Please complete the exercise on the "left-hand column Discussion Board" from the text on pg 47.

ANALYSIS Using the LeftHand Column to Develop Your Communication Skills Objective This analysis will help you identify gaps between what you say and what you think, as well as to help you understand why those gaps occur. You will experience the lefthand, righthand exercise described earlier in this section.

Directions Do the following:

Identify a difficult conversation that you had with a friend or work colleague involving a problem that you tried to resolve. The conversation may focus on a problem that has since been solved or one that still does not have a usable solution. The key is to find a problem that you were unable to resolve at that time. Try to identify a difficult problem that involved interpersonal difficulties, such as a conflict about how to do an assignment or a disagreement about who should perform different parts of a task. Write down the approach that you initially took to resolve the problem. What did you talk about? What ideas did you have? What were the interpersonal communication barriers that hindered your ability to resolve the issue? For example, did one of you have a hidden agenda? Were there status differences that created problems? Were there distractions that kept you from being focused on the conversation? Using a fresh piece of paper, divide the paper in half and write down the actual conversation that occurred on the righthand side of the page. You should focus on the words that were actually spoken. If you cannot remember the conversation verbatim, try to remember the key issues that were raised. On the lefthand side of the page, write down your thoughts and feelings that were unexpressed during the conversation. Read and think about what you have written in your lefthand column. Then answer these questions: What was it about the situation that led you to feel the way you felt? What was it about you or the situation that kept you from expressing your thoughts and feelings? What assumptions did you make about the other person? What did you lose from keeping certain thoughts and feelings to yourself? Consider how you might move some of your thoughts and feelings from the lefthand column to the righthand column. Write down one or two specific ideas. Reflection Sometimes we don't express our thoughts and feelings because we don't feel that we have sufficient grounds for the claims that we would like to makewe don't trust our intuition. But often our reticence is based on a desire to avoid conflict, rather than a lack of solid arguments. Feelings that are not expressed, however, do not simply disappear. In addition to being willing to express our own thoughts and feelings, we need to encourage others to express their thoughts and feelings and we need to listen carefully when they do. Often the best way to minimize conflict is to raise potentially contentious issues early, before they escalate.

Do the "left hand column" exercise in the text on pg. 47. Write at least two paragraphs. Analyze the conversation using quotes to reflect and interpret an encounter to achieve optimal results. Reflect the conversation in a table form so you can analyze the words in a better format. Don't describe your analysis until you have quoted "you said and s/he said". It is important to include this verbiage to analyze how statements might be interpreted and then consider changing the language for a better result. Write two paragraphs describing your analysis.