Supportive Listening

1. What principles of supportive communication and supportive listening are violated in this case? The principles of supportive communication and supportive listening that are violated in this case would be the following: congruent, descriptive, problem-oriented, validating, conjunctive, support listening. The new boss fails to be proactive in his conversation and allow the worker to gain the level of respect in order to address the issues on site. He also doesn’t provide any type of solution for the issues, he only addresses that there is a problem. In order to maintain some kind of balance in a supportive communication piece it is necessary to validate the information that is provided and receive the workers opinion on what they think would work for the changes. In addition, giving them an opportunity to tell you what they think needs to change first is extremely important. I think that both parties were not interested in supportive listening or communicating in order to be productive they should have identified the problem and collaborated on solutions for the problem. I think that the attitude that the worker has toward the new boss is completely unnecessary as all the new boss is attempting to do is his job, and the worker should understand that some of the violations are not up to the appropriate standards.

2. If you were to change this interaction to make it more productive, what would you change? I think what I would end up changing about this interaction would be by asking the worker first what he thinks about the work place and how he would improve it. I also think that it is necessary to be supportive when listening to what the worker has to say, because he is the one who has the time at the facility and is going to be your best individual to help you implement new processes or procedures to the crew. I also think that instead of calling all the bad issues out he should provide solutions and new ways of doing business. In most cases you are going to have conflict when a new individual comes on and attempts to address situations that they notice. Some of the major things that I would stay away from would be threats because I think that causes the employee to automatically change their attitude and go into defensive mode. I think that it is important to be problem-oriented and conjunctive in order maintain balance in the findings and solutions of issues in the work environment. I think also stating that we are now in need of having a sexual harassment training annually because it is required of all businesses, what this does is take that problem out of your hands and places it in the hands of a higher power that you don’t control.

3. Categorize each of the statements by naming the rule of supportive communication that is either illustrated or violated.