LEAD 4003 Module 3 Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Communication Analysis Example

What I Told Myself and What I Said to Linda: Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Communication After a Hard Announcement

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD4003: Collaborative Business Communication

Module 3 Assignment

Instructor Name

October 26, 2026

Introduction

The weekend rotation announcement in Module 1 went as planned at the huddle. What came afterward did not. Linda, a selector with eleven years on nights, waited until the others had gone to the floor and said, loudly enough for the lead to hear, that she had picked nights so she could care for her mother on weekends and that the company had just made that impossible. The conversation that followed lasted twelve minutes and went badly for the first five. This paper analyzes it in two layers: the intrapersonal communication, what I told myself and how I managed my own reactions, and the interpersonal communication between us. Linda is a composite of several employees, and details have been changed.

Two Kinds of Communication

Intrapersonal communication is the conversation a person has with themselves: interpreting events, talking oneself into or out of reactions and rehearsing what to say. Interpersonal communication is the exchange between people, verbal and nonverbal. The two are linked. How a leader interprets an employee's anger shapes what the leader says, and what the employee hears in reply shapes what she says next. Analyzing only the words exchanged would miss half of what happened in this conversation. Supervisors on night shift face an added pressure: picks run against a clock, so every minute spent talking feels like a minute the floor falls behind, which makes rushing a conversation tempting.

The First Five Minutes: What I Told Myself

My first internal reaction was a thought I can reconstruct almost word for word: she is doing this in front of the lead to make me look bad. That interpretation made me defensive before I had heard her fully. A second thought followed: I did not make this decision, so this is not fair to me. Both thoughts were about me, not about Linda or her mother. Neck and Manz (1992) argued that the self-talk people use in demanding situations affects how well they perform, and that leaders can learn to notice and replace unhelpful patterns. In those first minutes, I did neither; I let the defensive story run.

The First Five Minutes: What I Said

My words followed my thoughts. I explained the volume numbers again, said that everyone was affected equally and pointed out that she could request swaps. Each statement was accurate. Each made things worse. Linda's voice rose, she said the swaps were a joke because nobody wanted weekends and she turned to leave. My nonverbal communication likely added to the problem: I remember standing with my arms crossed and glancing toward the floor, where picks were already late. To her, I was a supervisor defending the company and eager to get back to work, which, at that moment, was exactly what I was.

The Turn: Regulating the Reaction

What changed the conversation was a moment of noticing. As Linda turned away, I realized I had not asked her a single question. Research on emotion regulation distinguishes strategies that act early, such as reappraising what a situation means, from those that act late, such as suppressing an emotion that is already present, and suggests that reappraisal tends to reduce the felt emotion without the costs that suppression carries (Gross, 1998). I reappraised: she is not attacking me; she is scared about her mother. The defensive feeling did not vanish, but it lost its grip. I uncrossed my arms, asked her to wait a moment and said, "I haven't listened. Tell me what weekends look like for you right now."

The Next Seven Minutes: Listening

Active-empathic listening has been described as three related activities: sensing what the speaker says and feels, processing it by making sense of the whole message and responding in ways that show understanding (Bodie, 2011). I tried to do all three. Linda explained that her brother covers her mother's care during the week and she covers weekends, and that one weekend in four would mean paying a home aide she could not afford. I summarized what I heard and asked what would make it workable. She said that if she knew her weekends three months ahead, her brother might switch with her. The solution came from her, once she felt heard, not from anything I had prepared. I told her I would ask scheduling to post her rotation for the full quarter and would look into whether caregiving qualified for the hardship exception.

Why Listening Worked

A review of research on listening at work concluded that high-quality listening tends to make speakers less defensive, more reflective and more willing to consider other views, and that it strengthens relationships between listeners and speakers (Kluger & Itzchakov, 2022). That describes the change in Linda. Once she saw that I wanted to understand her situation rather than win the argument, she moved from protesting the decision to solving her own scheduling problem. Nothing about the policy changed. What changed was that she was treated as a person with a specific problem rather than as an objection to be overcome.

A Week Later

The real test came the following week, when scheduling posted Linda's rotation for the full quarter and her brother agreed to switch weekends with her. She stopped by after the huddle to say it would work. She also said something I had not expected: that the conversation had gone better than the announcement, because at the huddle she had felt like one of forty-six and after it she had felt like herself. That remark confirms what the listening research predicts, and it also shows the limits of a well-planned group message. A huddle can deliver facts fairly to everyone, but people affected in different ways need individual conversations, and those conversations depend on a leader who can manage his own reactions first. Since then, two other selectors have asked for similar arrangements, and I have been able to approach each conversation with a question rather than a defense.

Lessons for Leading Through Change

Three lessons follow. First, defensive self-talk is predictable in difficult conversations, so a leader should plan for it, for example by deciding in advance to ask a question before answering any objection. Second, nonverbal signals carry as much as words; standing still, facing the person and not looking away toward other work tells an employee she has the leader's attention. Third, explaining a decision again rarely helps someone who is upset about its effect on her life; listening first makes explanation possible later. I have since started every one-on-one about the rotation with the same question I eventually asked Linda.

Conclusion

The conversation with Linda failed while my self-talk was about protecting myself and my words were about defending the decision. It recovered when I reappraised her anger as fear, changed my posture and listened actively, and she then found her own workable solution. Intrapersonal and interpersonal communication proved inseparable: the second improved only after the first did. Module 4 plans a more complex conflict, between two team leads, using structured conflict resolution steps.

References

Bodie, G. D. (2011). The Active-Empathic Listening Scale (AELS): Conceptualization and evidence of validity within the interpersonal domain. Communication Quarterly, 59(3), 277-295. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2011.583495

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271

Kluger, A. N., & Itzchakov, G. (2022). The power of listening at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 9, 121-146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012420-091013

Neck, C. P., & Manz, C. C. (1992). Thought self-leadership: The influence of self-talk and mental imagery on performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13(7), 681-699. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.4030130705