Ever have a time when you were sure you were being totally clear, but the other person heard something else?
Other people are a mirror of what we are really communicating. We communicate on so many different levels: voice tone, posture, breathing, attitude. Sometimes a particular word we choose has a vastly different meaning to someone else and if we ask ten people, we will get 10 subtly different meanings.
By adopting the belief that the meaning of your communication is the response you get instead of the communication you delivered regardless of their response, you become more responsive for feedback.
If The Meaning of Your Communication is The Response You Get, What Would Be Different for You?
Both parties in a communication have 100% responsibility - each for their communication.
The good news is, if each person takes 100 percent of the responsibility for their communication, you could have as much as 200 percent effort going into clear communication! And even if the other person doesn’t know or embrace this concept, and they think they’re just responsible for 50 percent, you still have 150 percent effort in place.
When you embrace this presupposition, you are committing to listening to the response and asking for feedback to clarify your communication.
This creates an opportunity for someone to really get you – for you to be truly understood – which can be difficult with this imprecise language of ours.
If you take the belief that the meaning of your communication is the response you get, to take responsibility and be willing to be more flexible than your audience could be so you can catch them at all and any angles, you learn how to communicate in two ways: yours and theirs.
This is what sets great communicators, teachers, mentors, coaches, counselors and speakers apart. Instead of labeling their audience as ‘slow’, ‘stupid’, ‘resistant’, ‘sleepy’, and so on, they take responsibility and go, ‘how can I communicate to them in a way that they’d get what I want to say, regardless?’
Notice how powerful your words are. Are you using your power wisely, or randomly letting words fly?
If you were to believe that the meaning of your communication is the response you get, how would your life be different?
