Tag Archives: communication

Purposeful Contributions

Yesterday I was part of a meeting with teachers offering a new course this year. Teachers and administrators (principals or vice principals) from each high school were there, and the VP in charge had us go around the table sharing. When it was my turn, I passed it over to one of my teachers who supports this course online. Since she works closely with the Inquiry Hub teacher who teaches the course, and she knows the content of the course better than I do, I knew she would do a better job than me sharing.

The next round, the conversation was more specific about delivery in the schools. When it got to me, I realized that in the context of both the online school and Inquiry Hub, nothing I could share would benefit a school of 1,000+ students, like the other schools that were sharing. So, I passed when it was my turn.

Anyone who has been in a meeting with me knows that I am not afraid to speak up or speak out. I’m happy to share my thoughts, ask a question, or present an idea. But I don’t need to hear my own voice. There was nothing I could have added to the conversation that would have benefited others.

The meeting was excellent. I think everyone left knowing a lot more than when they came, and my online teacher is creating a shared repository for all the teachers to contribute to, and benefit from. I definitely benefited more from listening than talking, and think that I would not have added value by saying more… I would have wasted the time of the group.

Moral of the story: Make positive and purposeful contributions, or shut up and listen.

The Dalai Lama is a bit more eloquent:

When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.

The Dalai Lama

Rhythm and Rapport

I felt it. I mean I really felt it. A rhythmic wave resonated throughout my body. Before this moment I had enjoyed music but I never had it consume me so completely. And I was surrounded by others who felt the same way.

It was the early summer of 1992, and I was 24 years old. My uncle had introduced me to an NLP teacher, paying for me to take his course, and I loved it. NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming is about harnessing communication patterns, that we all use, in more effective and powerful ways. The course I was in was very interesting because it seemed as if half the people were there to learn to be more effective and the other half seemed to be there for therapy.

The 9-day course started on a Saturday and ran daily from 8am to 4pm through the week and into the second weekend. It was the Friday morning and we were told we were in for a treat. We were taken to a small room filled with drums, shakers, tambourines, cow bells and assorted traditional music makers. The lesson was on rapport and we were going to use music to demonstrate it.

I think there were about 18 of us in this small room and we were broken up into groups of 2, 3, and 4, depending on the number of similar instruments. I don’t remember if we ended up with 5 or 6 groups. Next, each group was given a different beat to play. For instance, the cow bell players got tap-tap, tap-tap, pause, tap-tap, while a few drummers got a beat of 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2. That second example would have been the most complicated of the options with most others being quite simple.

We got counted down and everyone started playing their own beat in their groupings. As someone that doesn’t have musical training, it was good to have other people playing the same beat as me so that I could follow along and not be too distracted by the other groups. That said it was a ruckus in this small room. To put it kindly, we were making noise, horrible and loud clattering, pounding, clanging, dinging noise. It was awful.

I understood that we were supposed to build rapport and the music was somehow supposed to come together but it didn’t. There was just noise. We switched instruments and tried again. Noise. We switched beats. Noise. We switched instruments again, and I was given cow bells. More noise.

We were tired, and we were overwhelmed with the echo of instruments clamouring out of synch, and then something interesting happened. A professional dance instructor that was taking the course had a big gourd shaker in his hand, he stepped forward into the middle of our circle and connected with an older man on drums. This older gentleman that the dancer connected with was a retired music teacher. They sped up the beat slightly and I could hear their individual beats come together as if they were one pattern. The dancer with the gourd shaker was dancing to their beat and my beat fell into synch with his feet.

That was the moment it happened for me, and it was obvious that it was happening for everyone else in the room… our noise became music. But this was so much more than music, it was a wave of sound that reverberated through my body. I watched the dancer and realized that his gourd and feet were the backbone of the beat. We were all following his lead. Then I looked at the retired musician’s drum and I realized that it was him driving the beat. Then I looked at my cow bells and realized it was me that was leading the beat. Then I really understood what was happening. We were in perfect unison, we were one.

None of us were in the lead. All of us were in the lead. This was full rapport. We were all connected, all one beat, all one musical experience. We built up the sound to a full crescendo, it was all-consuming, bordering on ecstasy. There was a countdown, 3-2-1, and we all stopped playing. The instant silence was a final exclamation on an overwhelmingly beautiful experience. For the first time in my life I had felt, truly and to my core felt, the sound of music.

Missing out – The Art of Miscommunication

I believe that most miscommunication results from being out of context, out of place, or our of time.

Examples:

Context – Someone uses acronyms with people that are not familiar with them.

Place – Someone gives their boss marching orders.

Time  – Someone explains something everyone already found out about.

I think that a lot of news outlets intentionally focus on, or omit information from, one of these areas in order to entice, excite, anger, and/or engage viewers and readers.

While being ‘out of’ one of these makes for a great plot for a comedy, it is not ideal when we want to be fully informed, or if we want our team, or our customers, or our students to be fully informed.

The next time you are frustrated, ask yourself what you are missing out on?

 

3 sides to every story

It was my sister many years ago who said this to me the first time, but I’ve heard it many times since. There are 3 sides to every story: The first person’s perspective, the second person’s perspective, and somewhere in between there is the Truth.

We all want to feel that our experience is the Truth, but in reality we can’t always see where the other person is coming from. Relationships often have perceived truths that limit us from seeing the full Truth that lies in the middle. Our bias doesn’t have to come from malice, it can come from innocent ignorance. But when we see the bigger Truth, when we are reflecting back on a conversation, we can sometimes see our own flaws in perspective if we are honest with ourselves.

When this happens, we need to decide if it is more important to come back with the new Truth (or at least our perspective of it), or is it more important to concede that our truth was wrong, and think about how holding on to that truth affected the other person? Because even at this new juncture there might still be 3 sides to the story. Pause and reflect again. Maybe the relationship is more important than the Truth?

Opportunities not Obligations

Opportunities not obligations

We live in an era of obligations. Even the things we enjoy doing can sometimes feel more like a commitment and a chore. Then on top of that something else always seems to come up:

“No, unfortunately I can’t join you, I have my fitness class.”

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“Sorry, I’d love to, but I’m working late.”

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“I really wish I could, but I already have another obligation.”

While sometimes ‘I wish I could’ is actually, ‘thank the heavens I didn’t have to’, many times things come up that we really want to do, but our busy lives don’t allow it. You might have to turn down concert tickets, dinner, a beverage, or a dip in a hot tub. You really want to do these things but you have no choice but to apologize for not being able to indulge.

Recently, when I’ve provided opportunities for friends to connect, the moment they are unsure or can’t make it I say, “It’s an opportunity, not an obligation.” This does two things:

  1. It removes the need for an apology. No one is being let down. No one needs to feel guilty. You aren’t turning down an obligation, you simply had an opportunity presented and the opportunity is not one that can be taken advantage of at this time.
  2. It removes my own disappointment. It decreases expectations, and I don’t particularly like hearing my friends or colleagues apologize unnecessarily. It leaves me in a positive frame of mind. This opportunity didn’t work, I wonder if we can find another one soon?

You are not obligated to try this out yourself. Feel free to keep doing what you are doing if that works for you. However, you might want to try saying, ‘It’s an opportunity, not an obligation’, the next time a friend guiltily apologizes for not being able to meet with you. You have an opportunity to make that exchange feel better for both of you.

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Update: March 9, 2022 – More thinking on this topic: Opportunity not Obligation revisited

Reducing email

Here is something that I’ve done the past couple years with my staff, to help reduce email.

I have a slide that I present to (all 3 of) my schools in one of the few meetings I have with them all together. This slide, and my description of it, breaks down how to connect with me:

1. Can it wait for a face-to-face meeting? If so, no need to do any of the items below.

2. Call me. I get a phone call, it means come now! This doesn’t happen often, but it happens.

3. Text me. I’m trying to reduce this with #4, but if you need an answer, or would like me to come, without it being an emergency, a text is fine.

4. Microsoft Teams. No more ‘reply-all’ discussions in email! Teams has 2 key benefits to email. First, the conversations are contextualized – I have no idea what’s coming in for email, but when I have a notification in one of my teams, I know the group and topic of the message. Secondly, my teams get priority over the most recent email.

Also, rather that texts, @message me on Teams… I’m going to look here first, before email, to deal with my teams first.

5. Email. Really only used to follow up on emails from outside the teams, such as a parent asking a question or sharing something to be shared with me.

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My final point, I describe a couple very specific circumstances to ‘double-dip’ (such as texting me to deal with a very sensitive email communication that I should address quickly). But, in general I emphasize that double-dipping shouldn’t happen. Choose one means of communication for a specific issue.

What I’m hoping to achieve isn’t less communication with my team, but rather more focussed and timely communication with them. This does not happen when their communication is buried in my email.

Alphabet Soup

Vocabulary is a currency in our world.

Vulnerable learners, English language learners, students with reading and learning challenges, all start with a deficit of this currency.

What are we intentionally doing to reduce this deficit?

We don’t all have to use big fancy words, but if our students aren’t articulate and can’t thoughtfully get their messages across, their futures are likely to be hampered.

Be it learning challenges or environmental challenges (some kids grow up in homes where they aren’t read to by an adult, or lack a variety of books, or struggle with a new language), some kids start off with a vocabulary deficit.

But vocabulary is the currency of communication, and how we are able to express ourselves is becoming far more valuable in our amazingly connected world.