Communication is all about what THEY hear…

I had an interesting business meeting this morning.  Lots of good stuff being tossed around by 3 people with busy brains and loads of ideas.  I floated an idea (a good one as it happens) and it is interesting to examine what happened between my speaking and them ‘hearing’ what I had suggested. 

One of the guys went off on one little journey about the use of metaphors and in fact had inverted my meaning / story.  In fact, he had just picked up the bits that were interesting to him and taken it in a different direction.  The other chap heard the bits that worried him and was busy thinking about what wouldn’t work.  Over the next 20-30 minutes I explained and developed the idea and by the end of that time we all understood & liked my suggestion and agreed to use it as a core to process. 

The key about this little episode was that until further work was done, our ideas and understanding were at sixes & sevens.  There is an NLP precept which says the meaning of any communication is the meaning taken by the other person.

If it is important for you communicate effectively, you have to check that they have heard what you said and what you meant, not something totally different….

“The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”  George Bernard Shaw

Tags: Communication, miscommunication, NLP, understanding

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 14:21 and is filed under Communication, Hints, Tips & Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.