Page 33 - Effective Communication Skills by Dalton Kehoe

and then seek con¿ rming facts. They see it all at once, but they take a more
random approach to collecting facts because they already have the answer in
their minds. The second internal function is the thinking-feeling dimension:
How do you decide about what you’ve received? Thinkers tend to focus on
objective analysis and rational connections between elements. Feelers take
things more personally, focusing on larger values and emotional reactions by
them and others to a situation.

Myers and Briggs locate each individual on one more dimension: Orientation
to the world. Once you’ve shaped the info, once you’ve decided about it,
how do you respond to the world? Judgers are structured, scheduled, ordered,
planned, decisive, and deliberate;
perceivers are À exible, spontaneous,
We all use all eight of these adaptive, responsive to the situation,
personality functions but and tend to keep collecting data.
have strong, automatic
We all use all eight of these personality
preferences for one over the functions but have strong, automatic
other on each dimension. preferences for one over the other on
each dimension. When we understand
this about ourselves and others, we
can anticipate possible issues that will arise in communication relationships
and learn to manage our responses to others in ways that will allow us to be
understood—and allow us to understand others.

Everyone agrees that personality is slow to change throughout our lives. Our
self-concept, despite our denial of this, is always in the process of changing.
Self-concept is established, sustained, and altered through communication
with others and is built on the foundation of our inherited temperaments and
how these were responded to by our caretakers in our earliest communication
relationships. Sometimes we consciously enhance or hide parts of our self-
story to make our communication work. We naturally alter the outside edges
of our self as we learn and try new things; this is mostly done unthinkingly.
Finally, our self-concept anchors our attitudes and judgments: We never
approach situations neutrally. Our self is the position from which we look at
the world; we see it the way we are, not the way it is. Our self-concept is the

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