Monday, October 5, 2009
Nonverbal Communication Question #1
There have been many instances in my life where nonverbal messages have been misinerpeted. I have two occasions where this has happened recently, one occasion involving me giving the nonverbal message and one of me misinterpeting the nonverbal message. When I was president of my fraternity one of the guys asked me if they could have a party on a Tuesday. I replied nonverbally by raising my eyebrows and shaking my head up and down sarcastically. Sure enough when Tuesday came around I got back from work to find that a party was going on. When I confronted the guy who was throwing the party he said that I told him it was cool to have a party. He had misunderstood my nonverbal sarcasm and thought I was fine with it. I felt responsible for the miscommunication and enjoyed the party! The second instance involves my boss and I. We had done some painting in our office and I was in charge of re-hanging all of the pictures. My boss told me that he wanted to move some around. When I went to discuss this with him he was on his cell phone. When I pointed to one of the pictures he made a nonverbal action with his hand brushing it away. So I took that to mean that he didnt want the picture in his office anymore. So I threw it in the dumpster. A few hours later my boss asked me where the picture was. I told him I threw it away, and he got pissed off. I told him what happened to make me throw it away and he told me that he meant for me to get out of his office. Needless to say I ended up in the dumpster to retrieve the painting. Misinterpreting nonverbal communication is something that is common and sometime has bad results.
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I can understand both situations fairly well. The first time my roommates wanted to have a party, I just looked at them and raised my eyebrows. I should have actually said how I felt about it, which was that there would be a mess that no one would be willing to clean up. Sure enough, after the party, the house was a mess for awhile until they finally listened to me bugging them about it. Also, I have had a few miscommunications with people while they were on their cell phones. Often, they are not really listening to what you are trying to ask/tell them, but they still make some type of gesture to indicate they are. It is frustrating later if they also act as if they had no fault in the miscommunication, which is the worst part to me.
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