Communication Strategies: Mindfulness

Among the many communication strategies are the competencies of interpersonal communication which I thought would make a neat sub-set of strategies to post. I owe these strategies to a wide variety of researchers and theorists—I’ll mention a few tho’ I’m sure I’m omitting many: Art Bochner, Michael Hecht, Brian Spitzberg, William Cupach, James McCroskey, and Gerald Miller stand out in my mind. I include the references to research in some of these mainly to acknowledge the contributions of these theorists/researchers as well. These dozen items are taken largely from my Interpersonal Communication Book. A great skill to begin with is mindfulness which kind of underlies all the others.

Richest Academics

Here's an interesting article on the richest academics--unfortunately, no communication academics--but interesting nevertheless.

Talk between people with and without hearing difficulties

Talk between people with and without hearing difficulties can often prove uncomfortable. As with people who have visual impairment, people with hearing loss differ greatly: Some are totally deaf and can hear nothing, others have some hearing loss and can hear some sounds, and still others have impaired hearing but can hear most speech. Although people with profound hearing loss can speak, their speech may appear labored and may be less clear than the speech of those with unimpaired hearing. Here are some suggestions for more effective communication between people who hear well and those who have hearing problems. These suggestions were drawn from a variety of sources: Tips for Communicating with Deaf People (Rochester Institute of Technology, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Division of Public Affairs), http://www.his.com/~lola/deaf.html, http://www.zak.co.il/ deaf-info/old/comm_strategies.html, http://www.agbell.org/, http://www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/fact/comucate.htm, www.ndmig.com, www.mass.gov, and http://spot.pcc.edu/~rjacobs/career/communication_tips.htm.

Careers in Communication

Here's an interesting post on 33 career paths in communication. Students should find this interesting.

Mentoring Dos and Don'ts Again

Just heard from Psychology Today that the article I mentioned in a July 1, 2011 post is now available online. Check it out; there's lots of useful insights.

Dear Abby and Politeness

On Sunday, "Dear Abby" had three letters all revolving around politeness, giving us three good but often abused rules:

1.      When bringing young children to another person’s home, watch them and make sure that they don’t damage anything.

2.      People need compliments not criticism; it’s impolite to criticize for no constructive purpose.

3.      When answering the door, for example, in receiving a package, hold your dog back—not everyone loves your dog, nor will your dog love everyone.

The Stayover

According to one study, in press for publication in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and reported in the New York Times, the stayover refers to a type of part-time cohabitation. From an analysis of 22 college students in stayover relationships, a few interesting characteristics emerge:

Stayovers develop informally.

Stayovers are convenient rather than committed relationships (as with cohabitation).

Stayovers do not share financial responsibilities (as do cohabitating couples).

Stayovers do not keep their personal belongings in the other’s home.

Stayovers are more like guests than roommates.

Stayovers may be a new phenomenon or may have been around for years but never studied.

This is another type of relationship that we don't regularly discuss in our interpersonal textbooks but is obviously one that our students do. The long-term implications of stayovers are not clear and perhaps future research will look into these.