Assignment A--Reflections on a Communication Tipping Point

In about three pages double-spaced, please respond to this question: "How has a communication tipping point influenced your professional life?" You can recount an experience involving another person's or your own communication actions and options. In either case, the goal of the paper is three-fold: a) to describe a communication tipping point (i.e., a critical communication act that had significant impact on you and/or others; b) to explain other alternatives that could have been chosen; and c) to justify your selection of which of these alternatives would have been best for the circumstances involved.

To recap our class discussion, a communication tipping point is an utterance (written or spoken) that disturbs the balance of the status quo in some significant way. For example, a manager sometimes faces a tipping point moment in deciding how to discipline an employee who is widely popular with the rest of the workforce.

In writing your three pages, I suggest that you save time by trying the "Idea Circle" technique or the Classical Questions (p. 48) to stimulate your reservoir of ideas. In evaluating your work, I will of course pay primary attention to your content, but I will also consider the degree to which you followed the eight style recommendations we investigated in class.

This assignment will be collected at the beginning of our class on Oct. 25. Please bring hard copy (making it easier for me to give you specific feedback).