COMMUNICATION

TRAINING

November, 27th, 2014.

Ral Eduardo Betancourt Arguello

It was the first time I had experienced a Communication Training course like the one we
had, and in advance I can tell that the results I achieved are already helping me to be
more conscious, about some details, in my daily conversations.
By doing all the exercises we have done, I could learn how to make others understand
better my communications and how truly understand what others have tell; how to
become "a good listener" and an active speaker and conflict dealer.
I learned, by experiences in this training that, to build communication skills is a lot
more than only practicing speech. The process of communication involves from speech
to corporal language and gestures. I am thinking in the chair exercise we made. The
basis of it was the cooperation among us, all the participants, in other to achieve an
objective (not to let the chairs fall). Without cooperation, as we tried the first time, the
result was chaotic. In this chaos-situation, a leader emerged. A charismatic person, who
had the ability to think herself in the shoes of the others; her comrades, in other to build
a communication bridge among us, which will lead us to cooperation and to achieve our
common goal. This communication bridge was not made of words, neither of wood,
but of eye-contacts, gestures, facial expressions, postures, and other kinds of Nonverbal
communication. It was really satisfying when we manage to do effective this exercise. I
thought at first it was quite improbable that we could. Since we didnt had the
opportunity to know us very well before, which means that we didnt had the basic
materials (confidence, trustfulness, familiarity) to build our bridge.
Other very interesting exercise was the Thomas-Killman Conflict Mode Instrument. I
mean, it was very useful to learn, not only about other people but, about ourselves. In
this exercises we were ask to fulfill a survey, marking earthier A or B in each question,
depending on how typically of our behavior this statements and answers were. As a
result of this, we could find a description of our typically behavior in terms of
Assertiveness and Cooperativeness.
Its very important, I think, to be conscious about your behavior in conflict situations.
As we learned, there are no right or bad answers, neither good nor bad behaviors. We all
need in our daily life to be sometimes competing, collaborating, compromising,
avoiding or accommodating, depending on how we decide to manage the situation. This
is the key-word, to decide. I think that the ability to make decisions, logical o
emotional, about our social behaviors is what defines the human being.

In this kind of context, there are no bad decisions, or bad social behaviors, whenever
you have the awareness, the ability and the opportunity of decision making; freedom of
choice
And I think that this is the main importance of this kind of course. To gain the ability of
awareness. Without it, we are unarmed in the world, unprovided of the right of
controlling our own behavior, fate and social relations.
In the course itself, for instance, we had the opportunity of having an active role in all
the exercise. The structure of the course was not static, but dynamic. And it change to be
adapted to the preferences and personality of the whole group. As a result, we all had a
very amusing and profitable time. We could learn a lot, in a very short time, about our
classmates, about ourselves, and also, about some useful theories and skills.
I think that this kind of trainings are magnificently useful in a lot of different situations.
For instance, in the army. Its a tradition, so to say, of the army to be rude, competing, to
use force in other to achieve the objectives. But, discipline, obedience, order, success,
group unity, can be all achieved with better communication skills. There are a lot of
leaders in the world history who had demonstrated this, but nowadays, legitimized
violence, symbolically, verbal, or fiscal, is still used in many situations of life. Parents
with children, teachers with their students, and etcetera, in all situations involving
difference of power.
We are all, now, an example. We could succeeded the goal in the exercise of the chair
with no need of violence, but with cooperation. And we could achieved group unity in
no-time by communicating effectively.
To finalize with this short writing, I would like to repeat what I already said in the
training. Techniques, methods, exercises, theories, are, their alone, only tools. What is
really important, always, is the people. The effectiveness of this course relays on the
trainer. She sought for the personality of the group and found it. But she also use it, in
the good sense of the word, in other to help us discover our group potential. I think, it
will not be exaggerated to say that, we will all owe to this Communication Training
course all our future merits and accomplishments that we shall achieve as a group. For
this and more, we should all be thankful.