Reflective Journal:
Communication Survey

Missi Moore

Professor McGill
Practice Skills / Communication
28 January 2015

Reflective Journal: Communication Survey
I will be reflecting on the “Communication Self-Assessment Survey” I completed online for my Communications/Practice Skills class. We had to go to the mindtools website and fill in the Communication Quiz which consisted of 15 questions relating to various communication skills such as speaking, listening, writing and reading. The quiz took me approximately 5 minutes to complete. I responded to the questions as quickly and honestly as possible. The outcome of this quiz to provide me with a better understanding of what level I am at with my communication skills, but also, to give me a starting point and a direction as to where I might need improvement.
I scored 48 out of 75 on the quiz. According to the score interpretation, I am a capable communicator, but sometimes experience communication problems. I tend to agree with this interpretation. I will often catch myself second guessing things after I have said them or think that I had heard one thing when in fact it was something completely different that was said. Therefore, I know that I have some work to do on my communication skills. That being said, the results of the quiz were further broken down into a detailed interpretation relating to five steps of the communication process; message planning, message encoding, choosing the form of communication to use, message interpretation, and feedback .
The results that I received in the detailed interpretation varied, with some being more shocking to me than others. For the first step regarding message planning, I scored a 4/10. This does not surprise me because I do put a lot of time and effort in trying to figure out what I want to say to others. For example, at my previous job I had a bad habit of typing up emails with too much detail. I was advised by both a manager and a co-worker to trim down my emails. This section has taught me that when I am planning my message, I should keep it simple and straightforward.
For the next step involving the encoding or crafting of a message, I scored 14/25. I was upset to see such a low score in this step because I always thought that I was good at considering what I would say and how the recipient would perceive it. Furthermore, I often use diagrams or drawings when I talk to others. I had learned to do this when I was explaining the bankruptcy process to my clients at my previous job. It became a helpful tool for me which I adopted for many other areas of my life. The results in this section have taught me that I need to consider misunderstandings due to cultural barriers.
For the next step, which involved choosing the best form of communication, I scored 9/15. I agree that I can use more discretion in deciding the proper channel to communicate