IMPROVING MY COMMUNICATIONS

Submitted by Gregory Caton

Salt Lake Community College
Communications 1010
03/06/2015

Overview
I am a Realtor and mortgage loan officer, and communication is a very big part of my job. Poor
communication can cost you a deal and thousands of dollars, and then there is the flip side of the
coin when you have great communication with your clients you can make thousands and receive
numerous referrals. I work with a lot of builders and usually have problems communicating with
them when my client would like to have a problem on the home addressed and fixed. When I sit
down with the builder it usually ends up in a yelling match and the problem then becomes harder
to fix due to myself and the builder not wanting to deal with each other.

Description of Problem
It all begins with me wanting to give my clients the best service they will ever receive from
anyone, then we add in the fact that most home builders are always trying to find ways to make
more of a profit which translates into cutting corners and a drop in the quality of product
insulation. When these two situations collide it becomes my fiduciary duty to address the
problems, and help solve any issues that may arise during construction. Then we add a third
problem, I was in construction for fifteen year and know quite a bit about building a home, add
all this together and it is a perfect storm.
Just two weeks ago I received a call from a client of mine about the way their concrete driveway
and front walk looked, so I meet them at the home they are having built and let me tell you this
was some of the worse concrete work I have ever seen and it needed to be replaced, I mean come
on my client is spending a half a million dollars on this home. So I called the builder and
scheduled a time to meet him later that day. When the builder showed up, which was an hour
late, I went over and greeted him, and went right into the reason why I had asked him to meet
me. I came off very aggressive and a matter of fact to this poor guy who had looked like he had
already been to hell and back this day.
I asked the builder several times if he thought that the work was acceptable and he keep skirting
the question so I keep asking it and apparently I was getting louder every time I asked, I am
already loud by nature. I was growing more and more agitated by his political responses and his
lack of concern. Finally he agreed that the work was subpar but did not believe it needed to be
replaced, and that he took offence to me attaching his peoples work and his lack of over sight on
the project. I believe his exact words were You are an arrogant know it all. We yelled at each
other for about five more minute when I final calmed down and said that we were focusing on
ourselves and not the client or a solution to this problem. He agreed and he decide that he was
going to tear out both the drive way and the walk way.

Resource and Constraints

The next day I was thinking to myself, why does this always happen? After analyzing my
communications style or the lack of I came up with a few things I need to work on. First is my
Posture and Movement (Adler 96) was very aggressive and forceful which probably put him on
the defensive, I need to slow down and move in more of an inviting way. Next I probably did not
Withhold Judgment (Adler 66) I had already judge the situation and had a set outcome in my
mind that I believe would need to happen to solve the problem. I should have encouraged him to
open up and talk to me by using the Talk and interrupt Less (Adler 68) method, because I was
always interrupting as if what he had to say was meaningless.
Then come the Trigger Words (Adler 85) , I was telling him how bad and unacceptable his
work was and that he should fire people if that is the type of work that they produce. This
seemed to set him off the most. And the last one I will be working on is Personal Space and
Distance, (Adler 97), every time he did not answer me I got closer and closer, and by the end of
the conversation he got very aggressive towards me and I believe it is because I was in his
personal space.
There is a lot more communication concepts I can improve on, but I can only work on a few at a
time or they wont get done. I think the only thing that will hold me back is my ego and my
intolerance for sloppy work. I need to learn now how to communicate properly because when I
enter the real estate developing industries my communications can make or break my career. I
have read a lot about successful real estate developers and the one that has always talked about
communication being dire in his business is Donald Trump so I will try and model my
communication style around his.

Recommendations
I will first need to look at how I am react to the news my clients are delivering to me and how I
respond to them on the way we will fix it. This seems to set the tone for the interactions with the
builders. If they seem to be calm and not stressed then the interactions with the builder seem to
go smoothly. If they are stressed and agitated then I reflect that back on the builder when I talk to
them. So I need to listen and evaluate the problem before proceeding.
I will sit down and go over the last three or four interactions I have had with builders that ended
in a conflict and evaluate the conversations from start to finish starting with the initial phone call
to the moment when I get in my car to leave. I will evaluate my tonality and inflammatory
language and I will use more positive words (84); once I arrive to the home site I will evaluate
my posture and nonverbal (96) communications I will stand in a less aggressive manner and
watch the body language, I will also stand out of the builders personal space and keep a friendly
distance. I will also change my greeting to be more personal and warm. I will look at actually

preparing for negotiations and changing the way I conduct my negotiations by being more
understanding of the situation and try and see situations from the builders point of view,
(132,134).
I will work on listening more and be more compromising where I can compromise to help
achieve a win-win solution so that neither myself or the builder walks away feeling as though
they got the short end of the stick. (65, 66, 120,128) To avoid any misunderstandings when we
are looking for a solution I will use unequivocal terms and will stop being incivility and I will be
clearer when describing the problem (79,120) and when we come to a mutual agreement I will
repeat it for clarification.

Summary
This change has to happen for not only me but for my clients and future relationships with
builders. Who will want to deal with me if they know how I will react when a problem arrives,
and when the building process is smother my clients will enjoy the process a lot more. This
course has started to open up my eyes to a lot of weaknesses I have in my business that if not
fixed will sooner or later affect me in a way that could be detrimental to my financial success and
business relationships.

Works Cited
Adler, Elmhorst, Lucas. "COMM 1010." Adler, Elmhorst, Lucas. Comm1010. 2012. 96.