George Sevy

Comm 2010
Submitted to: Dr. Carolyn Clark
4/19/15

Final Report: Relational Change Project

Overview:
For this project my main goal has been to increase my potential for
sociability in my daily life. Often times I have found that my developed traits
towards my demeanor and nonverbal cues have the potential to cause
people to view my personality as uninterested or even condescending. I
associate this to my lack of reaction and acknowledgment that is generally
something people expect from interpersonally rewarding conversation.
Seeing as this interferes with my goals it is my intention to release these
trends for the sake of stimulating relational conversation, where these people
I interact with feel as though their presence is wanted as well as rewarded.
To do this I found it necessary to break from these traits and be the instigator
of conversation for the sake of understanding and associating with them.
Although this is a difficult process due to my introverted tendencies it has
become a great source for making new friends and realizing their own
struggles as a means of forging these connections that define true
interpersonal relationships. As I will explain this has been a great step
towards what I have realized as a necessary advancement to do what is
necessary to succeed in this world.
Unwanted Communication Pattern:
As I have come to a realization of my inadequacies towards communication
this has made it that much easier to pinpoint the specific aspects of these
developed communication traits that hold the greatest influence on who I
talk to, namely my eye contact. This realization has led me to asses past
experiences that have lead others to develop a predisposition of my
personality without even having to interact with me. I have often times been
very introspective person, which means that I can sometimes dwell on my
own thought process. While this has been quite beneficial in my approach
towards school and life in general, it also has the ill effect that I can also get
lost in these thoughts without recognizing the implications of how this can be
interpreted by those who notice my physical behavior. This has also had an
effect on my most personal relationships due to my incapacity towards

conflict resolution by avoiding this conversation all together. One of the

most notable of these was last year when I and my girlfriend almost had a
falling out, which was due to the fact that she noticed my behavior being
consistently as though I were in autopilot. Although I thought this was fine
and inconsequential to her because it was doing no harm and was something
I had become accustomed to, she was able to bring me back to a sense of
mindfulness (Beebe, p. 34) that in order for our relationship to work there
has to be some sort of awareness of emotional support from both ends. A
similar event also occurred more recently between me and one of my current
roommates due to the fact that our theologies and approach to life meant
that we were not seeing eye to eye on many issues. Instead of making the
attempt to realize why he might feel this way I was in a comfortable state of
mind while employing my common tactic of an avoidance (Beebe, p. 235)
conflict management style because I didnt find it a necessary step in our
relationship to be accommodating to these differences.
Strategies
Since this approach to communication was having an effect on all of my daily
interactions as well as my personal relationships I have been able to develop
and remain steadfast to several methods which I believed would convince
others of my genuine involvement and interest. First and foremost was this
fundamental principle behind eye contact (Beebe, p. 196). As we have
learned in class this action may be considered inappropriate in some cultures
but when applying it to American society it is valued as recognition of full
attentiveness and involvement within a conversation. Like I said previously I
have been able to see in retrospect that in many of these instances people
have misinterpreted my lack of eye contact as a lack of interest which has
never been my intention from the start. In order to prove to myself and
others that I appreciate their input I had taken it upon myself to put this at
the forefront of my thought process during any interaction as the
cornerstone of my communication development. The next step for me was
very important in developing connections through my ability to be a
relational listener (Beebe, p. 123). This goes hand in hand with the
perceived attentiveness of eye contact by not only recognizing that someone
has something to say but also building rapport by realizing that through the
simple act of listening I have the ability discern similarities between our
personalities. What this has taught me is if you personally have the capacity
to have a humbled sense towards the commonalities between others
regardless of aspects applying to race, gender, and culture instead of
focusing on these differences then you genuinely stand to gain that much

more information from them. This has been a critical step for me in forming
and maintaining new relationships because it has allowed me to value the
varied personal experiences and beliefs (Beebe, p. 33) that define us as
individuals. Through this process of relatability it has greatly been able to
assist me in utilizing a collaborative (Beebe, p. 238) conflict management
style. In the past I have relied entirely upon myself in work and school in
order to get the job done, not only it this unnecessarily tedious but I found
myself dedicating all of my time towards maintaining these responsibilities
which started a vicious cycle of reclusiveness and anxiety that didnt help my
communication any. Through this process of developing connections with
people that can genuinely assist me in achieving my goals and vise-versa not
only does this improve the quality of my projects but simultaneously allowed
me to recognize that these are the connections that will be essential to me
further down the road when I progress on my life goals.
Constraints
The number one difficulty I experienced while implementing these strategies
was breaking out of my shell and being the instigator for these
conversations. My introverted nature as well as my conflict avoidance has
led me to be a follower instead of a leader. How this applies to these
interactions is in general people like to talk about themselves more so than
having to hear other people do so, and although I am not usually guilty of
self-indulgent communication I would also not allow people the opportunity
to express information about themselves. Having this courage to ask simple
questions without implying any assumptions was particularly difficult when
engaging in multicultural communication. Like we have learned the varied
expectations of behavior and acceptable norms for interaction are varied and
often times foreign to someone like me who has rarely even left the state.
Although I found this necessary to hone these skills with the diversified
people I have the potential to interact with on a daily basis, it also gave me a
certain amount of anxiety and apprehensiveness when trying to figure out
how to acceptably do so.
Implementation

Although it sometimes may have been difficult to do so some of my most

interesting experiences with this new behavior was my ability to associate
from people in several different countries. Unlike the other semesters of
school where I have been pretty self-reliant, it just happened that I was able

to fall into a group of people that were not only foreign exchange students
and immigrants but also focused on similar degrees as me. This was a great
opportunity to enact my new efforts towards sociability through the use of
intercultural communication competence (Beebe, p. 104). This ability
to be aware of and sensitive towards someones cultural differences was
really beneficial when interacting with my South American friends. I do not
speak much Spanish and so often times some of my concepts would get lost
in translation and likewise they would have a tendency to make pop culture
references that I have never heard of. One of the examples of this was when
my friend Gabriel was talking about a music trend that originated in Puerto
Rico known as reggeaton. This music takes a lot of influence from modern
American hip hop but then applies a sort of Latin fusion which he claims just
becomes redundant because identical rhythm through each song. Not only
was this surprising for me because I had learned of a pretty widespread
phenomenon that I had previously never heard of before but also that this
was a cultural aspect from his country that he actually disagreed with. This
to me was a great opportunity to implement relational listening (Beebe,
p.123) because my focus was not towards putting my own opinion into the
matter but rather to just listen. This taught me that the greatest way to
overcome prejudice (Beebe, p. 102) or the formed opinion based on
stereotypes is not imply things you may think you know about their culture
but rather find out for yourself through talking to them. Another opportunity
to implement this ability came to me at my work when we hired on a boy
named Cheuk whose family had emigrated from Hong Kong. I believe this
was a great turning point in my ability to be inquisitive about someones
ethnicity (Beebe p. 91) because I already have a great intrigue towards the
nationality, heritage, languages, and religions of Asian countries. Not only
was I interested to hear some of his experiences traveling to Korea, Taiwan,
Japan, Thailand and Vietnam because these are places I eventually want to
travel to, but he was also able to give me example of the biases that
westerners have on oriental culture. For the most part I think many
Americans are guilty of ethnocentrism (Beebe, p. 100) whenever we label
a culture as Chinese which often times we apply to their language. What
Cheuk was able to fill me in on is there are actually two languages native to
China which are Cantonese and Mandarin. This was eye opening for me
because although I have been aware of these terms this conversation had
shown me that I had taken them in an entirely wrong context, which could
even come off as offensive to some. Thankfully he understanding and we
were actually able to go into deep conversation about our individual tastes in
music, food, sports as well as his worldview (Beebe, p. 94) in order to find

similarities in our theologies instead of those that we would associate to

each others culture. To me this was my best opportunity to implement the
use of creating a third culture (Beebe, p. 107) as a means of defining the
things we have in common instead of focusing on the differences that
separate us. This allowed us to be more open about our individual beliefs and
inevitably made us better friends.
Another common experience that I had throughout this journal was the
increased potential for conversations with the opposite sex. Sex (Beebe,
p.88) is the biologically inherited traits that define one as male or female,
while Gender (Beebe, p. 89) is a socially learned and reinforced idea of roles
within a society which can apply to either the masculine or feminine sex as
well as the androgynous role (Beebe, p. 40) which has traits of both
masculine and feminine. In general I do not have very many cross sex
relationships because it can be somewhat difficult to establish relatable
personality traits because of a lack of common interests. However, in my
Jazz Ensembles class this semester we had been put together with a group of
4 males and 3 females so I knew it would be necessary to strive to develop
these commonalities through relational listening in order to work together.
This actually proved to be more difficult than I expected. One member
named Michelle would often come up to me outside of class to tell me about
her struggles because it seemed as though she was getting overwhelmed
with all of the stuff going on with school and her daily life. Since I was
likewise very busy on my homework I had found that my attentiveness in
these conversations was not on par with the strategies I hoped to implement
and eventually she actually dropped the class. Initially I was distraught when
I felt as though this was partially my fault when I had failed to recognize my
strategy of eye contact (Beebe, p. 196) which implied to her that I was
disinterested when in reality I was just consumed with all my own work.
This had made me realize a great deal of sympathy (Beebe, p. 138)
because in the last of these conversations she was explaining how her
husband was in the hospital with a heart condition. Although I took this as a
failure on my part to recognize my communication goals I took the initiative
to make up for it when I was granted the opportunity to make amends last
week when she approached me at our performance and I was able to display
genuine interest about her husbands current whereabouts. I firmly believe
that this was proof positive of politeness theory (Beebe, p. 46) because I
am certain that I gained the ability to reconcile this individuals perception of
my personality simply through my ability to admit when I felt I treated her
wrongly. This also applies several instances I experienced with the singer of

our group named Amelia where we found ourselves butting heads over the
creative direction of our band. This was an imperative scenario to implement
a compromise (Beebe, p. 238) style of conflict resolution so that some of
our individual concerns could be resolved from both sides without hurting
each others feelings. This also meant that I also had to restrain some of my
physical tendencies towards my reclusive attitude that can be interpreted as
dominance (Beebe, p. 207) cues because I did not want it to seem as
though I had the desired total control of the band. To me this was a great
opportunity to implement the values of a feminine culture (Beebe, p. 96)
because my actions implied sensitivity to the emotional wellbeing of my
classmate as well as using verbal communication in a way that we could
relate to each other despite these differences. Overall this experience lead
me to notice the virtues of interaction adaption theory (Beebe, p. 191)
when I was able to realize that the only way we could actually reach a state
of compromise was through my incentive to reform my communication style
so that it would better serve the outcome of this specific interaction.
Results
In all I feel as though I have made very large steps in my ability to be flexible
in social scenarios instead of strictly following my ill-developed methods
towards communication that I have held onto for so long. Although I can see
now that this communication social style (Beebe, p. 55) is an integral part
of my personality and how I am interpreted on a daily basis I have found that
being able to change and apply new strategies is the most important part to
being able to associate with the vast amount of differences between each
other. The noticeable positive outcome of this was definitely the amount of
friends and acquaintances I was able to make in a relatively short amount of
time. Like I have said previously my style used to be determined by my
communication apprehension (Beebe, p. 42) because I had anxiety and
little desire to associate with people that know nothing about me. Now that I
am starting to shed the fear of the unknown consequence of trying to
associate with others this is becoming increasingly easier for me to start
conversation simply for the sake of doing so. Even though I feel like there
are plenty positive outcomes emerging from this I have also not failed to
recognize the negative aspects of my style that still need consideration.
Namely this applies to my variation in emotional state throughout the day.
Although I do not believe I am bi-polar by any means there are certain things
that people including me can do or say that throws me into a tailspin and can
affect my outlook for the rest of the day. This goes along the lines of
emotional contagion theory (Beebe, p. 212) because several times,

especially in our ensembles class I was able to physically see how my input
has had a negative impact of the emotional state of other members of the
group which is something I ultimately want to avoid. Even though I am
readily able to accept that there is still room for plenty of improvement
overall I feel like the benefits I have gained have definitely provided me the
tools that will help me address this properly. In systems theory (Beebe, p.
9) every connected aspect within a system has an inevitable effect on
everything else involved in the system, and I am beginning to realize how my
own influence no matter how small or insignificant it may seem will always
have this effect on the people in close proximity to me. Through this I have
greatly recognized how much I stand to change simply through my attitude
and focus, and I only hope that in the future I will be able to help do the
same for others.
Recommendations
It is undoubtable in my mind that with these efforts I have laid out a new
path for what I want to achieve by forming interconnected relationships, and
the only way I can possibly bring this to realization is through consistent
perseverance. The greatest take away for me from this whole experience
can be summed up with the phrase the only constant is change. What this
means for my future interactions is that although I came from a place of
unsociability when it comes to interracial and transgender communications, I
have found that with the world stepping into its phase of globalization the
only reasonable action is to accept that our differences are what define us as
individuals. Standpoint theory (Beebe, p. 72) supports this concept by
implying that someones social position, power, or cultural background
determines how each person perceives the behavior of others, and since
none of us have the capability to understand each others unique experience
the best course of action is to make an attempt to through the art of
communication. In the end it all boils down to the original concept of otheroriented (Beebe, p. 2) thinking that we learned right from the start of the
class. If you can gain this capability to not only put yourself in anothers
shoes, but also develop empathy (Beebe, p. 111) at the same time not only
does it make it easier to form these connections in the first place but it also
strengthens the bonds between them. In this way I have taken it upon
myself to strive and learn as much about the world and the people inhabiting
it by simply listening to them, and in turn provide them the information and
support that they can take away and implement in their own lives. After all I
see now that the entire goal is not to change peoples ideals for the sake of
relatability and similarity but to recognize the fact that any and all

relationships are a perpetual balance of give and take and this change is
little more than a pleasant side effect.
Works Cited
Beebe, Beebe, and Redmond, 7th edition. (2014). Interpersonal
Communication: Relating to
Others. Boston: Pearson