I have a one-year-old baby. I have to look after him and do some housework. At same time, I am just taking the PN program. How heavy the burden I am taking! I turned more and more tired, and more and more angry. I became crazy! At last, several days ago, when she worked very lazily again, I became beyond my endurance. I shouted to her, asking her what she wanted to do and if she knew how to work. And then we began to quarrel angrily. As we were very loudly, the boss came and stopped us. He let us stay at home one day and separated our duties.
In these days, I am calming down and I read the article about personal communication style. I tried to identify my own communication style with Wilson Learning Model.
Normally, I am shy girl. I don’t like to show my feeling to others because I don’t know how to do that and what the others will think. In shortly, I keep my emotion to myself. I am almost Task-Responsive. So in Scale A, I think I should choose 1. At same time, I can make decision by myself. I don’t like always to ask others this or that to make my decision. But I am not so much assertive. I make decision not so fast and sometimes want to hear others’ suggestion. I am somewhat Tell-Assertive. So in Scale B, I would like to choose 3. In this case, I can get the conclusion: my predominant communication style is in the Driver grid.
But under some particular condition, such like I feel stress and can’t solve problem in my normal way, I may turn into other communication style. At that time, I will be very loudly showing my uncomfortable and expressing my feeling clearly with anger or anxiety. I will turn into totally Expressive and People-Responsive, so I choose 4 in Scale A. When I can’t find the good way to solve my problem by myself, I am glad to ask others and get more advice. At this time, I will become Ask-Assertive, so I would choose 1 in Scale B. Interestingly, I found my backup communication style is just opposite to my predominant one.
In the conflict I mentioned above, firstly, I only used my predominant communication style. I didn’t tell her my uncomfortable feeling to her working attitude because I didn’t know what she would think about me. I didn’t ask other co-workers how they could do when they encounter such matter. No one other helped me to make decision. What I only did was to keep my dissatisfaction to myself. So I took the stress totally by myself. In that way, I felt worse and worse. Everything I didn’t in my normal communication style was useless. At last, I couldn’t help changing into my backup communication style. I censured her very rudely, showing my anger clearly. The problem may be solved since we have been separated, but I don’t feel comfortable. When I calmed down, I don’t think I want solve the matter in that way.
After I finished reading this article, I thought over it very much. I think I can find a better way to deal with such conflict. Instead of holding all feeling to myself, I will tell her my feeling when I feel uncomfortable, but next time I will do it in more gentle way. And I will be mild to teach her how she should work and point out what wrong is. I know if I can’t express my meaning when it is just little, it will be accumulated to a big trouble finally. Although sometimes maybe I can’t find the way that I can explain clearly, I should ask some of my colleagues for help. Because they may have met such problem before, I will ask them how they would deal with this person. In this way, I can find the better way to solve this communication problem.
Reference
Hill, Signe S. & Howlett, Helen Stephens (2001). Success in Practical/Vocational Nursing – From Student to Leader (4th Edition) Chapter 1: How Practical/Vocational Nursing Evolved p2-p22
Document from the official website of the Canadian Practical Nurses Association, from
Kozier & Erb & Berman & Burke (2000). Fundamentals of Nursing (6th Edition). Chapter19: Professional Nursing Roles p376-p381
Kelly Kay. RPN: A Brief History of Practical Nursing in Canada.