Message Received

When I’ve taught communications, one of the things I stressed was that the normal result of an attempt to communicate something is partial miscommunication and you must adjust for it. That is, the message you think you’re sending isn’t exactly what is received. I’ve had a series of encounters this week that underscored that. The first was that I was invited to dinner by a former employee. I hadn’t seen Dave in decades. In his approach, he had said that he had learned a lot from me, came to be a success and wanted to express his appreciation. We met and, after the small talk, I asked what he remembered the most. He laughed and said it was my stories. He always repeated them and, in fact, when he told one of his current employees that he was meeting me for dinner, the guy replied, “Is that the guy in the urinal cake story?” Dave laughed at that. Having taught weekend college, I sensed that people didn’t absorb what they had little interest in. So, I wrapped lessons in entertaining stories. I’ve led a pretty entertaining life so coming up with them was no problem. The challenge was building a lesson into them to make them a management tool. “Did he get the lesson that was in that story?” I responded. Dave looked puzzled. “There was a lesson in that?” So much for people receiving the intended message. Then Dorothy was telling me that she had been discussing Bob’s shortcomings with some mutual acquaintances and they had the same perceptions as she did. Guess again. I’d heard from some of them and what they took from the discussions was that Dorothy sure likes to dish the dirt. I doubt that was her intended message. Today, I kayaked with a guy who taught me whitewater paddling many years ago. He said I had developed a good stroke. I reminded him that he had told me that a number of times during the paddling course. “No, when I said you had quite a stroke there, I meant it was one of the worst I’d seen.” The lesson in this (and I won’t obscure it with a story) is that the message you think you’re sending isn’t always the one that’s received.