The Real Message
What do a grade school nurse, a software engineer and a corporate coach all have in common? The answer is that all three have lived the experience of receiving messages that were never actually sent.
Barbara is a nurse working within a local school system. One day a teacher brought a very young boy to her office who was complaining about "his stomach." Neither Barbara nor the teacher could figure out what was wrong with the toddler until Barbara noticed that he was having some trouble with his breathing. She asked him about it and it turned out the child didn’t have trouble with his stomach, he was having his first ever asthma attack.
The toddler's limited life experience caused him to confuse it with stomach problems. He did not have the language to make the necessary distinction.
Connor is a software engineer. His daughter was complaining loudly and persistently that she needed a car. As she was only sixteen and Connor didn’t think she needed a car, he would not give her one. Heck, she didn’t even have a full driving permit yet, no way she was getting her own car. He finally stopped fighting with her and asked her why she felt she needed a car. As she explained herself it finally dawned on Connor that what she really wanted was her own set of keys to the car so she could feel OK in front of her peers.
Mary is a corporate coach who was doing a two day program for a company to help them initiate changes in their culture. The future of the project depended on how well the two day kick-off went. But the entire first day the CFO sat frowning and shaking her head every time Mary made a key point. Every time. After day one Mary figured she was dead and still had a full day to go. The next day, however, the CFO was the most positive, gung-ho supporter of the program. "What was all the head shaking about?" Mary asked the CFO. The answer was that she had spend the whole first day thinking to herself "How could we have been doing it so wrong all this time and not know it? Mary is so right and we are so dumb!"
Barbara recognized that there was something going on that did not make sense and looked for additional clues from the child. Connor stopped fighting with his daughter and learned that it wasn’t about needing a car, it was about being accepted and respected, about fitting in with her peers. Mary spent an entire day of needless worry because she mis-read her strongest supporter’s messages.
Such goofs in communication happen every day. Some of them are funny, some can be life-threatening. My own father-in-law’s Parkinson’s Disease was misdiagnosed as inner ear problems for over a year because the attending physician heard his wife saying "he keeps falling down".
Whatever your occupation, if you deal with people, the chances are that there are messages you are receiving which are not being sent and vice-versa. This problem can be eliminated if we will just follow a few simple rules.
First, train yourself to respond instead of react. Reactions are about you. Responses require that you understand the situation.
Second, when you sense something is out of kilter, ask. It will often surprise the other person as very few people ever do ask what is really going on. The conversations that follow are likely to be rich and interesting and lead to a better understanding of yourself and the other person. Just trust your instincts when something feels a little "off" and look for the missing pieces that would cause it to make sense.
Next, stop being so creative. It’s too easy to fill in the blanks with make-believe when you don’t understand something. Get the facts.
And finally, give up mind-reading. It’s worse that a crap shoot and the consequences can be far more damaging.
JUMProductions
po box 522
arlington, tx 76004
vox 817.261.2108 fax 801.881.2717
contact us via email
copyright 2003 JUMProductions/Michael J. Stammer, All Rights Reserved
JUMProductions, the JUMProductions wordmark and the gyroscope logo
are all trademarks of JUMProductions and Michael J Stammer.