Person Change Project Final Report 

 
To: Profesor Shirene McKay 
Department of Communication 
 
From: Olivia Chilcote 
 
Date: December 13, 2020  
 
RE: Personal Change Project Final Report 

Overview

This paper is an outline of my personal change project. My goal was to adjust and work on 
unwanted communication behaviors that I found to affect my interpersonal relationships. 
My main focus was on communicating my feelings in a positive and effective way. I found 
many effective strategies from our textbook. This project gave me a chance to reflect on 
my habits and adjust them. It has made me more aware of communication behavior and 
effective ways to work on and fix it.  

Unwanted Communication Pattern 

 
For this project I went through and that about my communication habits. One thing I 
realized that was not healthy or working for me and my relationships was my ability to 
communicate my feelings. I tend to shut down and deal with it all in my head. Getting 
upset or frustrated is a natural human reaction to certain situations. Instead of turning 
this into a barrier in my relationships, I chose to work on expressing this in a better way.  
 
Examples: 
Family can be very difficult to positively communicate with. My sister and I tend to get 
into a lot of conflict with one another. She is in the stereotypical teenager stage where 
she’s always upset. She also tends to steal my things, such as my hair straightener, clothes, 
and shoes. I don’t communicate well when she does this. I tend to yell at her or get mad at 
her for taking them.  
 
Work can be very frustrating, as most know from experience. I work with my boyfriend 
and some of our friends. We work in a very fast paced department. The work is very 
individual but each person affects it overall. We had a couple days in a row where the 
work was barely getting done on time or going a little late. It was very frustrating and 
stressful. I took a phone call for an upset customer and had asked a coworker for help. He 
told me no and walked away. This made me even more frustrated and upset. I accidentally 
centered this frustration towards my boyfriend. Instead of telling him what was wrong 
and that I was upset, I lashed out. It ended up adding more stress and anger for both of us.  
 
In the first situation, I could calmly and rationally explain what was frustrating me. She 
would listen better than me yelling at her. In the second situation, if I would have told my 
boyfriend what had happened, It could have helped ease the stress of the situation. 
Instead, I added stress to both of us. My communication habits were negatively affecting 
my interpersonal relationships.  
 
Strategies 
 
To effectively change my communication habit, I had to find strategies to help me reach 
my goal. I found three main strategies to apply to my habits and work on my unwanted 
communication behavior.  
 
The first strategy I used was​ Describe Your Feelings, Rather Than Evaluate Behavior 
(Bebe, Bebe, & Redmond, pg. 165). This strategy helped me express my emotions that I got 
from other people's behavior. I chose this strategy because it would help me describe my 
feelings. It also stops you from jumping to conclusions about other people's actions. I 
chose this strategy because I hoped it would help me get my feelings across in a situation. 
Since my goal was to express my feelings in a better way, I found this to be fitting.  
 
The other strategy I wanted to implement was the ​Conflict Management Styles​ (Bebe, 
Bebe, & Redmond, pg. 226). The book discusses 5 types of conflict management styles: 
avoidance, competition, accommodation, compromise, and collaboration. (Beebe, Beebe & 
Redmond, 2017, p. 223-226). I wanted to mainly use the last two, compromise and 
collaboration, because those are typically the most positive. The other three were 
described in a more negative way, so I tried to avoid using those. I used the conflict 
management styles with my sister the most.  
 
Constraints 
 
I had a hard time following through with my goal. It takes a lot of thought and extra effort 
to make a change in your natural behavior. I found myself forgetting about my goal or 
ignoring it. I would know that I wanted to change how I communicate my feelings and 
frustration, but I would push it off and take the easy way out.  
 
For example, when I got frustrated at work I got angry at my boyfriend instead of telling 
him what I was feeling and why I was angry. I pushed away my goal and let my anger and 
frustration get the best of me.  
 
I also struggled with other people not following through on their end. For example, my 
sister and I had compromised on her stealing my stuff and me hers, but afterwards no 
change was made. It made it difficult for me to want to continue to work on change and my 
goal of bettering my communication habits.   
 
Implementation 
 
When I first began this assignment I was excited. I wanted something to happen, so I could 
start implementing my chosen strategies. After nothing happened, I forgot about it for a 
little bit. I had to constantly remind myself what my goal was and that I needed to work on 
it, rather than going back to my natural instincts. It is very difficult to fight what you are 
comfortable with. After I had been working on it for a few weeks, I started to find myself 
being more open about sharing my feelings, although I still had my bad days. 
 
One thing that I liked was that by using the strategy of ​Describe Your Feelings, Rather 
Than Evaluate Behavior ​(Bebe, Bebe, & Redmond, pg. 165), both me and the other person 
were able to find out things that both people were unaware of. For example, when my 
boyfriend and I get frustrated with each other, we tend to avoid each other, to get time to 
cool off. I do this by doing things alone while he turns to his friends to distract him. One 
day, I finally told him that this made me feel as if me and our situation were unimportant to 
him. He was shocked that I felt this way. He then told me that he does this as a way to 
distract himself from feeling angry or sad. We were both able to see things from each 
other's point of view and it really helped us. I like that this strategy helped us see things 
differently and have a better understanding of the other person's behavior and reactions 
to things. 
 
I did not always follow through with my goal to communicate my feelings. I ended up using 
the avoidance ​Conflict Management Style​ (Bebe, Bebe, & Redmond, pg. 226) a couple 
times throughout the project. For example, my cousin had asked me to stay the night after 
a family dinner. I didn’t want to disappoint her, but I also knew that I had a lot of 
homework that I need to do that night and the next day. Instead of just telling her that it 
wouldn’t be a good night, I avoided her and giving her a straight answer. Even though I was 
unsuccessful in improving my communication, I was able to learn from it. I like that even 
though not all of my journal entries had a success story, I can use them to reflect and do 
better next time. 
 
Results 
The outcomes of this project went fairly well. The thing this project helped me with the 
most was giving me the chance to reflect on my communication patterns. It gave me the 
chance to see the negative consequences of my behavior. By being able to point out the 
bad habits, it gives me an opportunity to work on it. By going through the class textbook, I 
was also able to find ways to improve and create more positive communication habits. 
  
Part of it was that other people didn’t respond with my plans for change. For example, my 
sister. We set up a compromise from the ​Conflict Management Styles.​ (Bebe, Bebe, & 
Redmond, pg. 226) She didn’t follow through with her end and no change was made. I had 
thoughts of “if she isn’t willing to do her part, then why should I do mine?” This made it 
harder for me to put in the effort to change my communication style with her. I had to 
remind myself that there were still other things to try and I can at least be working on my 
own goal. 
 
I still have plenty of work to do to improve my communication habits and interpersonal 
relationships. I plan to continue to work on my goal.  
 
Recommendations 
 
There is always something we can work on to better ourselves and our habits. 
Communication especially has a lot of opportunity for change. Right now, my main goal is 
to work on my communication with my boyfriend and younger sister. These are the two 
relationships I see the most conflict in. As I went through my project, I realized I talked 
about them the most in my journal entries. Getting to reflect on that, I can now prioritize 
these two relationships and help better our communication.  
 
When we created our proposals a strategy I was planning to implement was I will learn to 
be mindful of your nonverbal behavior (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2017, p. 205). During 
my project, I let this one slip aside and never implemented this strategy. As I continue to 
work on my goal, I would like to add this. A big part of how others view you and your 
verbal messages come across is through your nonverbal behavior. I am a shy and quiet 
person and that tends to come of as me being snotty or judgemental. Being aware of my 
nonverbal behavior would help me to come off in a better way.  
 
References  
 
Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J. & Redmond, M. V. (2018). Interpersonal communication: Relating 
to others. (8th edition). Pearson.