Getting Through to Difficult Colleagues
It's really frustrating when we feel like what we say isn't getting through.
When I was 3 years old my speech was unintelligible. I spoke – a lot. Or at least, I tried. But what came out was complete nonsense. Not surprisingly, I got very frustrated. As far as I was concerned, I was doing what everyone else was doing. I couldn't understand why they didn't understand me.
Seeing my frustration, my parents took me to a speech therapist. She realised that my sensitive hearing meant I was listening to all sorts of sounds, but not tuning in to the intricacies of speech. In several weeks things turned around and I started to speak in a way that others could comprehend.
If we're struggling to communicate or feel heard at work, we may have the sense that our communication isn't getting through. We may hear things like:
"I don't know how many times I've told him but he still doesn't listen"
"People just don't understand"
"I'm just trying to get them to behave differently..."
Some of this may be based on what I call the Mechanical Myth of Communication. Our logic goes something like: I have some thoughts, I speak some words, someone else hears those words. If that exchange occurs, they should do what I want them to.
In the mechanical myth, speaking is kind of like we're sending data. We have the data in our brains, we send it via words, they receive it by hearing.
If we want to communicate effectively, we need a different way of thinking.
Whenever two people are speaking, there's a lot going on. I might be thinking about what someone just said, what I need to do next, wondering what I'm going to have for lunch – and whoever I'm speaking to will also have a load of different thoughts going on. And then someone speaks.
Communication is less like sending data, and more like three people all trying to talk at once.
Combine this with the way that each of us sees the world, and we realise, just as the speech therapist taught me, that perhaps the way I'm speaking is not the way others are hearing me.
Realising the complexities of human conversation opens up several possibilities.
Firstly, it helps us get less frustrated. Instead of getting annoyed with others "being slow" or "not getting it", we can start to get curious about how communication works.
Secondly, it helps us to realise that when communicating, we have a responsibility to speak in a way that others understand. It's not just a case of us speaking without consideration of the listener.
Finally, the realisation that we all have our own way of seeing the world suggests that a more effective approach might be a kinder approach – one that doesn't expect effective communication to occur automatically, but instead that learning to communicate is a skill of lifelong learning.
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