Transcriber: Quynh Kieu Reviewer: Keira White
Have you ever played the game: “Telephone”?
that game you might have played it as a kid,
but where you started with one message,
and then you pass it from person to person to person,
and you see just how mangled it ends up.
I did this just the other day with a group of students.
We started with “save water”,
and after it passed just a few times,
we ended up with the message: “fish soap”.
I used to think that was so bizarre,
just absolutely crazy, how simple whispering of one person to a person,
that message could get lost.
But then I really thought about it,
and I want to be clear, I am not a communications expert.
I’ve just been reading and thinking about this a lot,
particularly in the pandemic
where our entire mode of communication has changed.
I started to realize it’s a wonder
that any message you say to anyone gets across properly.
Think about it, think about all the gaps
from your message that you start with in your brain
to what your listener is eventually going to take from that message.
Let's walk through each one quickly.
So, let’s pretend you’re the speaker, you have a thought,
and there’s some science out there that will tell you
your thought is in your brain 11 seconds before you are even aware of it.
That thought is going to be influenced by your mother tongue, your culture,
your schooling, certainly your upbringing and your life experiences.
So this is where there's a gap. Next comes your word choice.
I’m going to push us today
to be very careful and very precise in our word choice.
Now, I’m only talking today about spoken communications.
I’m assuming that there’s going to be a message that’s overlaid with tone,
maybe body language.
I’m not taking on text or email
where you don’t have the benefit of seeing your speaker,
and I certainly do not want to think about masks.
So after the speaker’s word choice, there’s what the listener hears.
Assuming that your listener has audibly collected
all of the things that you said,
like they could physically hear you,
they’re going to overlay that with your tone, with your expression
and whatever it is that they’re picking up from your body language.
Yet another opportunity for gaps.
Lastly, that listener is going to overlay his or her mother tongue, culture,
upbringing, schooling, life experience, as they interpret your message.
It is a wonder that we are not talking about fish soap all the time.
So how do we combat this?
I was thinking about it, and I have to admit.
I think some of the miscommunications
that exist are because we’ve gotten just a little bit lazy,
I think we take communication largely for granted,
probably because so many of us do it all day long
that we’re not as careful as we should be.
So my suggestion to eradicate language laziness
is going to be to get back to basics.
Bear with me, the acronym is a bit of a stretch, but let’s start.
We need to be more active.
A lot of times when you’re communicating with someone, it’s because you’d like
to see a behavior changed or you’d like to see an action
as a result of what it is that you’ve said.
But how often do we say what we mean? Here’s an example:
“You never text me back”.
What’s your listener supposed to say to that? “Yes, I do”. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do”. You’ve given your listener nothing to act upon.
If what you really mean is:
“I feel really disrespected when you don’t get back to me in a timely manner,
could you try to respond to my texts more quickly?”
Now, your listener has a choice, they might say,
Wow, I had no idea I was making you feel that way. I am so sorry.
I will act on that right away.
No promises that’s the reaction you’re going to get.
You may be just as likely to hear:
“Nah, probably not”, but at least you’ve got resolution from your message.
Think about other phrases like this, how about the phrase: “Man up”?
More often than not, when you hear this phrase,
someone is encouraging someone else to be more brave,
to have a little bit more courage, take the stage, take the field,
but we don’t say what we mean,
phrases like man up,
give that listener absolutely no actionable feedback.
So say what you really mean. Take the stage, grab that mic, be brave.
The last one I want to talk about here is almost dangerously passive,
and this one's not my idea.
I read about this from a writer and thinker named Dr. Jackson Katz,
and he speaks about the phrase: “Violence against women.”
Listen to that phrase, there is absolutely no action,
it’s as if violence is just a thing that happens to women sometimes,
and there is nothing we can do about it.
What if we said what we mean: this person attacked this woman.
Well, let’s go find out what led to that attack,
let’s have conversations around it with the actors in the sentence,
instead of brushing it under the rug and letting it fall into the passive gap.
Be more active in your word choice and give actionable feedback.
Next, I'm going to ask us to be more specific.
Another lazy language habit
that I know I’m guilty of is speaking in gross generalizations.
Everyone is talking about the party last weekend.
Really? Everyone? You surveyed all of the people?
Well, then your listener doesn’t have any way in,
they’re led to believe: “I guess my opinion doesn’t even matter now,
if everyone has already decided to talk about last weekend’s party.
Why are you talking to me about it?”
These sweeping generalizations really backfire.
You’ve blocked your listener out from the conversation
before you even started.
Instead, you could say:
“Everyone I talked to today was talking about last weekend’s party.”
Granted, it’s the same four people I talk to every day,
but it seemed like a big deal.
Well, now your listener can say: “Hmm, I know these four people.
I really value their opinions. I want to hear more”, or maybe,
“I know these four people,
I don’t much value their opinions and I don’t think I need to hear more”.
But at least you’ve engaged them in the conversation,
and not shut them out before you’ve even started.
Now I want to imagine that the you I’m talking to, is the listener.
As a listener, I always learned that you have to listen attentively,
but I never realized why that is.
There’s research that shows that humans can only concentrate
on 1.6 tasks at a time.
So, if you’re listening to someone,
and also thinking about what you’re going to say next
or what you're going to eat later,
it’s likely that that is getting 1.0 of your attention,
and your speaker’s only getting 0.6.
It’s very obvious that something’s going to get lost in that message,
so let's do our best as listeners to listen more attentively,
give our speakers that 1.6 of our focus.
There’s also intention.
You can listen with a positive intent or negative intent.
When you’re listening with positive intention,
and believing that you have something to learn from the conversation,
you’re going to approach it with a more open and curious mindset.
You are guaranteed to get more of the information
if you are listening with positive and open intention.
This does not mean that you have to like what the speaker is telling you,
but you certainly have to keep listening,
to make sure that you’re getting the message correctly.
The opposite of this, of course,
is listening with negative intent, closed and judgmental approach.
You're sitting there thinking to yourself,
there is just nothing this person can teach me.
I don’t even want to hear the rest of this.
I am so ready to shut this down.
Well, there goes your focus,
and your attention is no longer on grasping the message
and you’ve already shut yourself out.
What’s the point in being in conversation
if you’re not listening for someone else’s point of view?
Lastly, as a listener,
I’m going to ask that we be very careful with our responses.
When you’re listening,
it’s likely that what someone’s telling you might be causing a reaction.
That reaction could be highly emotional, visceral.
You could be sitting there listening to them and it is making your blood boil,
but that doesn’t mean that’s how you have to respond.
You always have a choice to take your reaction
and turn it into a response.
Sometimes that might mean pausing, gathering your thoughts.
This could even be a result of excitement.
That reaction may have been your heart palpitating,
but take a minute and make sure that you, as a listener,
are as careful with your response
as I hope our speakers will be with their word choice.
I know we’re not going to solve all the communication gaps
that are out there, and certainly not
in an ever-increasingly distant world.
But I think if we are a little bit more careful, more intentional,
specific and active while we communicate,
we stand a chance at bridging some of these gaps.
Thank you.
(Applause)