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“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two-thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one-third thinking about what I want to say.” – Abraham Lincoln
One of the biggest communications problems is the lack of complete information. This results in a slew of additional back-and-forth emails, voice and text messages until the full information is received and acknowledged.
How much time do you spend having to get additional information when someone has sent you an email or left a message on your voice mail? Wouldn’t it save time if the pertinent information was included in the original message?
The easy way to make sure you are communicating complete information is to ask yourself a few questions:
Who? Who is the intended recipient? If it is written, who else might end up reading it? Who else needs this information?
What? What is the reason for the message? If it’s an email, make sure the subject reflects the content. If you are leaving a voice mail, leave enough information so that the recipient can respond.
Where? When? If you are sending information about an event, be sure to include the location and the day and time. If you are requesting information, be sure to specify when you need it. “As soon as possible,” “quickly,” “immediately,” and “in the next few days” mean different things to different people. Be specific.
Why? Explain your need for the particular information so that the recipient has some context.
How? How do you want the information delivered? Do you want a phone call? Or is postal mail appropriate? How do you want a task completed? Have you provided enough specific information that the recipient will understand exactly what you are asking? How will this message be received? Have you been diplomatic? Have you been too diplomatic?
You won’t need to answer all the questions every time you send a message, but it’s a good practice to simply read through your message and run through these questions. It’s a first step toward becoming an effective communicator. The truly gifted communicators follow Lincoln’s ratio.
My dad was an amazing man. He grew up in Southern Arkansas. His family had a farm and owned a general store. His father lost most of the family’s finances when a business he owned went under. Life was a bit more difficult from that point on and my dad had to drop out of college to help support the family.
Daddy grew up in a typical Southern family with the values that were common during those years. Family was important. Paying your bills and being honest were core values. So was a strong belief that there was a difference between the races. My grandparents would never have treated anyone so rudely, but there was a belief that the racial attitudes of the day were correct.
Somehow my father developed a very different attitude. He saw hard working black sharecropping families and did not see a difference between them and their white counterparts. He entered the Navy during World War II and then the Air Force Civil Service afterward. He met people from all walks of life and developed a belief that all people were similar, decent and worthy of respect.
That belief was the cornerstone of my father’s life. He never met a stranger. He never believed that people were anything more than ill-informed. He never demonized the people he disagreed with.
For a long time, I thought my father was naive. He found it difficult to see that people were actually mean, or hard-hearted, or selfish. As I have gotten older, I’ve realized that my father chose to believe the best of people, at least until he had evidence to the contrary.
I once read this quotation (I believe it is from Cicero): A man without malice is incapable of seeing malice in others. That quotation sums up my father.
The lesson I learned from my father’s life is not that it is of benefit to be naive, but that when two people want to communicate, it is best that they assume that each is coming from an honorable perspective. Although we may disagree on particular points, if we start with mutual respect and a strong belief that we each want the best for all involved, we have a chance at communicating. If, as we get deeper into the conversation, we have evidence that the other is not coming from this positive position, we can take another tack. But we need to start from this point. Otherwise, we will miss the opportunity to communicate with most people with whom we disagree.
Happy Father’s Day, Daddy! Thank you for your thoughtful and intelligent example. I miss you.
I’m more convinced that we were not designed to multitask, and that our relationships and lives (business and personal) suffer when we do not focus on the person in front of us or the job we need to do.
When you are dividing your attention, you don’t learn as well. A research team from the UCLA Psychology Department found that there are different parts of your brain that handle memory of information and memory of tasks. There are two different parts of the brain – one is normally affected when learning new tasks without multitasking. If you have to multitask, the part of the brain that you use changes. That part is not accustomed to remembering information. Can the brain adapt? Who knows? But in the interim, quality decreases.
According to research done at the University of Michigan by Dr. David Meyer, when you multitask, you don’t actually do two things at once. You shift your focus between two activities. You may think you can do this effectively, but research shows that if you are able, you are in a very small minority (although you are in the majority in thinking you can do it.)
There are two distinct processes that happen when you shift. One is a goal-shift – you decide you want to do activity B instead of activity A. The second is a rule-shift – you change your mindset so that you can do what needs to be done. It’s sort of like changing between software programs and remembering how things work.
For instance, I’m working on the computer and the TV is going in the background and the phone rings. I mute the TV. When I’m finished with the call, I want to turn the TV sound back on, and I find myself moving the computer mouse like I normally would to turn off the screen saver. It takes me a moment to remember to hit the mute button on the remote. Each of these shifts takes time. Goal-shifting takes a split second, but rule-shifting can take a half second which can be enough time for your car to crash as you switch from talking on the phone to handling whatever hazard is on the road.
We live in a society where we are becoming significantly disconnected from each other. We use ATMs and pump our own gas. Sometimes our only human contact is when we are at the drive-thru. And we’ve gotten so rude that the service person doesn’t know if we are talking to him or her or to someone on our cell phone. My friends have “caught” me checking my email while I’m talking to them on the phone. I don’t want my friends to ignore me. We owe the people who wait on us the courtesy of being there, being truly present when they serve us.
We need to pay attention to the people we meet, because that human connection is ultimately what life is all about. Try it. Try actually listening to the people you meet. Don’t think about what you want to say. Don’t think about what you’re going to do later today or this weekend. Listen to the people who talk to you.
You can’t avoid multitasking completely. But when you have a choice, choose not to do it. If you can, put your phone on voice mail when you are completing a task. Leave a message that explains that you will return the call at a particular time. Then return the calls.
Most importantly, try this at home. You may be surprised at the reaction you get. You might realize what your spouse or your child really needs – time with you.
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