Continuous Personal Development

For this assignment I have chosen to cover the communications competency. Communication, I feel, has always been one of the biggest hurdles that I had to overcome throughout life’s journey. I am able to come up with brilliant ideas and am able to solve problems but all of that is completely useless if I am unable to communicate my ideas and solutions with other people. Most of the things that we do in our daily lives, especially things done in the healthcare sector, require some form of collaboration and teamwork. It is for this reason that I have decided to improve my communication skills. As a future doctor, it is of the utmost importance that I am able to quickly and effectively communicate with colleagues and patients. This ensures maximum patient satisfaction and ensures that all of us are on the same page in terms of what’s happening with the patient.

To help me along this journey I have selected a couple of resources that would teach me what I need to work on and how to achieve those goals, and also to expose me to what proper communication is supposed to look like. I chose these resources carefully, ensuring that it can support me throughout all stages of this learning journey.

The first type of resource that I gathered consists of a few Youtube channels. I feel that I learn best through watching videos rather consuming written information. I am better able to visualize what was explained in a video than what was written down in words. The first Youtube channel that I selected was “Vinh Giang”. This channel was created by, and is hosted by, Vinh Giang, a popular communications teacher. He has done many talks on how to improve one’s communication skills and has many students who have found success. For this particular learning journey I chose to focus on his video titled “13 Years of Communication Skills Knowledge in 53 minutes”. This video wonderfully condenses all of the key points on how to improve my communication skills while still providing a lot of detail. I learned about the importance of my vocal image. My vocal image is basically just my projection and my confidence. It is the first impression that people get of me based on my tone. Having a strong vocal image is key to effective communication as it lays the foundation for the conversation and ensures that you are perceived as a reliable, confident person. The second channel that I accessed was “How Communication Works”. Compared to Vinh’s channel, this had both it’s pros and cons. I primarily focused on this channels short form content. This allowed me to quickly get pointers that I could use during my conversations. I could access these videos while I waited for other thing, such as standing in a queue. This allowed me to maximize my learning time. The third and final Youtube channel that I accessed was “Stanford Graduate School of Business”. I used this source to gain exposure to how proper and effective communication should look like. They have many videos which are just talks done by various people on a number of topics. This allows me to see how the skills that I learned from the other channels can be applied practically.

The next type of resource that I used for this learning journey is articles. These were mostly useful in terms of planning this communications journey. These articles mostly just outlined the basic principles required to effectively communicate and provided some basic tips on how to achieve those goals. The article “Effective Communication Improving Your Interpersonal Skills” was very helpful as it not only gave me tips with detailed explanations but also briefly discusses what effective communication actually means. This, once again, helped to solidify my understanding of what I’m working towards. My main takeaway from this article is that I need to look within and try to identify what personal blocks are preventing me from being an effective communicator. After some brief thought, I came to the conclusion that my primary mental block in terms of communication is that I feel a constant need for perfection. Communication should be organic, not something that is scripted, planned or needs to be perfect (Source 1). The second article that I accessed was one done by the Harvard Division of Continuing Education titled "8 Ways You Can Improve Your Communication Skills”. I found this source helpful in terms of it going into a reasonable amount of detail with each point; however, compared to my other sources, this was focused more on structured, inorganic communication. Overall, this source was the least helpful.

I have already started implementing some of these tips in my daily life. I have been making friends with as many people in the class as possible and have been greeting random people that I pass on campus. I feel as though my communication skills are improving but I know that I still have a long way to go before I become properly proficient.

Bibliography:

Source 1:

fraser, jason (2016). How Organic Communication Helps Teams Succeed - Built to Adapt - Medium. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/built-to-adapt/how-organic-communication-helps-teams-succeed-b32ba04e998.)