In
my office there are only two of us, my Director and myself. Yet we do frequently have to work and
communicate with other representatives from the other colleges and universities. I feel that communication with my direct boss
is very healthy and for the most part we almost share one mind. Therefore, I would rather focus my attention
on the communication with the other schools.
There are four schools that share a space in our office. All four of us try and work together by doing
educational outreaches, briefings to the different military departments on the
base, base-wide events where we share informational tables and we also
coordinate for our local graduation. You
could say that there is even some healthy competition between the schools since
all four schools work to “recruit” students to their university. At the end of the day, our ultimate goal as
honest and sincere school representatives is to make sure that we are offering
prospective and active students the support they need to achieve their academic
goals. The fact that we are four
different entities can sometimes make working together very challenging. One of the major challenges we have had
working together has been a lack of communication. One solution to this problem is that we have
weekly office meetings where all schools attend and share ideas, talk about
issues and just get caught up for the week.
In our situation, a counseling situation
is always preferable. First of all, each
school has different policies and different ways of handling situations;
therefore we cannot coach each other on how to run each of the schools. Instead, I feel that counseling is a great
approach to helping each other solve issues.
Another useful supportive communication
guideline to follow would be congruent communication. From my experience, some of our “co-workers”
will hold back their real feelings when discussing controversial issues. In the past, we noticed that this type of
behavior caused bitter feelings between individuals and created trust issues. Whetten
and Cameron explain that “congruence is a prerequisite of trust. Genuineness and
authenticity lie at the heart of positive relationships” (2011, p.247). One thing we try to strive during our weekly
meetings is the concept of “putting it all out on the table”. For example, when we discuss scheduling or
classroom assignments, tension can rise.
We have to come up with assignments that are fair for everyone. For example, we try to rotate the best
classrooms around so that every school has an opportunity to use it. Some individuals will not verbalize when they
are not happy with the classroom arrangements during the meetings. Instead,
they will go back to their offices and then “bad talk” the other schools.
This creates a negative dynamic.
Therefore, by striving for congruency in our communication, we can avoid
bad feelings among the schools.
Another guideline that we try and
incorporate for supportive communication is to avoid evaluative
communication. This is an easy trap to
fall into since again, each school has a different way of handling their
students and therefore sometimes we can find ourselves evaluating or judging
the way another school conducts business.
Instead, we could practice descriptive communication which allows for
more objective interactions where we can share how we feel about a situation or
describe consequences that we feel could affect all parties. This method seems less conflictive since “describing
feelings or consequences also lessens the likelihood of defensiveness since the
problem is framed in the context of the
communicator’s feelings or objective consequences, not the attributes of the
subordinate” (Whetten and Cameron, 2011, p.248). In essence, you avoid finger pointing.
I believe that the outcome from applying
these supportive communication guidelines will help all four schools to
establish a more trusting and respectful rapport with each other. I also believe that better communication will
assist us in improving our teamwork efforts which in turn will improve how we
assist our students. In the end, how we
treat each other will reflect on the services that we pass down to our students
and that in turn will reflect the overall image of each university or college
in this office.
References
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