Communication Strategies: Immediacy

Immediacy is the creation of closeness, a sense of togetherness, of oneness, between speaker and listener. When you communicate immediacy you convey a sense of interest and attention, a liking for and an attraction to the other person. You communicate immediacy with both verbal and nonverbal messages.

Networking

Here's great advice on networking--something we touch on in our textbooks but probably don't do it justice.

Meeting Dad

Here's an interesting little piece on meeting your date's Dad. Much of it, as you'll see, is communication related and would probably spark an interesting class discussion on the dos and don'ts, mistakes and successes, of meeting a date's parents.

Strategies for Apprehension Management

One of the realities of textbook writing is that you never have enough space to say all you want to say. Fortunately, this blog allows me to elaborate on topics, post that elaboration here, and then enable students to find the material with a quick scan of their smart phones or tablet. Communication apprehension is one such topic that students and instructors frequently ask for more information than what will fit into a specific textbook. Here, then, is my most complete discussion of communication apprehension (with an emphasis on skills for managing apprehension) from my Essential Elements of Public Speaking, minus the reference citations to research. This provides a more thorough discussion than would fit into my Human Communication or Essentials of Human Communication. The most authoritative source on communication apprehension is Virginia Richmond and James McCroskey’s Communication: Apprehension, Avoidance, and Effectiveness, 5^th ed. (Boston, MA: Pearson, 1998).

            Here we consider a few preliminaries to communication apprehension and then offer four strategies, four sets of skills, that may help you manage your own fear of speaking.

Communication Strategies: Openness

Openness in interpersonal communication is a person’s willingness to self-disclose——to reveal information about himself or herself as appropriate. Openness also includes a willingness to listen openly and to react honestly to the messages of others. This does not mean that openness is always appropriate. In fact, too much openness is likely to lead to a decrease in your relationship satisfaction.

Communicating Openness. Consider these few ideas.

Satisficing: A note on making choices

In our communication textbooks, we’re beginning to talk more and more about communication as a process of making choices. An interesting concept in this connection is satisficing. [What follows is a very preliminary attempt to begin an integration of this concept into communication generally.] All communication involves making choices—what we say or don’t say, who we talk to and who we avoid, how we dress to convey the desired image, and of course choices in our relationships—with whom we form friendships or romantic relationships. Of course, we never have all the information we’d need to make the very best choice. And even if that information were available, it would take a great deal of time and energy to locate and digest it. After all, how much time do you want to spend researching the best television before buying one?  So what do we do when we need to make a choice, or solve a problem, or reach a decision?