It is ALL communication

I had a very interesting conversation with someone who was having a problem with two colleagues.  Something had occurred that caused a rift between the two; let’s call them Frank & Andrew. 

Andrew had done something that had made Frank very angry and they no longer felt that they could trust/rely on each other.  The details of the story are not important here, however, more interestingly, I suggested that he didn’t get involved in the details of the story either.  The thing is that clever people can always justify their actions and tend to persuade you and lose you in the details of their tale.  If we analysed all the facts doubtless we would come up with a solution but in real life one seldom stops and weighs things up like this. 

I suggested that a better question than “Why did Andrew do what he did?” was “What was Andrew trying to say / communicate?”  The thing is that everything we do says something about how we feel about ourselves and those we are interacting with.  Was he feeling insecure, unappreciated, angry, bored, neglected???  Once one has an understanding of this one can begin to address the underlying issues rather than getting bogged down in the content of the story.

I’d be interested to gather any of your experiences about what underpinned misunderstandings and rifts that you have witnessed / experienced

“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.”  Vincent Van Gogh

Tags: Communication, emotions, feelings, justification, stories

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 13:35 and is filed under Communication, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Mini-Articles. 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.