"Self-reflection Essay: Interpersonal CommunicationThis essay is a self-reflection analysis of my communication skills based upon information generatedfrom the five diagnostic tools presented hereafter and focusing on two communication issues drawnfrom the results of the diagnostic tools. The two communication issues in need of my personalcommunication development are public speaking anxiety, more precisely giving a presentation andlow tolerance for disagreement. Moreover, this essay consists of literature review focusing on keyconcepts and theories related to the communication issues. Through this process of reflection, I havegained knowledge of activities I can implement to tackle the communication issues. These activitiesare reflected in an action plan after the literature review. I have used five different diagnostic tools to analyze my communication in various communicationsituations. First tool was a Self-Perceived Communication Competence Questionnaire which is anindicator of how people analyze their own communication competence when confronted with aplethora of communication situations with an array of receivers (McCroskey & McCroskey, 2013).The second tool was a Personal Report of Communication Apprehension which measures anindividual’s feelings towards communication by asking the individual to analyze diversecommunication situations and how one would behave in them (McCroskey, 2007a). The third toolwas a Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety which gives, as the name entails, an estimate ofindividual’s level of anxiety towards public speaking (McCroskey, 2007b). The fourth tool was theWillingness to Listen Diagnostic with which one’s orientation towards listening can be examined(Richmond & Hickson, 2001).Lastly, the fifth tool was a Tolerance for Disagreement providinginformation on how well people can tolerate disagreement and conflicting ideas which one believesto be true (Teven, Richmond & McCroskey, 1998). The results from all the questionnaires where quite accurate and I recognize my communication styleand preferences from them. As the results from Self-Perceived Communication Competence show, Iam at my most comfortable when talking with friends and having interactions on a one-to-one basis,whereas, I am somewhat uncomfortable talking in public, in large groups of people or meetings. Theresults from the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension further verifies that I have a slightapprehension when it comes to public speaking or speaking in meetings. My overall communicationapprehension score was 70 which falls in the category of a moderate level of communicationapprehension. The public speaking anxiety score of 115 demonstrates that I experience moderatelevels of anxiety when giving a presentation which is aligned with the scores from the apprehensionreport. The fourth diagnostic tool, Willingness to Listen provided me with a score of 72 indicating a moderate level of willingness to listen. Lastly, the tolerance for disagreement score puts me also inthe moderate scale with a score of 42. Although the scores for public speaking anxiety and tolerance for disagreement fall in the categoryof moderate, I perceive myself needing to improve those areas of communication and I strongly feelthat by doing so, it will be beneficial for my business communication to reduce the level of anxietyfrom moderate to low. When it comes to tolerance for disagreement, I have always had the tendencyto avoid conflicts and disagreements in my interpersonal communication and try to solve any issuesas diplomatically as possible. However, I believe disagreements are inevitable in business contextand especially in decision-making and finding the right way to communicate when disagreeingopinions arise, is crucial.Reflecting on the public speaking anxiety, giving a presentation in a meeting, I would like to providethe following example of what happened six months ago while I was working as a Legal Assistant inone of the business law firms in Finland. I was given a task to present findings of what could beimproved in the procedure of sending responses, claims and pleas to courts on the designated duedate. I was to present the findings of the survey in the partner’s meeting. Prior to the meeting, I feltquite nervous because I knew I needed to articulate my findings in a comprehensible way as thepartners, all of whom are lawyers, had a limited amount of knowledge of the administrative tasksassistants do. Furthermore, judging by my previous experiences, lawyers are a demanding audience,and this only added the pressure to communicate and deliver the presentation as clearly and accuratelyas possible. Although I was prepared for presenting, I found it difficult to concentrate and rememberwhat I was meant to communicate.The second example of a communication issue is related to tolerance for disagreement and it tookplace in the same law firm. I was given a task which I knew did not belong to me, however, to avoidarguments with one of the managers, I ended up completing the task. This is a classic example of mybehavior to avoid communicating my disagreeing view of the issue to the other party. I was clearlytrying to avoid a possible interpersonal conflict by submissive behavior and communicating to themanager what she wanted to hear. Now, reflecting on the situation, I could have presented a solidargument with evidence to support my view, where it might not have led to a conflict at all.Communication apprehension (CA) can be defined as an anxiety or fear towards expected orunexpected communication situations with a person or group of people (McCroskey, 1977). Due tothese negative associations towards communication, an individual with elevated levels of CA willabstain from voluntarily engaging oneself in oral communication as identified by McCroskey (1977).Furthermore, McCroskey (2001) identified four types of CA which are anxiety related to trait,audience, context and situation. Trait related anxiety refers to the individual who is avoiding publicspeaking because of lack of knowledge or experience but with practice will be able to perform inpublic speaking situations. Audience anxiety is to do with the people in the audience causing thenervousness of the speaker, whereas, context anxiety is caused by, for instance, novelty or uncertaintyof the situation. Lastly, the situation anxiety is created by combination of factors such as cultural,social and psychological factors (McCroskey, 1977). The ability to communicate is conceptuallydistinct from communication apprehension, however, there is strong negative associations betweenthe two and the cause for this phenomenon is believed to be individual’s ability to momentarilyovercome anxiety and continue to perform in an unpleasant situation in which the negativeassociations evolve (Gardner, Milne, Stringer & Whiting, 2005).Public speaking competence is a necessity in business life as researched by Marinho, Mesquita deMedeiros, Gama and Teixeira (2017). Their research also concluded that a predominant element forsuccess in professional life and establishing creditability and is the ability to communicate fluently.Another research conducted by Russ (2012), found out that in an organizational setting, the level ofCA individual has effects on the interpersonal workplace relationships and effectiveness as amanager. Another research conducted by Russ (2013), concluded that managers who have prominentlevel of CA, are less likely to include others in their decision-making process, moreover, they are lesslikely to propose collaborative communication with their subordinates. From these research resultscan be concluded that the extent to which communication apprehension influences individual’sactions is significant and, subsequently, how important it is to lower the levels of CA so it does notpose far-reaching negative implications for one’s professional competence at the workplace. The tolerance for disagreement was conceptualized following research conducted of groupcommunication and communication in an organizational setting (Teven at al., 1998). Disagreeing iscircumstantially dependent meaning that the way one disagrees differs depending on who is theopponent in the disagreement, for instance colleagues or family members, where the disagreement istaking place, and in addition, whether it is disagreeing face-to-face or online (Marra, 2012). Thebackground of the participants, their position in the company and the communication style are factorsfurther identified having an influence on the formation of disagreement by Angour (2012). The theoretical framework around interpersonal communication regarding disagreement and conflictis not unambiguous since there are many components affecting the situation, whether a discussionevolves into disagreement or conflict (Education portal, 2016).Education portal (2016), identifies four interpersonal communication factors affecting the emergence of possible disagreement orconflict at the workplace which are verbal communication, non-verbal communication, emotions incommunication and listening. De Vries, Bakker-Pieper & Oostenveld (2010) studied different verbalcommunication styles and identified several factors affecting communication which werepreciseness, expressiveness, argumentativeness, assuredness, supportiveness and verbalaggressiveness.These factors have an impact on communication and especially in the businesscontext, the factors dictate how employees perceive their managers. Within a company, knowledgesharing and team commitment are largely influenced by manager’s communication style (De Vrieset al., 2010).According to another study conducted by Hartman & McCambridge (2011), theeffective communication is the number one skill companies seek in managers and it is directly linkedto team efficacy and it increases the opportunity for promotion. Hartman and McCambridge (2011),also found that when communicating in different types of situations, one should identify the needs ofthe audience and adjust communication style accordingly. Positive non-verbal communication, for instance nonverbal immediacy, may prevent disagreementdue to its effect of bringing forward positive signals and attitudes (Jia, Cheng & Hale, 2017).Nonverbal immediacy can be defined as an act of expressing positive signs such as smiling or noddingwhen listening or talking (Jia et al., 2017).Another component of interpersonal communicationaffecting the emergence of disagreement in negotiation is emotions as identified by Van Kleef & DeDreu (2006). According to Van Kleef’s and De Dreu’s findings (2006) in a negotiation situation,those individuals who expressed disappointment or worry in their interpersonal communicationpersuaded the opponent to adopt the opposing view. As stated above, individual’s ability to listen isone of the factors constituting interpersonal communication.As commented by Roberts and Vinson(1998), there are individual variations in the individual’s ability to listen and to which extent one letsexternal stimulus subconsciously effect listening. After identifying the two communication issues needing development, I have created an action planfor the next six months to overcome these issues. Firstly, keeping a personal journal would bebeneficial throughout the process to keep me on track with what I have accomplished and where Ican reflect my own progress. At the end of the six-month period, the journal would be a useful toolto identify the areas where I have improved and if there are issues I need to work on, the journalwould act as a framework for future planning. Secondly, having a mentor to oversee the process andusing the mentor’s expertise to overcome the speech anxiety issues and learn confidence strategiesfor presenting, would make the process effective. I am going to hire Peter Dhu as my mentor who hasa Diploma in Professional Coaching and he has accumulated 20 years of experience working with "