Beyond Professional Communications...

It was the last lesson of the semester, yet it was the most impactful one.

“How are we communicating with our loved ones?” This question was asked by Ms. Lim as she brought the module to a close.

Somehow, when she asked that question, I was overwhelmed by it. This was because earlier on, when she mentioned a quote from my blog post, I was reminded of an objective that I wanted to achieve from this module- to be able to communicate better to improved relationships. Thus when the parting question was asked, I started to reflect on my communication with my loved ones.

Sad to say, I do not think I have achieved this particular goal. It is not because I did not learn anything from this module. Rather, in the midst of all the busyness of work and presentations, I have not actively put what I had learnt into my daily life.

So many times, I assume that my loved ones understand what I am trying to communicate. If they do not, I would instant complain “why don’t you understand” without thinking whether I put in effort to communicate properly. When interacting with strangers or friends, I would be the actively listener and good communicator but when communicating with loved one, I would slack off and take things for granted.

But this will change. I am really glad that Ms. Lim reminded me of my priorities and loves of my life and gave the challenge to rise up and apply what I have learnt beyond the context of “professional communication” but into our daily lives as well.

It may be the end of a module. But for me, it is definitely a beginning of actively putting what I have learnt into practice.

Concentration, concentration, presentation is a game of concentration

Eye contact, checked. Gestures, checked. Clarify and good pace of speech, checked. Ability to remain composed in the midst of distractions, not checked.

Distractions were something that I was not prepared for. Having practiced in front of the mirror and my parents, I did not have any interruptions to worry about. Therefore distractions caught me off guard and affected my train of thoughts.

During my presentation, at my second point, there were two loud beeps coming from the direction of my classmates. The beeps reminded me of Ms. Lim’s instructions to give a signal at the 18th and 20th minute. With that idea, my thoughts became divided between the presentation and whether we went overtime. As the saying goes “A divided house cannot stand”, my divided thoughts gave me a hard time in presenting as I fumbled quite a bit. After a while, I managed to regain my composure by reassuring myself that since all the practices were done within 20 minutes and this round was no different. However, by then I was almost three quarters through my part.

Could I have done something during my preparation to advert away this disaster? Since the problems lies with my concentration, I need to train myself to concentrate and not be affected by distractions. A possible training method would be learning to concentrate in class and not allowing myself to daydream or let my thought wander about.

Putting aside the fumbling due to a distracted mind, I feel that I did reasonably well as I consciously ensure that my non-verbal cues are sufficiently present. In terms of PowerPoint slides creation, I have improved a lot from the peer-teaching. This time round, my slides were simple, concise and do not have unnecessary pictures. The black background was also particularly useful as I did not have to worry about being in the light of the projector.

All in all, even though I did not meet my expectation in terms of a calm, composed and professional delivery, I did identify a weakness that I never knew about before. Hence it was a good learning experience.