Communication

The goal of effective communication is to have the person you’re speaking to understand what you want them to know.

As easy as that may sound, it isn’t. For starters, you have to throw out the Golden Rule.  If you think you just need to say what you want to say in a way that you would understand, you aren’t thinking about the other person at all.  Sure, you still need to respect them, and not make them feel bad.  But after that, the words you use, the tone you use, the time and place where you share what you have to say—that has to be all about them, and not about you.

This lesson in humility was particularly important for me to learn when I was teaching teens, where it doesn’t take much to take a pretty basic, easy conversation and make it a cause dramatique.  I honestly thought it was impossible to teach the Pythagorean Theorem in an offensive way, until I presented it to tenth graders who had boys, girls, popularity, who they would sit next to at lunch, and Boy George on their minds.  A-, B- and C- squared didn’t stand a chance.

I can’t claim to be a sensei of communication, but I think I got pretty good at it.  It turns out each class is its own stage, or field of play.  As a result, whenever I had to deliver important news to a student, it was never before class (when the student was in “pre-game” mode), during class (in the middle of the performance), or right after class (when they were mentally reviewing their post-game highlight reel). 

That kind of news required a different time, and a different place, where I would be talking to a different person.  It’s easy to see teens as anxious-ridden sturm-and-drangers when they’re around other teens, because when they’re around other teens, that’s exactly what they seem to be.  Alone, most of them are thoughtful, personable, perceptive, receptive, reasonable, and – most important—comfortable.  If you have something to say, that’s the best possible condition to say it.

My teaching days are long behind me, yet I’m still amazed how these same rules apply with adults.  Raise a new idea that’s a little too out there during the “brainstorming” phase of an allegedly “open” meeting, and it goes nowhere.  Ask the wrong ice breaker at a party, and you get a litany of anxiety-laden boasts about the size of their house, their rank at the office, or their next trip to Tuscany. Give a politician lights, audience, and a microphone, and forget about being informed; it’s now show time.

That last point came to mind when people shamed CNN for giving Donald Trump a live town hall meeting so close to his court losses.  CNN countered that the guy had a right to speak, and silencing him was unconstitutional.

CNN was almost right, but it’s clear CNN never taught middle school.  If they really wanted us to hear what Donald Trump had to say—and not the standard, canned Tumpbytes– you put him in a room with fewer lights, one reporter, and record it a week after he lost his case.  Not only would Trump’s content have been more thoughtful; the audience’s listening would have been, too.

Pep rallies are great, but they don’t fuel thoughtful discourse—and that’s OK, because they aren’t meant to.  But when it comes time to say something important, give the ideas a chance, and consider the audience.  You’ve already won yourself over.  Move on to everybody else.

Meringue

A bowl of stiff seas
Could be brought to its knees
Without the one eighth of tartar.
The amount may seem slight
But it summons its might
And dessert is a cushion white star.

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