We are all human beings
The other day I had a great chat with a good friend on the topic of communications, specifically in a corporate world. Not necessarily PR or external communications with the press, but interpersonal communications between staff members, sometimes working on a common project for a certain time. Then we continued, to some extend, on communications in general. The topic doesn’t get old!
About 396 hours
Fighting over ideas?
Starting in early April and for the last four months now, I’ve been taking part in a project with more or less 20 people directly involved at various levels. The analysis phase brought about 10 of us in a room for 6 hours, every day of the week and this for three months, discussing the various possibilities and details of the implementation. That’s not quite 400 hours spent in the same room, with the same people.
Then with everyone having a different skill-set, having been raised during diverse decades and possibly cultures, and obviously coming from contrasting academic and professional backgrounds, it quickly became clear that things weren’t going to get easier. After so many weeks, needless to say that we got to know each others quite well!
I’m not here to report any incidents really. Maybe just a few frustrations, but nothing major.
But analytical as I can be, I keep trying to understand what exactly triggers those frustrations.
Emotional integrity
I think the obvious answer is feelings. Everyone would agree for instance that not being able to get their point through is not an enjoyable outcome for a discussion. Like we simply feel disrespected by having our ideas discarded or bluntly ignored by the other party who, we get the impression, is listening only passively. Plus it doesn’t get better when there are hidden agendas, politics, friends or just different angles and levels of understanding for every argument. Everybody hate having their emotional integrity shaken. So really, they simply don’t get it, do they?!
They is the keyword here; they simply don’t get it.
Let’s turn that around for a minute. What if we didn’t get it either? What if we couldn’t understand the counter argument, or were too blinded to even really listen? Would it be possible that, just once, we jumped to conclusions too quickly and closed ourselves to a potentially valuable input?
Let’s try this
The fact is we are all human beings in the end. All different, with many strengths and certainly weaknesses. So in the end I wondered what would be a starting point to try and keep professionals and potentially personal relationships from heating up too much.
I would think that the first thing is probably awareness. So what about trying to reflect back on situations. For instance, a few minutes at the end of a day are sufficient to ask yourself whether you might have upset anybody, or maybe assumed anything. When in doubt, assume you did.
Initially without necessarily taking actions, this will emphasise the fact that frustrations due to miscommunication between two (perfectly imperfect, some would argue) human beings and rarely happens without a reason. Then the next step will flow on it’s own.
Now Showing: “Breaking and Entering”
Funnily enough the movie Breaking and Entering was showing tonight and I thought it was a stunning example of a failure to communicate. The main character and his wife are in a rather cold relationship where they hardly understand each other and their few attempts to communicate results in fights and obvious disgruntlement.
The movie, I thought, was well produced overall and features pretty solid lead actors. Partly taking place in London’s Kings Cross, it questions boundaries between social classes and between people in various relationships.
