Anyone feel like they could communicate a bit better?
I definitely could.
As I’m female, I have no trouble speaking.
But I don’t always communicate what I want or need to say.
Part of this is that I’m naturally shy and awkward, but this is more about growing a set and actually opening my mouth at all, rather than not communicating effectively. And in fact, the shy and socially anxious thing is much easier to deal with than some of my other communication shortcomings, because I know about it and I have strategies to deal with it. It’s a bit like people who are alcoholics, they know they have to stay away from it because they have alcoholic “tendencies” that they have to manage their whole life.
Sometimes though, communication errors can be funny, in retrospect at least.
A good example of this comes from back when email had just come in. At this point, we only had slow dial up internet, where you could actually hear it dialling up to get a connection, and where you often had to wait for websites to open. I was living with my sister at the time and we were both dealing with a gentleman in the real estate industry. I don’t even remember what we were dealing with him in relation to. But suffice to say, both of us thought he was a complete arsehole. Anyway, on this particular occasion, he sent me an email. In response to the email I quickly typed a comment to my sister that referenced my aforementioned opinion of him and sent it off, only to realise in horror that I’d actually replied to the gentleman’s email, rather than forwarded the email to my sister. Unfortunately, there was no “undo send” button at the time. I was beetroot red with mortification, and I did make the effort of ringing his office the next day to apologise to him. He wasn’t in the office when I called (apparently), so I emailed him to apologise. But essentially there’s really not much that you can do to remedy the situation when you’ve called someone an arsehole.
I was just lucky that he took it on the chin and handled it incredibly well.
My mate Bron also relates a great story about miscommunication that happened when text messaging on mobile phones was a much newer thing. This was when there were no emoticons and you had to abbreviate every word as much as possible because you were charged per text, and in fact were often charged on a per word basis. Anyway, the lady in Bron’s story knew someone who’d just lost a loved one, so she sent her off what she thought was a kind and highly appropriate text which she finished with the acronym LOL, thinking it meant lots of love. She only discovered the inappropriateness of the message when someone informed her about the laugh out loud thing.
Personally, I never get anything I write 100% perfect first time, so I need to edit everything I type, including emails. But I’m at extra risk when I email because I have a tendency to use smiley faces in emails a fair bit, which have a devious and wayward habit of turning into winks. This is because my fingers have a habit of forgetting the shift key that turns the semi colon into a colon before hitting the half bracket smile. This of course creates a wink instead of a smiley face. In a professional context, this can be crucifyingly embarrassing. Luckily, so far none of my sleazy winks have been set loose on the world, but I still have to watch the little buggers and check every email before I send it, because they’re extremely randy.
However, I actually think it’s a good thing that I’ll never be able to take my communication skills for granted. I like the fact that I have to be aware of how I communicate, and to think about how I can improve my communication skills to work more effectively with people in my personal and professional life.
Because of course communication has a number of elements that we all have control over. It has to include the right message, and this message has to be expressed clearly and effectively. Some of my messages have definitely been unclear in the past because I didn’t want to come across as bossy, so I now try to re-assess professional messages for clarity before I send them. Communication also has to be expressed at the right time to ensure that it is received, and received as well as possible. No communication is going to be effective at 4.45 pm on a Friday afternoon when the person you’re contacting is just about to head off to the pub after a stressful week. And finally, communication has to be delivered in the right format. Speaking, words, texts, visuals, photos and videos are all forms of communication that are appropriate for some messages and inappropriate for others. To use a personal example, anything emotional or delicate is usually best dealt with using direct verbal communication.
So in summary, I’ll keep working on my communication skills for as long as I still have air in my lungs, because I’ve experienced the pain of getting bad results from bad communication, and the incredible beauty and joy of getting good results from good communication in both my personal and professional life.
© Annemaree Jensen