Tag Archives: communication

Just a call away

Today I saw a sunset in Greece. It was hours ago, and although the sun hasn’t set here yet, my daughter is on a Greek island and she FaceTime’d me. The photo shared above is from a Snapchat she shared just before calling. She was on a balcony at her hostel, and we chatted for a few minutes while her friends got ready to go to dinner.

When my wife did a similar backpacking trip 30 years ago she spoke to her parents by collect call each time she was heading to or arrived in another country and that would be it for contact for days if not longer than a week. For this trip my wife is in contact with our kid almost daily, even if just by WhatsApp chat. She checks in with her dad a little less frequently, knowing I get the updates from my wife.

Time zones are the only challenge to communication. As I’m writing this at 7:30pm here, and it’s 5:30am in Greece. But beyond that, it’s pretty awesome that we can stay connected… for free with a simple wifi connection. This shouldn’t still amaze me but it does. It would take me 14.5 hours including a layover to get to her, but I can see her ‘live’ on my phone with the only challenge being what time we go to sleep.

Makes me think, who else is just a call away, but I haven’t made the effort?

Blind spots

I’m dealing with an issue between two students right now and the challenge is that both of their opposing views are valid. The challenge isn’t the points of view, it’s the current climate that makes one view insensitive to the other view. There was no intent to harm, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t harm. Poor communication is another issue, and it might seem like therein lies the problem more so than the stances themselves. However this just amplified the problem.

I can get the students together to eliminate the communication issue, but first I needed to show one of them how their perspective could be perceived differently than intended… I had to show this student how their perspective came from a place of privilege. I shared how I was once blind to my privilege and I think the student understood. Was this student’s statements ‘wrong’? No. Was this student’s statement insensitive? Yes. Could the other student have approached the concern differently? Yes… but here’s the thing, I don’t think it would have been settled any better if the issue was addressed in-person rather than publicly online. When a concern is in your blind spot how are you expected to see it?

Privilege creates blind spots. Politics creates blind spots. Religion creates blind spots. Gender creates blind spots. Anger creates blind spots. Culture creates blind spots. Language creates blind spots. Wealth creates blind spots. Trauma creates blind spots. Power creates blind spots. Ignorance creates blind spots… and the list can go on and on.

We can’t know that we have blind spots until they are shown to us. We don’t see them unless we can be shown things from a different perspective. We need to be empathetic. We need to be open to alternate views. We need to understand that our blind spots don’t inherently make us bad people, but when we are exposed to our blind spots our egos, our sense of right and wrong, need to be tempered.

When we are faced with a perspective that was in our blind spot we need to be open to seeing things from a perspective that’s not our own… and here’s the hard part, not to be judgemental but to be compassionate, empathetic, and willing to see the bias we hold. This is a big ask. But it builds character and helps us grow.

In the student issue I’m dealing with the onus to make things better lies on the person who was blind to their privilege. If that student can’t see the other perspective, if the blind spot remains, well then we have a disagreement that won’t be settled well. But if that student can see the other perspective, then maybe we can come to a satisfactory conclusion. We can focus less on intent and blame, and more on making things better. We can have an honest conversation about how our statements could be seen as insensitive and biased, even though that wasn’t the intent. There was no intention of harm, but harm was done, and if that harm is recognized, well then we can move forward. It becomes a learning experience and not an issue of right versus wrong. That’s one less blind spot, and one more opportunity to help us all get along a little more compassionately.

The Ego and the Way

There is a saying that we are our own worst enemy, and this is especially true when our egos get the best of us. I know that I’m not at my best when I get my back up. I know that making my point a second time in an argument doesn’t help even if… especially if… I’m right. And yet sometimes in the moment of an argument I’ll still poke my point in, like a finger into a wound. Being right becomes more important than coming to an agreement.

Ego clouds the way. Hammering out past transgressions becomes more important than finding a good path forward. Being right trumps being kind, considerate, humble, compromising, or forgiving. Ego destroys apologies, by inserting justifications and explanations. “I’m sorry but…” is not an apology. “What I meant to say…” only adds to the harm. “The reason why…” is a way to justify not a way to heal.

It’s especially hard when the other person doesn’t make it easy. It takes an inner strength to take the good path when being met with frustration or even anger. That’s when the ego wakes and stands it’s ground; When the tone and tenor switches from coming to a settlement to winning an argument; When the ego becomes the way. But when you succumb to ego, you surrender a good outcome. When you meet another’s ego with ego the way forward is lost.

Do you or your ego rise up to a challenge? What is the desired outcome, to be right or to move forward? When the ego clouds the way pack your umbrella because the destination is not bright. Tuck the ego away and a clearer horizon is possible… and you just might arrive somewhere you want to be.

The meaning of your communication

One of my favourite sayings, almost a mantra for me, is:

The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.

This message has two important parts:

1. It puts the responsibility of good communication on me as a communicator.

2. It focuses on the result of my communication.

If someone doesn’t understand my message (2 – result), then I didn’t communicate the message well enough (1 – responsibility).

It reminds me to be clear and concise. It reminds me to check for understanding. It reminds me to bite my tongue, and listen so that I understand the perspective of the other person. And it harshly reminds me that I’m imperfect at doing these things when I’m not understood and when I don’t take ownership of the miscommunication.

This is most important when dealing with difficult conversations.

I’m reminded of this coaching advice about verbal jujitsu:

It’s easy to blame someone else for poor communication, much harder to accept that we can control the narrative when we recognize that we are accountable and responsible for our good communication… And that in the end it’s the result matters. Not winning a point. Not blaming someone else for misunderstanding. Not getting the last word in.

Language barrier

When we lived in China we lived in ‘a small city of 6 million’, Dalian, on a peninsula on the east coast. It was not unusual for my family to hear no English spoken by anyone except us from the time we left our Canadian curriculum foreign national school on Friday until we went back to school on Monday. We couldn’t go to a restaurant unless the menu had pictures. And if you were in a store and didn’t see what you were looking for, a game of charades ensued with hand gestures and singular Chinese words coming from us rather than sentences.

Google Translate was fairly new and most Asian languages were not well translated, especially Chinese. I remember going to a grocery store to buy baking soda for my wife. I put the 2 words into Google Translate and got two Chinese characters. But on the shelf were 6 or 7 different items with some having the first character and some having something very similar to the second character, and none having both.

I asked for help and the employee couldn’t help me. She asked a coworker, and she couldn’t help me either. I was stuck. I finally bought a plastic back with a white powder that looked like baking soda and on my way home I realized that the cost of this item was less than 50 cents Canadian, and had I bought all 5 of the most likely items, it would have cost me under $3. That would have saved me 30 minutes and a lot of frustration.

Now things have changed significantly. Language translation is so much easier. People can have full-on conversations with Google or an app translating voice to text and/or voice almost instantaneously. These tools will even correct themselves when the context of the sentence is recognized. For instance, I think ‘baking’ and ‘soda’ were two words that were translated for me independently, and so the words were loosely translated to ‘cooking in the oven’ and ‘bubbly drink’. Now translators know that these words next to each other mean something different than when the words are used in a different context.

All this to say that the days of language being a major barrier to basic communication are over. I can think of a lot of frustrating conversations and miscommunications I had in my 2 years of living in China that would not have happened if we went now rather than over a decade ago. I think of the conversations I wanted to have but couldn’t. I think of the questions I had that were just left unanswered.

Sure there were a few magical moments where we overcame the language barrier and made special connections, but these moments pale in comparison to what we could have said and done with the tools available today. While I hold some nostalgia about the way things were for us back then, I think I’d still prefer it if we had the language conversion tools of today back then.

How important is…

I met an old friend yesterday. He helped me out a lot when I moved to BC. That was back in 1993, and we spent a fair bit of time together for about a month after my move. I remember him asking me a bunch of questions one day about relationships. I don’t remember what came first, but they were a series of questions regarding how important parts of relationships were: How important is money? How important is intimacy/sex? How important is good communication?

I don’t remember my initial answer, but when he got to his third or fourth question I came up with a general answer for all of them.

When you are in a bad relationship, these things can be insurmountable problems that break the relationship up. When you are in a good relationship none of these things matter unless they are very deficient… in a good relationship, you can weather a financial storm but if money is always a problem then it becomes very important. You can struggle with intimacy, but if it’s long term, then it becomes important. You can communicate poorly sometimes, but if it’s more frequent, then it becomes important.

Basically, when things are going well, none of these concerns are overly important, it’s only when there is a long term mismatch or struggle that any of these relationship challenges becomes important. I think his line of questioning was to help him figure out what was the most important part of a relationship and my response was the part that isn’t working becomes the most important, and then needs to be dealt with.

I’m pleased to report that my friend is still happily married. I’m not saying it was thanks to my advice, I’m just stating this because it could be easy to assume he was asking those questions because his relationship was on the rocks. It wasn’t. Rather it was just two guys in their mid 20’s trying to figure out relationships.

My grandfather used to say, “Kill a snake when it’s small.” It wasn’t intended as such but I think that’s good relationship advice. When concerns arise, deal with them quick, because if they grow too large, they become important problems that are bigger and harder to deal with… and they could potentially become the most important part of the relationship.

Email Fail

I think email is broken.

1. Spam – it’s not just annoying, it’s dangerous and people are scammed all the time. Sometimes you just need to click a link and you are in trouble. I’ve seen stats ranging from 45-84% of all email being spam. While spam filters might block a lot of this, too much still gets through.

2. Unsubscribe – how many things have you not subscribed to that you have to unsubscribe from? And sometimes the unsubscribe process is the way that spammers know they have a working email and so they target you more. I’ve resorted to ‘block sender’ to unsubscribe from subscriptions that I didn’t sign up for.

3. Unsolicited invitations – worse still is the follow-up, “I don’t know if you saw my first email.” I take the time to block sender when I get these. I don’t owe you a reply when I don’t know you and you cold call me through email. I didn’t miss your email, I wasn’t interested the first time, and I’m just annoyed the second.

4. “Thank you.” – You want to thank me, please do so by not sending me an email thank you. Thank you’s are very polite in conversation, they are just another email adding to my inbox when sent digitally. I know this sounds cranky, but unless you are sending me a hilarious gif that says in some way, ‘Hey, I was so thankful I found this to make you smile’, then save yourself the effort and just don’t reply with a ‘Thanks’.

5. Reply All – Hitting Reply All should require effort, such as a double check to make you think about it:

It is way too easy to Reply All, and this is used far too often. Whenever possible, I blind cc emails when they go to a lot of people and might solicit a Reply All. Sometimes I wish Reply All wasn’t even an option. For the amount of times I’ve used it, I would still be saving time if I had to type everyone’s email in to reply to all, but then also avoided receiving so many in my inbox because it was equally hard for everyone else to send them.

6. Email doesn’t stop – I have a vampire rule for email that I follow: Unless someone that works for me asks a question or needs my help (invites me in), then I’m not allowed to enter their inbox on weekends or after 6pm on a work day. It is annoying how many steps/clicks it takes to delay an email delivery until the next morning, but I’ll do it to avoid sending someone an email when they won’t be dealing with it until the next work day anyway. I rather inconvenience myself than add work to people at or after dinner or on their weekends. Even if I’m sharing a useful resource, it can wait until the next morning. I wish more people did this. If someone wants to think about work on their time off, it should be because they want to, not because a work email came in to interrupt them at home.

—

In a blog post titled Finding Balance, that I wrote over 8 years ago, I created and shared the image above and I said,

“Email is not a productivity tool. It is a poorly used form of communication that engulfs productivity time and requires a disproportionate amount of our lives.”

In the past 8 years I haven’t seen any innovation in email and it still hinders more than helps productivity. Currently I use Microsoft Teams with my work teams and tell them that I will check messages there before email. At least this tool lets me contextualize the messages and so prioritizing my teams is easier than looking at the most recent email that has come in. But email still sucks too much of my time for the value that it does (and mostly does not) return.

Essentially, email has failed, and I would love to see it go away in the same way the fax machine did.

Missing the point

“The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.”

This is a quote I heard in a communication course that I took in my early 20’s, more than a half of my life ago… but I remember it and it is a bit of a mantra for me. So, when I share something and the message isn’t clear, I recognize that I need to take at least partial responsibility. An unexpected response tells me that my communication was not clear enough to get the response I expected.

Yesterday I was mad. I actually expected a shooting like the one in a Texas school to happen. I didn’t know it would be a school, but I saw the publicity the supermarket shooting in Buffalo the week before got and I figured another high profile shooting was coming. When it happened, and when it was a school, I was angry. That anger came through in my post, Enough is enough. But writing it wasn’t enough for me. I don’t pretend I have an audience big enough to make a genuine difference. So, I sent it to some local and some US reporters that I have access to via Twitter. It only went to accounts that allow Direct Messages, so that I was sending the messages privately.

One reporter responded. I won’t name him, because I have a lot of respect for him and I appreciate him responding to me… he was the only one. These were his words:

David, I don’t agree with you one bit. The rate of mass shootings in Canada (and MANY other countries) versus the US is so vastly different, with practically no difference in the way media treats the subject. That in itself is evidence of a flaw in your logic. I am in the businesses of shedding light on the issues that erode our safety and security because ignoring a problem never makes it go away. Do I wish these events never happened? Am I heartbroken and traumatized by what I see and hear and have to filter for our audience? You’re damn right I am. I hate every minute of it. But am I to blame? Not at all. Why don’t you direct some of your energy at those who refuse to put restrictions on killing machines and those who pull the trigger?

And this was my response:

I’m only saying don’t report their names. Don’t highlight their lives. Yes this is a US problem, I’ve mostly sent this to US news. But how hard would it be not to dignify the killers. To remove any mention of their identity? The stats tell us these are more likely to happen after a high publicity act. The people doing the copycat act know they will be (in)famous like the other killers before them. I know gun laws in the US are a big problem… but that doesn’t diminish the fact that all news outlets are making it worse. Apologies if you think I’m blaming you, I’m not. I’m blaming a news system that glorifies killers. That’s the part I am struggling with. Stop naming the killers. Stop highlighting their lives. That’s my point. It’s not about you, it’s about this:

That is the part media outlets play. And all of them can do better.

He took it as a personal attack, and he missed the point. I blame myself. I should have written a plea, not a condemnation. The irony to me is this line he shared, “I am in the businesses of shedding light on the issues that erode our safety and security because ignoring a problem never makes it go away.” The simple fact is that by glorifying the killer, he and his colleagues are eroding our safety and security. They are publicizing to the weak and the disturbed that they too can become famous.

“Am I heartbroken and traumatized by what I see and hear and have to filter for our audience?” He said. Yes, filtering for the audience is part of being a news reporter, and what I’m asking is for him and his colleagues to filter out the names of the idiots with guns. I’m not saying, ‘Don’t report the news.’ I’m not saying, ‘You are responsible.’ I am saying that highlighting and profiling the idiots with guns erodes public safety and security. How hard would it be for news media to have a simple code of conduct:

  • Do not mention a mass shooter’s name.
  • Do not share images of them.
  • Do not investigate their lives, profile them, or quote them.

That’s what I wanted to say. But that’s not what I communicated. I can’t blame anyone for missing the point, when I failed to make the point clear.

Beginner eyes

Sometimes it’s hard to teach something when you are really knowledgeable about it. You don’t have the vantage point of a beginner, you can’t see the problem through their eyes. It becomes easy to presume they have knowledge that they don’t.

I shared this on Twitter and Facebook last week:

I was today years old when I realized… No, actually I still don’t have a clue what this sign is trying to say⁉️ 🤣

People with obvious knowledge of the area started to clarify whet it means for me. Very kind of them, but they missed the point.

I was driving with my wife to catch a ferry at Horseshoe Bay. This sign is on the way. To get to the ferry terminal the best thing you can do is stay on the highway. Any tourist or foreigner to this area would not think this is the case, seeing this sign. They would blow by this confusing sign at 80-100km an hour and wonder if they were missing a turnoff. No matter how helpful clarification may be, without prior knowledge this is a ridiculously confusing street sign.

This is a good example that demonstrates how when you know a lot about a complicated topic, it’s often hard to explain something to someone who knows very little about it. Assumptions of prior knowledge are easy to make. Eyes glaze over. Attention shifts away. Dialogue becomes monologue. Nothing is learned.

Asking clarifying questions helps… and that goes for both people. The beginner can ask what something means, or how something relates. The expert can ‘quiz’ the beginner. But I think the responsibility lies more on the expert to understand what is an appropriate level of explanation. And to do this well, an expert needs to appreciate the topic through a beginner’s eyes.

Opportunity not Obligation revisited

I wrote about the idea of offering people ‘Opportunities not Obligations‘ back in November 2019. I have used this a lot since then. It’s one of my favourite social hacks to allow a person to feel guilt free about turning down an opportunity. (Read the post to really understand what this is all about.)

I want to add something to this now, some advice to the person saying it… if you use this phrase and the person declines the opportunity, well then you need to let it go. You need to be authentically okay with the person not accepting the opportunity. Otherwise, your follow-up will undermine the good intentions of the phrase.

If you say, ‘Are you sure’ Or ‘that’s too bad’, or if you ask again, then you are making the thing you offered feel more like an obligation. You are making the person feel like you are disappointed or let down.

“This is an opportunity, not an obligation.”

When you use the phrase authentically, then it is freeing to both you, the asker, and your friend, the receiver. No apologies needed, no guilt. But if you aren’t authentic and you will be disappointed, then this isn’t a helpful phrase to use.