How are You Communicating in Your Workplace?

From an archived edition of Shared Visions:

As a volunteer, you spend a great deal of time and energy grappling with how to communicate with the people with whom you work. How well you are able to do this often determines your whole impression of how your volunteer experience is going. So take some time now and give yourself a chance to reflect on what your experience of communicating in your workplace has meant to you.

* Often, the volunteer experience is the first time a volunteer has ever had a full-time job. If this is the case for you, ask yourself: How has your experience of communicating with people at your volunteer workplace differed from your previous work experiences? Did that difference reveal itself gracefully, or was it a rude awakening? (If this wasn’t the case for you, ask yourself: How has this colored your experience differently than that of others?)

* Whether you are a teacher, a counselor, or a house manager, your words may very well carry more authority and responsibility than you have been used to having. How does that feel – good, bad, awkward, liberating? How does that shape your relationships with others?

* Depending on your experience, you may have already had some communication problems at work: a new language, a difficult dialect, people talking too fast or slow. How have these problems changed the way you communicate? What insights into your own personal growth can you take from this struggle?

* Is there anything in the way co-workers, clients or students speak to you that you feel discounts your value, perhaps because of your age or because you are ‘just a volunteer?’ Or, on the contrary, do your co-workers or clients express their appreciation, e.g., because you are a volunteer? What are some ways you can respond to their discounts or approvals?

Conclusion: If you had a particularly strong reaction to any of the above questions, consider sharing your responses with fellow volunteers or a trusted co-worker and ask for thoughts and suggestions of how they see you communicating in your workplace. How are they doing with their own communication?



http://www.pallotticenter.org/newsletters/sharedvision/vol15no2.pdf
Shared Visions, Volume 15: Number 2