Discovering Communications

All of us believe that we know how to communicate and therefore do not perceive that there is really anything at all that we need to know about improving our communications from the standpoint of verbal communications; however, I would suspect that pretty much everybody feels that there is probably something that they can learn to improve how they perform written communications.

I would also suspect that most or many of us do not write like we talk nor do we talk like we write but if one is improved even the slightest bit, then the other one must be improved as well whether that improvement is direct or indirect.

From personal experience, I can truthfully say that they more I write the better I get at writing and I have noticed that my conversation when in a formal setting reflects the proper English that I had used in my writing which is why I made the statement in the first place, because if it impacts me a little then it probably impacts others as well.

I would also suspect that if one uses improper English in their oral communications then they will probably use improper English in their written communications as well, although that may not actually be an across the board occurrence because one may not exercise due diligence in their oral communications but would apply due diligence in their written communications.

So, where is all of this taking us?

Before answering that question, let me say that I have intentionally overlooked something extremely important relative to communications which is LISTENING.

Listening is a concept that most (not many this time) people who communicate take for granted and very little time is spent in school developing our listening skills; and yet, most of the problems in business and industry revolves around communication issues and when that is put under the microscope most of those problems revolve around poor or inaccurate listening.

For example, have you ever played that game where a line is formed of 15 to 20 people and the host whispers a brief message to the first person in the line. That person must whisper that message to the next person in the line who then whispers it to the next person in line... and so forth and so on until the last person in line hears that whispered message. Once the last person has heard the message that person must repeat the message out loud to the host and the rest of the people participating in the game.

Almost every time this game is played, the repeated message by the last person is never exactly as it was whispered by the host to the first person,

Why do you think that happened?

Is is because it was not spoken properly?

Is is because it was not listened to properly?

Is it because of both listening/communicating skills?

So, while we are thinking about which one is to blame here... let me ask this question: Who is responsible for the proper communications of a message?

The speaker

The listener

Let me toss out this idea to you and see what you think...

When a message is communicated from Person A to Person B then Person B has a 50/50 chance of understanding the message correctly in the sense that there is a 50% chance that they heard correctly and there is a 50% chance that they heard correctly. For the purposes of this exercise, I will be assuming that everyone hears correctly. This can be illustrated in the following way:

A (1.00) to B (.50) = .50

Now Person B must communicate that same message to Person C who has the same 50/50 chance of understanding which is illustrated in this way:

A to B (.50) X C (,50) = .25

And, what this means is that Person C only has a 25% chance that they heard the message correctly and now that same message has to be communicated to Person D and when this is done, it can be illustrated in this way:

A to B (.50) to C (.25) X D(.50) = .125

And, what this mean is that when Person C communicates when that person thinks is a correct message to Person D and Person D has a 50/50 chance of hearing that message correctly that there is really only a 12.5% chance that Person D really heard that message correctly.

I could keep going but I believe that you get the point and it is mathematically clear that by the time that message is transmitted to the 3^rd person there is only a 12-13% chance or probability that the message was communicated correctly or incorrectly... and, this ASSUMES that the message was properly communicated (articulated shall we say) and properly listened to from the standpoint that the listen was totally focused on what we being communicated and that there was no mental drift.

But, we all instinctively know that we are selective listeners plus we only hear that which we want to hear or that which we have been conditioned to hear. Additionally, many of us are formulating what we are going to say next rather than giving the speaker our undivided attention. And, if we are not formulating our answers, then we are thinking about something else that either happened earlier or will happen later or maybe an incident from the previous day or evening that we cannot completely release.

With all this knowledge and acceptance of who we are and how we are, we still do not think that there is any need at all to working on improving our communications skills because everybody knows how to communicate and have been communicating since they first learned to speak and first learn to spell words and no longer needed to point and say gimme.