next let's talk about communication and confidence so we just went over context and setting and came plan scripts all that fun stuff that kind of leads us next to communication competency so communication competency is how confident you feel to me this is my definition how confident you feel in a particular communication setting context and situation well then sometimes and maybe you can relate to this there's going to be moments in your life where you don't feel very competent with your communication and that might be like a situation like public speaking like you may feel pretty confident communicating if you're just talking one-on-one or if you're talking in a small group but as soon as you're put on a stage or up at a podium you freeze right you lose what you've what's called communication competency so the book says communication competency is the impression that communicative behavior is both appropriate and effective in a given situation to me that translate to translates to confidence right so like i said you may have um relationships you feel very competent in but then like i asked you to start working with a group in class all of a sudden you feel a little bit anxious about that you don't you don't know your classmates it feels kind of weird there's not really historical context there so then you don't feel as competent but some people you might walk into any like for me you put me in a small group but i'm like cool yeah let's talk you know like i don't that doesn't make me nervous but say or like say if you meet someone new like that doesn't make me nervous to meet someone new but some people it might um another way that you might look at it is like if you like public speaking so maybe i put you up at the podium and all of a sudden you freeze you freak out you're like oh i just don't feel very competent or very good at writing some people so i don't feel like i'm good at public speaking but that really is just you saying like i'm not very i don't feel like my communication is very competent within this communication setting right um so that is what we call communication apprehension communication apprehension is just a big word for like anxiety surroundings your communication well there's several different types of communication competency and it's important to know what which one you identify with so that you can come up with what we call a communication improvement plan you can improve that let's look at those communication apprehension types so we have okay so i guess i'll define it for you as the book says communication apprehension is the fear or anxiety associated with real or anticipated communication with others so like if you're thinking about having to do a speech and that gives you anxiety right that is anticipated um if it's like you're sitting next to someone in class and i've asked you and they'll share something with them and you get anxious that would be like actual like it's happening type um communication apprehension so like i said earlier there's trait like trait like is going to be whatever you feel anxious really in all public all kinds of speaking situations um then you have audience space so this might be specific people like a good one for audience space would be like if you have a crush on somebody i remember whenever i was growing up i had a crush on someone i would like freak out every time that i had to communicate with that person right so that would be maybe an audience based so see situational that's going to be short-lived anxiety that happens during a particular situation like a job interview right like something that's not happening all the time or something like a constant thing you're in but like a situation that pulls out that anxiety and then or that um yeah and then you have context space so this is um like a particular like in this particular type of setting or context i'm always going to be nervous like um like public speaking in general right public speaking in general makes me nervous um and then that small group communication really does it however a small group interview would make me nervous right see like so situation or context is like big picture whereas situational is more specified for you if that helps you understand that a bit better like i said earlier you can come up with what's called a communication improvement plan so that's going to be to first identify the problem you have to understand where you why you get nervous or why you feel like you're not very competent in your communication in particular situation okay so identify the problem state the specific goal like what are you wanting to achieve that's really important uh just being vague like oh in general i just want to be a good communicator that's that's not really achievable right we need to have specific things that we're going for so have specific goals um outline specifics perceive procedure for reaching that goal so what can you do specifically to actually get achieve the goal that you just set and then devise a method for measuring progress so making sure that you're kind of checking back and looking at it all right so how do you do those things well the book actually does provide a guide for that i would i would recommend maybe doing that for yourself if you would like to because i think it's really helpful for people because i think because communication is a learned behavior we sometimes just think oh i'm just not good at communicating i'm not good at sharing my feelings i'm not good at you know small group or one-on-ones or you know i'm not good at public speaking all of those things are actually something that can be practiced you can become good at it so but in order to become good at it we just have to be able to have a clear goal that we're trying to reach we're trying to understand what steps it's going to take for us to get there and then we have to measure it and figure out okay how can i continue to improve and again just remember the more competent you feel in any communication situation or you're going to feel more confident in general