1). After reading Chapter
11 in its entirety, answer the following question: Why should
communication majors make good mediators? What might lawyers and
psychotherapists find it difficult to effectively play the role of mediator?
Communication majors would
be good mediators because of their ability to communicate in multiple ways.
Communication majors learn to identify and understand nonverbal communication,
verbal communication, compromising, interpersonal communication, etc. These
skills will give communication majors the ability to adapt to many different
people and their types of communication. It also will allow a communication major
to listen to both sides of an argument or debate. After listening to both sides
a comm major would be able to use the skills that they learned such as problem
solving and decision making to help mediate the problem. Lawyers and
psychotherapists do not have the same training. They do not learn to listen to
the way people talk, only what they say. Also, both lawyers and psychotherapists
tend to focus on only one side of the problem. Lawyers would take one side and
try to make it a stronger, more persuasive argument so that side could win.
Psychotherapists will focus on solving the problem for one person without
solving the problem between the two people. So in all, a communication major
would make a better mediator.
Great post! I completely agree with what you elaborated on regarding how communication majors can see through many different situations in multiple ways. As communication majors we can definitely see and mentally read certain types of conflict not only verbally, but also through body language and all other types of non-verbal communication. I also like how you illustrated our strengths as communication majors in how we can easily adapt to multiple types of personalities and use the skills we learn to mediate the problem. It is very true that lawyers and psychotherapists would have difficulty trying to be mediators because they are trained to speak solely on the behalf of one person or a single group. Everyone has to see all sides to a situation and be able to let others express their emotion without being biased otherwise conflict does not resolve itself effectively.
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