Am I clear?
Communication 101
I remember sitting in my first class in communication during my bachelor degree. The teacher walked us through the basic principles of communication. It’s quite simple, you have the sender, sending the message through a channel. The receiver, receiving the message then providing feedback to the sender. If everything goes well and there is no noise on the channel both parties understand each other.
Most of the time, not all goes well. We end up creating all sorts of interactions where everyone is left frustrated and misunderstood.
In order to help, I would add a few key elements to the basic model.
First, intention. In order to be understood by the receiver, the sender must be clear about his intentions : do I want to inform, convince, apologize? It seems basic but how many times were you on the receiving end of a jumble of words, racking your brain to understand what the person wants to tell you and finally losing patience and say: what’s your point exactly?
Second, tone. Once the intention is clear, the tone…sets the tone! The same message is not going to be received the same way depending on the tone. Have you ever tried complimenting someone in an angry tone? Or to get a raise by apologizing? It might work, but I’m pretty sure you are more likely to confuse your interlocutor than to transmit the message!
Last but not least, asking if the message is understood as it was intended. How to do it? By asking a fundamental question : Am I clear? It deepens the feedback part. First because a lot of people don’t provide feedback once they receive the message or they do it awkwardly thus contributing to the confusion.
It’s the one we tend to skip the most.
We presume that our counterpart shares the same langage, culture, references, history as we do. We take for granted that because we use words in a certain order we will be understood. We think that if people have something to say they will say it.
It takes humility to ask the question. A willingness to have an optimal communication. It also takes courage.
Because as humans, we sometimes shy away from the truth. We don’t ask the question because somehow we don’t want to hear the answer.
It’s not often deliberate. It’s mostly unconscious.
So, as conscious leaders our job is to dive deep. To plunge into the truth, to bring clarity into our communication.
To ask the question until the answer is : yes, we understand each other perfectly.
