Do You Ever Feel Like You’re Talking To A Wall?

Have you ever been in a conversation when the person you’re talking to just isn’t hearing what you are saying? And, no matter how many times you explain, they just don’t get it! It’s like talking to a wall or even like you’re speaking Greek and they only speak Korean! My experience is that too much of our conversation these days fall into this communication category. We don’t understand one another. And even when we think we’re speaking the same language, sometimes our experience and expectations have us hearing something entirely different from what the speaker intended for us to hear.

Our emotional preference colors what we hear and what we say. How we hear things and say things always exists within a context. If my context is significantly different from your context, we may use the exact same word to mean very different things. When I say it is important to get a task completed, I may mean that the task is one of a dozen things that need to be done within the next month. You may hear that you should stop everything else and focus on that one task. Emotionally, our sense of urgency can exist on two very different levels. If you are a very task oriented person, and I am a very supportive, people oriented person, our perception of what needs to be done and when it should be done can cause communication difficulties.

How do we stop talking to walls and start communicating more effectively? The key is to stop assuming that others know what you mean when you tell them something. Doing this is actually very easy. We can’t always read other people’s minds but we can always ask questions. If I am a supervisor and I communicate to one of my people a message that I believe needs action from them, simply asking them, after I’ve delivered the message, “What actions do you intend to take based on what I’ve told you?” This question will tell you immediately if you are on the same page. If someone tells you something, and you aren’t certain as to what they are looking for from you, you can simply ask, “what actions would you like to see from me, based on what you have told me?” We need to stop assuming and guessing. This can help us all start speaking the same language!