The Meaning Of The Communication Is NOT In The Words (Part 1)...
Post reading time: 2.5mins
The Meaning Of The Commmunication...
Have a think about this...
The meaning of the communication is NOT in the words it is in the way the other person 'sees' things and interprets your words.
For example:
Have you ever given someone an instruction only to find out later that they didn't complete it properly?
It's frustrating isn't it?
And they probably told you something like:
"No problem, I'll do it right away".
Well, this happened to me when I was still running my landscaping company in South Africa.
We had a maintenance contract on a large property in Bryanston. Normally we spent an hour and a half there once a week keeping it in tip-top condition.
'Newbie'
On this occasion we had a 'newbie' on the job so I asked him to sweep the tennis court while the rest of the team were tending to the flowers and cutting the grass.
A little while later I checked to see how he was doing only to see there were a lot of leaves etc. still on the playing surface even though he thought he'd finished.
He was asked to sweep again, properly this time...
As the team were packing the tools onto the trailer & getting ready to go I checked the court again only to find it was still not swept.
Frustrated
Time was ticking & the rest of the team were getting frustrated so I asked my headman to find out what was going on. After a few minutes of what became a fairly loud discussion in IsiZulu there was an incredulous shouting followed by much laughter & ribbing of the 'newbie'.
He was indignant, he'd swept the court carefully,
THREE times but...
It turns out that he thought the green playing surface was water covered in pond weed, and he wasn't walking on that!
Man, was I dumbfounded! Never in a thousand years would I have imagined that.
With much glee and chattering amongst themselves the rest of the team grabbed some brushes and quickly swept the tennis court so we could move on and have an early finish...
It was a Friday after all.
Valuable Lesson:- The Other Person's Interpretation of Your Words
That incident taught me an important lesson about how important it is to go out of your way to understand things from the view of the person you are giving the message to.
We can't assume they understand the meaning WE'VE attached to our words...
We have to make sure we know their thinking & view of the world.
That way, we can deliver our message in the way they need to hear it. There's a lot less friction & better results all round with that approach.
In this case, if I'd have thought about this gentleman's rural background, how this was his first time in the 'big city' and the fact that he'd never even seen a tennis court before, I could have done my job so much better.
I didn't though, so received a priceless lesson in return :-)
Author
Stuart Elliott
Stuart, is affectionately known as 'The Soul Whisperer' and mid-life professionals hire him to help them let go of long held, limiting beliefs and supercharge their feelings of self-worth, so they can finally take charge of their life & become all they can be.
He's lived for extended periods of time on three vastly different continents, is a qualified hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner and has a deep understanding of people and mindset.
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