GIFTS SERIES The Affect of Conflict on Communication Style: A Classroom Activity Overview: This activity is useful to help students

discover their natural communication tendencies in a situation with conflict. The activity works best when used prior to an Assertive, nonassertive, and aggressive communication style lecture. It can be used in public speaking, interpersonal communication, small group, and argumentation courses. Goals: Learn and apply assertive, nonassertive, and aggressive communication styles. Distinguish between assertive, nonassertive, and aggressive communication styles. Allow students to discover their own communication style. Engage in discussion with classmates about the effectiveness of assertive, nonassertive, and aggressive communication styles during conflict. Rationale: This activity is based on the idea that different communication styles (specifically assertive, nonassertive, and aggressive) are more effective than others during conflict situations. Although assertive communication is recognized as an extremely effective strategy for dealing with conflict (Devito, 2005), assertive communication can often times be blocked by stress, frustration, and anger (Antai-Otong, 2001). When we allow emotions to control our intellect, the result is often aggressive communication (Antai-Otong, 2001). On the other hand, the frustration of conflict can sometimes promote us to take a passive role and allow others to control the conflict, denying us our right to express our own thoughts and feelings (Devito, 2005). The emotions of conflict tend to bring out the worst communication style from participants. By putting students in a fun, yet conflict oriented situation, they are able to recognize their own communication style and realize the difference that conflict can make in their communication effectiveness. Directions for the activity: Facilitator Instructions: Option A: Split the students up into groups of seven. Hand out one employee profile to each group member. Separate the groups, either into separate rooms, or as far away from each other as possible. Option B: Randomly choose 7 students to participate in the activity. The other students in the class will act as observers and take notes about the nonverbal and verbal behaviors of the participants. Give one employee profile sheet to each student who is participating in the activity. Instruct the students not to look at the piece of paper (the employee profile) until they are instructed to do so. Explain that they will read their employee profile and highlight the important information that they think makes their candidate the best choice. Explain to the students that there is a lot of information on the sheet. Some of it may be relevant and some may not. They can only share information about their employee that is on their employee profile (they cannot make up new information) and they can also choose NOT to share some of the information. Student Instructions (read aloud to the groups): You all work for The Brown Bag Company. As the head of your department, you have been chosen by the president of your company to be part of a very important task force. This task force needs to determine who is going to be named The Brown Bag Companys Employee of the Year and in receiving this honor be given an extra week of vacation time, a $5000 bonus, and a trip to Hawaii. Seven individuals have been nominated, and you have been chosen to represent one of these seven employees to the rest of

the task force. The employee that you have been chosen to represent is part of your department, so you feel strongly that your employee should be named employee of the year. Please read the information sheet about your employee that you have been given (to refresh your memory about him/her). You will have 30 minutes to decide unanimously as a group which employee will receive the honor. Explanation: This activity will address conflict, communication style, leadership, critical thinking, group communication, negotiation, persuasion, and communication ethics. The students know that they have a limited amount of time to come to a unanimous decision. Due to the fact that there is both positive information about their own employee and negative information (or dirt) about another students employee, students will experience conflict on many different levels. Initially, students experience an internal conflict regarding the ethics of disclosing information that may be detrimental to another persons case. As the activity progresses, students experience external conflicts over which information is relevant to the task at hand and which candidate is MOST deserving of the win. As time ticks away, the increased stress of a time crunch adds to the tension of the conflict. Leaders and followers emerge from the group with different communication styles. Results: I have used this activity in all of my communication courses. In fact I purposely cover assertive, nonassertive, and aggressive communication styles in my courses so that I can run this activity. It has been extremely successful, and students often tell me in my reviews that it was their most memorable activity. I prefer to use option B (randomly choosing 7 students and using the rest of the class as observers) because I get a higher quality discussion at the end of the activity. Even when students emerge as the assertive one or the passive one, it is often much more apparent to the observers than it is to the student or the other participants. The only down side to option B is that not everyone gets to evaluate their own communication strategies during conflict. I have learned that offering an incentive to the winner helps even the naturally passive students speak up (I usually just bring a candy bar or bag of chips). I mention to the students that I adapted this activity from and real-world corporate interview that I had for Sears, Roebuck, and Company. I explain that employers are starting to realize the importance of assertive communicators because of their I-win, you-win philosophy. The discussion after the game is critical to the effectiveness of the activity, especially to de-fuse those aggressive personality types. I usually start by asking the following questions: o Give me examples of the effective (i.e., assertive) communication strategies that some of the participants used during the negotiation. o What are some examples of strategies that would fall in the nonassertive category? o What are some examples of strategies that would fall in the aggressive category? o Was there a clear leader of the group? Who? Why? o What did the nonverbal cues say about the participants? (Appendix A) Employee Profiles LeShonda Ray LeShonda has worked for The Brown Bag Company for 25 years. She is a 50 year old, African American woman. LeShonda is the Sales Director and has lead the sales team to beat their sales goal by at least 10% every year for the past 5 years. She is also a wonderful prospector, landing 7 new accounts this past year, worth over $250,000. Her customer service with our clients is irreplaceable. The president of The Brown Bag Company has received numerous letters from

happy customers, complimenting our service and business standards. The Brown Bad Company adopted a section of Route 66 thanks to LeShondas hard work and vision of a cleaner, brighter future. Extra Information to Keep or Share: Mary Thompson is a recovering alcoholic, who has slipped off the bandwagon many times. Mary Thompson is also having an affair with Bobby Brown (President of The Brown Bag Company)! Mary Thompson Mary Thompson is a 38 year old, Caucasian woman. Mary started the Put Cancer in the Bag Association, which is a fundraising organization that supports local cancer research. In addition to this extraordinary accomplishment, Marys work is always prompt and perfect. In her spare time, she is the chairperson of The Brown Bag bowling league. Extra Information to Keep or Share: Brittany Brown takes 2-hour lunches to go see her boyfriend in the mailroom. The accounting department has also discovered that she has been using company credit cards for personal use. Brittany Brown Brittany started working in the mailroom at The Brown Bag Company when she was 16, and now is the Human Resources Director. She is a 23 year old, Caucasian woman. She worked her way up in the company through high school and college, and is now pursuing a masters degree. Her grandfather, Robert Brown, founded The Brown Bag Company. She donated the money in her college fund to charity and funded herself through school. Brittany always comes into work early and stays late. She is in charge of the Fun Bag, a group that she formed to bring fun and happiness to Brown Bag employees. In the last year she has personally supervised over 36 fun activities. She has a great rapport with her co-workers. She also decreased turnover in the company by 20% since becoming HR Director. Extra Information to Keep or Share: Bill Williams has an illegitimate child with Jo, his secretary. He also has been caught on a number of occasions drinking on the job, or coming back from lunch drunk. Bill Williams Bill is an engineer for The Brown Bag Company. He is a 58 year old, Caucasian man. Bill finally finished the design and prototype for a new bag production machine that cut production time in half. He also received a patent on the machine. Bill is a member of the Rotary club, and was named Grand Marshall of the annual summer festival in town. Extra Information to Keep or Share: Skip Jones took the company van to Florida without permission (he claimed he was taking it to a systems convention), and to make matters worse the van was impounded when he got a DUI. He is also suspected of steroid use. Skip Jones Skip Jones is the director of the Information Systems (IS) department. He is a 26 year old, Caucasian man. Over the past year Skip has researched new systems software and made much needed updates to The Brown Bag systems. Skip improved the systems so much that they can now provide daily sales results. Now, instead of having to wait until the end of the month to evaluate the numbers, the sales team can keep track of their transactions on a day-to-day basis. In his spare time, Skip participated in the 2001-2002 Winter Olympics. His trip was sponsored by The Brown Bag Company, which brought us a lot of recognition. Extra Information to Keep or Share: LeShonda Ray is suspected of embezzling money from the company. Jane Smith

Jane was recently stolen away from The Plastic Bag Company (Brown Bags largest competitor). Jane works in the Research and Development department and with her knowledge of the competition, she has created 3 new products to out-perform the competition. These 3 new products were last years Top Sellers for the Brown Bag! Extra Information to Keep or Share: Francois Curry lied on his Citizenship Application. He has a felony record in France and escaped to the United States to avoid prosecution. He also uses the Brown Bag warehouses to smuggle illegal merchandise into the country. Francois Curry Francois Curry moved to the United States to work for the Brown Bag company 5 years ago. He is the Director of Logistics, and has done remarkable things for Brown Bags product turnaround. Prior to Francois, the Brown Bag was losing customers at a high rate due to the fact that it took 2-3 months to get products to the customers. Francois submitted a proposal to purchase several warehouses throughout the United States to store products and thus decrease delivery time. Currently, Brown Bag can deliver products to their customers in 5-7 business days (which is an industry record). Extra Information to Keep or Share: Jane is secretly sharing insider information with her cousin who still works for the Plastic Bag Company. Bibliography: Devito, J. (2005). Essentials of Human Communication (5 th ed.). NY: Pearson Antai-Otong, D. (2001). Creative Stress-Management Techniques For Self-Renewal. Dermatology Nursing, 13, 31-39