Reflection

An interpersonal communication problem I have encountered would be my recent experience as a housekeeping coordinator. This role requires multi-tasking and good communication skills which was challenging for a first-timer. The guests’ request would come through via the telephone or by the operator. The operator’s role is to answer calls when any department’s telephone line is engaged. The housekeeping and operator communicate via Skype where guests’ request would be posted. As a coordinator, once we received the requests, we had to acknowledge and reply within five minutes.

There was once when many requests flooded the chat on Skype and I overlooked one of the requests which resulted in a guest incident. The operator sent a few requests at the same time and I only gave one reply when I should have acknowledged each individual message. Unfortunately, one of the requests was to clean a particular room as soon as possible as the guest was feeling sick and needed rest. Half an hour later, the operator called and mentioned that the guest had requested for the room to be cleaned up half an hour ago but did not see any room attendant.  

I realized the importance of communicating clearly with others be it online or offline. The possible root causes identified were; the operator did not ensure that all requests sent to housekeeping was recorded and on my part, I overlooked the message as I was occupied with other matters at the same time. Hence, I regretted not being observant and replied only once out of convenience. Through this incident, I felt apologetic towards the guest. How should I make amends to the guest? What should I have done to ensure that the overlooked message was received?

Revised on 20/2/17

Commented on:
Michelle
Joey

Personal Branding

Question: Ultimate review: How do each of these areas connect to your personal branding?

The areas covered such as the body language, tone and emotions affects how you portray yourself to an external party. For instance, if you are applying for a job,  it is important to note that your non-verbal cues will also impact other's decision in hiring you. We need to be aware of our actions and behaviors be it online or offline as this will also affect people's perception of us. In terms of social media, we need to know what we should and should not do or it might bring down our reputation and how people perceive us. 

In order to make improvements, we should also interact with people so that we can identify our strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, we have to be open to feedback and also take it as a learning opportunity.  Therefore, having a good personal branding will make you stand out from others and eventually build confidence.

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(Edited & Updated on 8 February 2017)

In my opinion, personal branding refers to how well you know yourself in order to portray a good image to others. Throughout the sharing session, there are several areas that I have identified and should improve on.

Firstly, one of the takeaways is having a high IQ does not necessary translate to a high EQ. Being a university student, I am very concerned with the grades that I get as it tells me how much effort I have put in. However, being too focused on grades may neglect or distance relationships. Hence, I feel that I should also put in more effort in building interpersonal relationships with people around me. This is a very important aspect in the workplace. For instance, a person can be promoted to be a manager based on his outstanding results but have problems managing people. Therefore, working on my EQ would allow me to be a better team player in the prospective organization. 

Secondly, I should also work on my non-verbal communication skills. I have an issue maintaining eye contact when I am engaged in a conversation or during presentation. Personally, I feel nervous when the audience maintain their eye contact at my presentation. It makes me worried when they give puzzled facial expressions. However, after going through various presentation experience coupled with observing other students’ presentations made me realized that eye contact is important to show your fullest attention to the presenter.

Lastly, the 7Cs is also an important aspect of communication. I think it is a challenge for me to fulfill all the seven criteria. In writing reports or presentation, I will definitely miss out on some of the criteria such as being correct. This meant that it should be free from grammatical or vocabulary errors which I am not confident and still in the process of learning to make changes.

These are the main areas that I should improve on and will add value to my personal branding, which eventually builds up my confidence level.