Week Three: Uncovering my MDL

I have had the pleasure (and many times displeasure) of spending most of my professional career working under two very intelligent, accomplished and expressive women.  And it has been exhausting.  The expressive message design logic is a reactive approach to communication and before I had terminology to describe this behavior I would infer that my bosses were miserable, egotistical, rude, and thoughtless.  At other times I considered them appropriately direct, and because of that directness, inspiring.  As a professional who uses what I consider the conventional MDL, many times I took their words personally and became extremely offended by what I considered inappropriate outbursts.  Other times (when not directed at me) I admired their courage to say what was on their mind and assert themselves. 

My conventional message design logic requires me to constantly be hyper-aware and analyze every word (gesture, facial expression, etc) in a conversation.  This too is ultimately exhausting.  Over the last few months, I have begun to contemplate and address my tendencies toward passiveness, aggressiveness and assertiveness. I tend toward passivity when dealing with authority figures but become aggressive when pushed to my limit because I haven't yet developed my assertive voice. Understanding these tendencies in relation to the expressive, conventional and rhetoric message design logics assists me in continuing to mature my communication style.  I hope one day I will operate more in the rhetoric MDL style - proactive instead of reactive (or no reaction at all).