Transform your life by Penny Ferguson

Author:Penny Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: The Infinite Ideas Company Limited

28

Do I have that right?

Good communication enhances relationships. The mood of a family dinner or the success of a business meeting can be transformed when we actually understand each other rather than simply think that we do.

Have you ever been involved in a heated debate with someone when it suddenly dawns on you what they actually mean and you realise you agree with them after all?

TESTING UNDERSTANDING

Sometimes, even though we’re listening to what’s being said, we’re not actually hearing what is meant. Let me give you an example. Have you ever been somewhere such as a conference or parents’ evening where the keynote speaker or the head teacher are on stage and addressing the audience? You’re listening but you’re beginning to think you must be missing something because you’re not entirely clear about what they’re talking about. You wonder whether there’s a paper that you should have read or a letter at home that has gone astray. However, everyone else seems to know what’s going on and so you don’t want to make a fool of yourself by asking a question.

If you’re lucky, some brave soul will raise their hand and say something like, ‘When you said that you’re now planning on moving forward with the project, did you mean…. ‘The speaker is then likely to either say, ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean’ or ‘No, what I meant was….’ At this point you can feel the relief in the room as everyone begins to understand what the speaker meant, and you realise it wasn’t just you that was feeling lost. But what if nobody had asked a question to clarify the situation?

The English language is full of words that are difficult to define. We know their basic meaning, but they can take on a different emphasis dependent upon the context or the aim of the speaker. For example, if your child asks you to pick them up from school early the next day you may wish to ask what they mean by early, otherwise you could arrive an hour before your usual time when in fact your child only meant five minutes early.

CONFUSION REIGNS

Imagine that you’ve just had your appraisal at work and your boss has highlighted a couple of areas in which you need to ‘do better’. You think this means that you need to do things like write a more detailed report and maybe attend more departmental meetings. At your next meeting with him, however, he tells you he’s disappointed. And when you ask why, he says that he was expecting a more committed response from you. If only you’d realised that what he really wanted was for you to send in weekly updates to keep him informed, to communicate with other departments on a daily basis and to include some additional recommendations in your report. If only you’d asked what he actually meant by ‘better’!

So why didn’t you? For some reason we’re often reluctant to ask in case it makes us look silly. But how silly

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.