Week 9: Post 3

As I went back through my initial reading and notes from of Chapter 2, I found numerous comments in the margins of the “Elements of a Psychological Model” and “Improving Faulty Communication” sections. The notes I had made about “communication as a psychological process” (Trenholm, 2008, p. 26) became more useful to me as I considered the concepts in terms of coordination with (and without) coherence when sending and receiving communication messages. As a sender, if you communicate with your receiver and the receiver sends back a cohesive message, you have accomplished communication with coordination and coherence. However, if the sender communicates with the receiver and clarifying questions are asked or the retort does not align with the message of the sender then communicate was coordinated (i.e., went from sender to receiver), but it was not coherent (between the sender and receiver). As Trenholm (2008) offers critique to the psychological model, she states “communication is unsuccessful whenever the meaning intended by the source differ from the meaning interpreted by the receiver” (p. 27). In my margin I wrote “intent vs impact.” This concept helps me to remember the importance of considering your experiences and environment when communicating to others. Often, in the social justice and diversity trainings I’ve attended, someone (usually without fail!) says something “they didn’t mean to come out the way it did” and the messages impacts a person (or a group) negatively (most times opposite of what the sender intended).