Competent Communication

I can say I truly admire people that have strong communication skills.  That is not one of my strengths. However, I hope as I continue in this class that I will become more efficient.

The people that I admire are:

Bishop T. D. Jakes-Founder and senior pastor of the Potter's House a non-domination church in Texas. One of the issues that I have with certain ministers, which is the reason why I am not receptive to their message, is because they don’t teach me.  They "preach" the word but I am not able to understand what the message is.  There have been incidents while in church I watch people reactions to the sermon and I know they did not learn anything from it.  Instead they get caught up in the hype and the music and for that moment they are spiritual.   As I watch The Potter’s House, I am able to understand what he is talking about and I believe I learn from his sermons. He is a great public speaker because he is confident, animated and uses real life situations to explain his messages.

Afaa Michael Weaver -author, poet and professor. I met Professor Weaver at Rutgers University he was my Afro-American Literature professor.  I remember loving his class.  He exposed us to so much history and literature that we did not know exists.  He had a strong presence in his class.  You knew he was in total control.  He never raised his voice but was stern. However, he was a great listener.  He always asked us for our opinions and he offered great feedback. His feedback was never negative instead it was guiding to get you to think in a different way.  I remembered an assignment in which we had to read the Invisible Man, for whatever reasons I was unable to understand the significance of the yams.  Years later after I graduated from college, I found him online and asked him to explain the answer to me. He did it with no problem.  I was happy that he cared.  I also attended one of his poetry readings in Philadelphia, it was amazing.  Besides being my first poetry reading, he listened to people opinions about his book. He gained my respect by the way he respected us as students.

Mr. Earl Kights-My former 6th grade teacher, current friend and mentor.  When I was a student in his 6^th grade class I could not stand him.  He was strict, sometimes rude and very boisterous.  However, he was an excellent teacher and he made sure when his students left his class they were above and beyond ready to move on. Maybe his personality is the reason why he taught the top classes.  Our friendship developed by him understanding why I was having difficulties in school.  He found out, from some other source that my mother had passed away the year before I entered his class. I was going through an emotional turmoil and I took my bent up feelings out on anybody and everybody. At that time I was very difficult to handle.  It seems strange now but he was able to get me to open up about my feelings of losing my mom by making me complete the obituary section on a class newspaper. 

From that point on we developed a relationship in which I can depend on him for anything.  He respects me as his daughter.  He is one of the best communicators I know because he listens.  I know there have been several incidences that he could have judge me poorly on.  However, he has always let me learn from my mistakes and when he offer advice or opinions I listen because I know he is speaking from his heart and he has my best interests.  A few years ago, he gave me advice on a situation that I was going through.  He told me to stop making excuses for someone’s behavior. I was shock because I didn’t know that I was doing that.  Just from those few simple words made me change how I viewed the situation and I was able to make the needed changes.

I would love to model some of my communication behaviors after each of these individuals.   Each one demonstrates the confidence of knowing what they are talking about and are not afraid to express their opinions and two are great listeners and offer influential feedback.  One is good at using nonverbal communication and vigor to get their message across.

If you would like to read more about Professor Weaver you can visit his website http://www.afaamweaver.com/

If you would like to view any of Bishop T. D. Jakes sermons you can visit his website http://www.tdjakes.org/bishoptdjakes.html or look him up on you tube.