alcoholic father. My roommate asked me if it would be okay for this girl to stay with us, and although I felt very empathetic for her awful living situation, I suggested we should not allow the girl to stay with us since we have never met her and do not know if the individual is trustworthy. I also suggested it would be a bad idea since we do not have space, and the girl may end up wanting to stay for a longer period than intended since this is a common problem I have seen in similar scenarios. My roommate disagreed with my judgment and thought the girl should be allowed to stay with us because of her negative circumstances. My roommate and I still have completely different opinions about this issue, and we haven’t been able to agree on anything regarding this matter. For this skill application, I will set up a meeting with my roommate within our home so we can discuss this problem in-depth and hopefully come up with a solution. I will also utilize these three attributes from supportive communication: Supportive listening with a focus on responding, problem-oriented communication, and validating communication. Supportive listening will be important for this particular situation to ensure I understand my partner’s specific views on the problem, and since my partner feels very passionate about her opinion, responding will be important so my roommate understands that I am actively listening to her concerns. Since our initial argument was somewhat intense, it will be important to use problemoriented communication so my roommate understands my focus is on the problem rather than her opinion or her characteristics. Validating communication will be key in this circumstance because I want to ensure my responses clearly communicate respect, flexibility, and cooperation while searching for areas of agreement. In completing this exercise, the benefit I hope to achieve is an agreement on this topic between my roommate and I by weighing out the benefits and the costs of allowing the girl to stay in our home. Even if we cannot agree on every individual component of our conversation, my hope is we can both benefit by coming up with a solution to overcome our disagreement. In using these three supportive communication attributes, I will know if I am successful if our conversation consists of more agreements than disagreements on specific topics and/or if we can find an overall solution to the problem. Skill Application Results Before my roommate and I began our meeting, I made sure we were both in a good mood and were happy with each other to ensure emotional responses were minimized in the meeting. I decided to initiate the conversation by explaining to my roommate that the goal of our conversation was to focus specifically on the problem of our disagreement rather than attacking any individual attributes regarding our opinions our personal characteristics. In this sense, I was essentially describing to her an interpretation of problem-oriented communication without specifically telling her the concept was being used for the purpose of my assignment. She enthusiastically agreed, and we started off the conversation with a positive tone. Her agreement was an indication that she was reciprocating problem-oriented communication. To begin the conversation about the specific issue, I reviewed what my roommate and I had disagreed on previously, and explained the details of our differing opinions in that I felt uncomfortable allowing the girl to stay in our home, while she was eager to let the girl stay with us for a few weeks. I then further implemented problem-oriented communication by suggesting we should search for alternative solutions to the issue rather than repeating our attempt to validate our differing opinions like last time, and my roommate reciprocated problem-oriented communication by avidly agreeing with this. We both took a moment to think of alternatives, then my roommate suggested we invite the girl to lunch at a restaurant, get to know her, and listen to her issue. Though I felt a little hesitant internally, I implemented validating communication by explaining that I was open to this idea, however, I also stated that if we ended up gaining trust in the girl and felt inclined to help her, there would still be an issue since there would not be enough space to comfortably live with three people in our home for an extended period. My roommate became slightly defensive and explained that it is worth being uncomfortable for a period of time to help the girl overcome her situation, but she explained she was still open to other alternatives. During this time in the conversation, my roommate began talking about personal experiences similar to the girl and began communicating emotionally about why it was worth it to give up our personal space to allow the girl to stay with us. At this point, I used supportive listening with a focus on responding by sympathizing with her thoughts and responding by nodding and using verbal agreements on why the girl should have an opportunity to stay somewhere safe. I then suggested we could follow the idea of going to lunch with the girl, and allow her to stay with us for two days while we also assist her in finding a home that would be more suitable, and my roommate supportively listened with positive body language and verbal agreements. My roommate was extremely happy about this suggestion, and this is exactly what we decided on doing. This discussion was an enormous success since we were able to quickly find a solution to our disagreement after I used the supportive communication tactics of supportive listening with a focus on responding, problem-oriented communication, and validating communication. I know this conversation was successful because we agreed on virtually everything besides the inherent disagreement my roommate had when she became slightly defensive, and we were also able to agree on a solution that satisfied both of our views. In this sense, it was obvious there were more agreements than disagreements, and everyone in the situation benefited including myself, my roommate, and the girl in need of a home. One area I could improve in is how I implement validating communication. When I used this communication tactic, I immediately described an issue after telling my roommate that I was open to the idea of going out to lunch with the girl. In this sense, it may have appeared to my roommate that I was only superficially agreeing with her statement so that I could immediately explain my differing point of view without a significant altercation. If I were to do this exercise again, I would simply agree with my roommate and go in-depth about why I agree, and then explain my opposition instead of rapidly agreeing and explaining an associated issue. In doing this, it is likely that my roommate’s emotional response and the slight defensiveness could have been avoided altogether. This skill application allowed me to thoroughly understand the effectiveness of supportive communication techniques. Reading about these supportive communication techniques was beneficial for comprehension, but applying these techniques to a real situation truly impacted me and allowed me to understand the value of supportive communication. I was surprised to find how these supportive communication techniques were contagious in a sense; nearly every time I used one of the three techniques, my roommate mimicked them, and this is why I believe the conversation went extremely well. Since I have actively thought about implementing the techniques to a specific situation and thereafter applied them concretely, I have gained knowledge on how to realistically apply these techniques, and I will be able to remember them for future circumstances. In my future career, this will be extremely useful since I will be employed as a sales manager after graduating college. In sales, it is common that customers find disagreements, so applying these techniques will vastly help me to find solutions to disparities. Additionally, this will assist me in having a managerial role since disagreements can commonly arise between employees and managers.