Communication and Interpersonal Skills

Discuss role of identity management in starting, developing and pertaining relationships.

Identity management in starting a relation
First impression is the last impression is a very famous saying which clearly explains the importance of identity management in starting relationships. The first impression we to give others about ourselves is responsible for the beginning of our relationship. Identity management are the communication strategies that we use to influence how others view us. Managing identities can be a conscious or deliberate process but in the case of starting a relationship we manage our identities deliberately. We show our best side to which the other person gets attracted. We try to appear charming, polite, understanding, witty or perhaps cool and suave depending upon the relationship we want with the other person. We use our physical appearance, our manners and our setting to present ourselves as a person we want others to see. For example if i want to be friends with some new girl in our class I would greet her, try being helpful to her or find a mutual interest to talk about. This identity management or public self is very important because to present ourselves as we truly are might be against the social norms or against the interest of the person we want to start a relation with. We often manage our identity to gain compliance of others or to get others to act in a way we want like we try to be an attentive student during a class to get favors from a teacher.

Identity management in developing and pertaining a relationship

Once a relationship are up and running we still manage our identities but not as much but again this depends upon the relationship like in a worker employee relationship or a patient doctor we constantly manage our identities but with friends and siblings we rarely manage our identity. Identity management is also situational even with friends and family members we sometimes show one face

and sometimes the other depending upon the situation. for example with a teacher during a lecture and after a lecture we have different identities. Sometimes even with people we have close relationship we manage our identity to save their face, we present ourselves to support what people want to see. We save them from feeling embarrassed or inferior. The importance of identity management can be summed up by words of sociologist Erving Goffman. He suggested that each of us is a kind of playwright who create role they way we want others to see us, as well as a performer who act out those roles. But unlike the audience for most forms of acting, our audience is made up of other actors who are trying to create their own characters.