Tag Archives: communication

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.

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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.

The nod

When I lived in China, if I passed a foreigner, an ex-pat, I got ‘the nod’. It didn’t matter if the person was British, East Indian, Australian, Japanese, or American, they were from another country and I got an acknowledging nod. We were in Dalian, North East China, and of all the foreigners, the Russians were most abundant. The Russians would not give you the nod, even if you gave them one. It was weird.

I got to know a few Russians while in Dalian and they were all very nice, but seeing a Russian stranger on the street, or in a shopping mall, they would give you a quick glance, decide you are not ‘one of them’, and look away. Never the nod.

It’s funny, one of my daughters once asked, “Do you think that they think we are American?” Because we were often asked (in Chinese) by locals if we were American? (Nǐ shì měiguó rén ma?) To which we would answer ‘Canadian’ (Jiānádà rén). Then the person would smile and be even more friendly. My kids picked this up pretty quickly and figured the Russians were assuming we were American.

Here in Canada I get the nod from people of Middle Eastern descent. It happened last night, when I was in a Lebanese Donair shop. I ordered my large, spicy, extra lamb donair, paid and walked along the counter to where I pick it up. Directly in front of me I made eye contact with a young man sitting and enjoying his meal, and he gave me the nod. I returned it with a smile. That was the whole exchange, nothing more. The knowing, ‘you are one of us’ nod.

Oddly enough, I have a Russian grandfather, and my Middle Eastern ancestry is that I’m 50% Ashkenazi Jew. So, the Russian in Dalian that shrugged off without the nod had no idea I actually had heritage, and the Middle Eastern in Canada would probably be surprised to know that my heritage is Jewish. And the Chinese in China had no idea my Grandmother was Chinese.

I’m used to not fitting in a cultural box. As I mentioned before, “I have a look that Italians mistake for Greek, and Greeks mistake for Italian. I am neither.” I am ‘white’ but with a combined heritage of being 75% Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese, I don’t readily identify as white… other than the privilege I know that I ‘wear’.

But the nod is not about that. The nod is not really about nationality or heritage, it’s about sharing a common experience. It doesn’t matter if the nod is a case of mistaken identity, it doesn’t matter if you are from different parts of the world. The nod is a way that two human beings connect and say “I see you.” And it’s a beautiful thing.

Ain’t no such thing

I was having a text conversation with a friend and he accidentally used the wrong punctuation, and then corrected himself. But I read it as him answering his own question.

I hope so?

So!

He meant to say ‘I hope so!’ As in I hope I can make it. I interpreted it as him hoping so but not sure? Then being sure and saying, ‘So!’ As in yes I can. Mainly because I wasn’t watching my phone and didn’t know the messages came one right after the other, thinking there was a delay between the two. So we texted back and forth and he jokingly said, “And here I go thinking text communication is the most perfect and clear form of communication.”

Then I said, “In communication and transportation there ain’t no such thing as perfect.”

He replied, ‘Lol. Good one’, to which I replied, ‘Might be a blog post’.

Two things come to mind. First, the quote, “The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.” So even when you think you’ve communicated clearly if the response is unexpected, well then it wasn’t clear. Often we think we’ve conveyed a message clearly but when it isn’t received clearly, well then part of the blame does go to the communicator. This simple idea helps me be more patient and thoughtful when my communication is not received as I expected.

Secondly, there is no form of transportation that is close to perfect. If anything is traveling from point A to point B, an accident can happen… even if that accident isn’t caused by the transportation of choice. A simple example of this would be imagining that there were a (almost) perfect and safe way to get from A to B, but during the travel a tornado hit the vehicle. If something is being transported, the method of transportation is not perfect.

So, in communication and transportation we can expect mistakes and accidents.

Mistakes in communication can be made up for by being responsive, and by knowing that mistakes happen. Accidents in transportation will happen and there needs to be safety protocols and contingency plans. For example, I’m not against pipelines, but I think that companies that want oil as a natural resource should have to create a billion dollar cleanup fund for accidents that will eventually happen. If they say they can’t afford that, well then the government response shouldn’t be subsidies, but rather a response of, “The oil will be there when you can afford it.”

Perfect communication? Perfect transportation? I really don’t think so!

Living in a dream

One of my favourite responses when someone asks me how I’m doing is “Living the dream!”

Yesterday I wrote about how there seems to be many people who think they ‘took the red pill‘ – revealing an unpleasant truth, but they have actually taken the blue pill – remaining in blissful ignorance.

Then this morning I was listening to a podcast and musician Baba Brinkman was quoted as saying, “What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.”

This made me realize how much reality right now (for many if not all of us) is literally like being in a dream. Let me explain… In a dream, when something doesn’t fit with reality, it doesn’t always trigger a response.

Examples:

  • You are in a dream talking to someone and turn away, you turn back and now it’s a different person, but having the same conversation.
  • You are in a dream and in it you are in your own house, you change rooms and now you are in a room you’ve never seen before, or even outside.
  • You are in a dream and cars can fly, or you can fly.

In each of these cases, had it been reality, the experience would be jarring, but in a dream it just makes sense.

Well in today’s reality, I think many people are living in a dream. So, you give an anti-vaxer, or a flat earther some profound point that undermines their belief, and what happens? Nothing. It doesn’t interrupt the dream. It isn’t jarring, it doesn’t ‘wake them up’. Their reality includes points and counterpoints that do not trigger a wakeful response. So, the dream can keep going… uninterrupted.

“What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.”

The problem today is that too many people are agreeing on hallucinations that just don’t fit our reality; hallucinations that undermine our future reality… and I’m not sure how we can wake them up?

More Cowbell: Signal-to-noise

Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. SNR is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power, often expressed in decibels. A ratio higher than 1:1 (greater than 0 dB) indicates more signal than noise. Wikipedia

This is a scientific term that relates to how much background noise there is interfering with the data or information you are trying to receive. A simple way to think about this is having a conversation in a party. If the noise of the party is too loud, you can’t pick up the signal (what the other person is saying). There is a point at which the noise does not interfere and the signal/communication is easy to hear, then moving along the scale the noise can interfere a little or a lot.

With machines this ratio is easy to calculate. With humans it’s a lot harder. It isn’t always about the quality of the signal, it’s also about the the willingness of the receiver to receive the signal. Sometimes people are not ready to receive the signal no matter how clear it is. Sometimes people choose to listen to the noise. Sometimes the noise is in their own head, not just coming from outside.

We are currently living in a world where a large number of people pay attention to the noise and are missing the signal altogether. A world where the noise is intentionally being spread. A world where the signal is considered noise. But humans aren’t machines, and so the noise isn’t easily calibrated and removed.

Social media used to amplify the signal, now it amplifies the noise. News used to amplify the signal, now it constantly reports about the problem of the noise, thus highlighting the noise and bringing it to everyone’s attention… not always in a negative light… or putting the signal and the noise on an equal footing as if to say here are two equal signals to be weighed and considered. As a result, communities, families, and friendships are being torn apart as they argue about what is signal and what is noise.

I’m reminded of the ‘More Cowbell’ skit on Saturday Night Live.

The noise is becoming too loud to receive the signal in any meaningful way. We need to simultaneously turn up the signal and turn down the noise. If not, we better get used to the cow bell.

Being a good listener

A quick post to help me reflect out loud.

Recently I think I’ve been a poor listener. It’s not that I don’t listen, it’s that my listening has been filled with my own interjections and relevant stories. I realized this a few days ago when a colleague was sharing an experience they had on the weekend. I immediately shared a similar experience, then asked more about their’s.

That sounds polite but it isn’t. I didn’t just relate, I stole their thunder. I took away from a moment of someone sharing their experience, so that I could share mine… the story became mine, with theirs being a footnote.

I’ve reflected and realized that I’ve engaged with others like this too often in the past few weeks. I need to listen more in order to listen, not to ‘add to’, not to ‘fix’, not to ‘steal’. Just to listen, ask, encourage, celebrate others, and be present.