The fading art of communication

Much has been written on the art of communication, verbal, non verbal etc. But in this time and age the key question is, are we communicating the right things in an appropriate manner? Are we assuming many things and leaving them open for judgement? Majority of the issues around us today are due to lack of proper communication than necessarily willingness to resolve or better still, ability to resolve it.  

Have you ever wondered how simpler life would be if we all communicated in straightforward manner rather than leaving things to interpretation?

The six golden rules of clear communication still remain the same:

1. Why
2. What
3. When
4. Where
5. How and
6. The body language or in new world even the social media language

 As I started reflecting on my days, I found numerous incidents where ignorance of the basics of the six golden rules led to issues that could have been simply avoided.

Why:

Early morning on my way to office, there is a massive traffic jam and the GPS is showing the area as all red, I wonder why is there so much traffic at this juncture, and moving a few yards forward, I realise that the road is being repaired on one of the two traffic lanes and hence the chaos. I wondered, “It would have been great, had the traffic police communicated by putting a warning signal, at the beginning of the lane ‘Construction work ahead, expect delays or take alternate route’…the day would have started on a happy note!"  Simple, yet very important for better planning of commuters and even traffic management.

What:

For my morning coffee, I went and ordered my coffee in my regular café where I had been going for years, only to receive a black coffee as I sipped it moving out of the café… angry at the morning delays, I walk back to the counter almost screaming, “this is not what I get on a daily basis”. and the young girl at the billing counter said, the café staff has changed and the new guy didn’t know my preference. I cool down a bit and wondering if I would have communicated clearly, what was my recipe of coffee rather than assuming that the server at the café would know, I would have saved the moment.

When:

There is a regular client in our organisation (say Mr. Right), a highly professional and empathetic client, I receive an “urgent attention needed” message from him stating the quality of the services is not upto the mark... digging deeper into it, I realise the quality of analysis was not an issue but more importantly the agreed timelines of the services were not met. One of the key project members had to leave because of an emergency and the project lead didn’t inform the client, assuming that they would pull it during the day, but could not and hence when Mr. Right found out, he was obviously upset. We immediately called him, apologised and explained him the situation. All he said, “If you would have told me when to expect the analysis, I could have managed the situation better.”  In my 20+ years of career, I have seen more issues around communication than the actual quality of product or services.

How:

Reviewing a presentation for an upcoming strategy meeting, I found all the financial numbers and related analysis to be wrong, only to realise later that they were assumed based on previous financial year while in the strategy team had projected numbers on Zero based budgeting. On further discussions with the two department heads, apparently, the finance department was not informed by the strategy team on the how the projections were considered for the coming years and finance team on their part assumed without clarifying … a simple communication between the teams would have saved many frustrations and obviously time.

Where

I come back home in the evening only to find my daughter has still not reached home post her music lessons, I remember her telling she will be late today, as post class she would be hanging out with her friends practicing for upcoming show in the academy area.  With two hours above her class time and her phone not reachable, I am worried. I call up the music academy, to discover that it closed an hour ago. She comes home in sometime, little realising my worry level had already gone up, she casually explains her phone ran out of battery and she thought she had already informed that she would be late and they moved to a nearby fastfood joint. Had her communication been clear on where she intended to go, we would have saved each other some unpleasant conversations.

The language

Social media these days is adding on to pressure on communication where brevity is the new “in thing”. A friend of mine often writes, pmwf (ping me when free)… now does that mean an urgency or not is often a subject of interpretation. There are times, when I have replied back immediately only to realise that it was a casual chitchat and when I didn’t for couple of days to realise, it was really an emergency situation. I am often left wondering, are these instant messengers helping us or making matters worse? Are they even depicting our intentions clearly in the language we are thinking or are we using abbreviations and emoticons more which are even more subject to interpretation.

Recent studies are suggesting, though average intelligence quotient (IQ) of human beings is increasing, our emotional quotient (EQ) is going down and hence, it is imperative that we communicate more clearly than before. We need to our ability to communicate more than any other living species to our advantage rather than to create more confusion in the world.