Communication Climates

On Wednesday, my Human Communication lecturer Mr. Murali taught us about the Communication Climates. When he talked about direct aggression, then an incident that happened at the pass struck me up. I decided to write it out because I think it was really related to the lesson I had learned in the class.

I had worked in a lawyer firm as a receptionist two years ago. Joyce was the account manager and also the head of mine. She was a kind and integrity person. I had learned a lot of things from her and she was generous in teaching me the account works. Later on she elevated me as her assistant and we cooperated good with each other.

One day I was late to work because had caught in a very…very…very…bad traffic jam. I was late about two hours so I asked Joyce to inform the boss. When I arrived, one of my bosses just instructed me to took half day leave without any reason. Even I knew it was wrong to be late but half day leave required 4 hours and I’m just late for two hours. That made me felt unfair because I wasn’t late on purpose.

Joyce also felt that was unjust for me so she went in to the bosses room and argued with them. That surprised me because I decided to obey the bosses instruction and doesn’t wish to mess up the business. I had no idea what they talked about in the conversation but one thing I knew was one of the bosses really got mad. Maybe he felt a little bit of guilty so he refused to continue the conversation. He slapped on the table and left the room. This doesn’t make Joyce to stop but she still continued her argument with the other boss. I really admired on her bravery because I knew myself very well. I would never ever damn to against my boss even I knew it was not all my fault. What can I say, most of people will commonly choose the same choice as mine to keep their job safe.

I think this incident had completely showed out the spiral reinforce climates that can happen in two level. The first one is escalatory conflict spirals which both parties start up with a negative conversation and this is where the conflict happened. The second level is de-escalatory conflict spirals and it occurs when one of the parties try to stop and withdraw from the negative conversation.