You have thought about how many opportunities do we lose because we don't know how to relate? Isn't it frequent to hear that this world is made for people who know how to relate? There are those who have the gift of liking everyone and there are those who despite being good people, with great intelligence, project a distorted image for not knowing how to communicate properly. Xavier Guix expresses it well in his book "I neither understand nor understand myself" when he refers to the balance that must exist between communicating and relating. "Communication is a matter of skill and occupation, while knowing how to relate is knowing how to be yourself and to be with others."
Communication aims to build stable relationships to function in an environment. There is no doubt that feelings come into play in relationships, which sometimes unite or separate us. Communication is not easy or difficult, it is we who complicate things. Guix points out that there is the principle of intentionality; it refers to the fact that every action always carries an intention and when we observe the actions of other people, we generally attribute to it the intentions that I have associated with it. That is why it is common for us to conflict, when we judge a fact, at first sight, from our perspective, from our intentions, which are not necessarily exact.
We must understand that people are not the same as yesterday, nor those of an hour ago. We are subject to changes in emotional states, product of the situations we face. So it should not surprise us when the boss is in a bad mood today and yesterday was a "rattle" or when the husband or wife does not have the same expression and tone of voice as yesterday. It is important to determine how is the person today and here? How do you feel today and here? And how is our relationship today and here? understanding the present is essential, because we can be at different times, with different internal states and different intentions.
Sound familiar? «Pepe the manager says:« I no longer know how to say things to the chief of operations… I have spoken to him in a thousand ways and he does not understand me, he has been in the job for 10 years and he is supposed to… »» In the family, my son has 13 years old and he is no longer the same, he no longer wants to go out with us, he prefers to be "glued" to the computer. I have told him thousands of times not to leave things lying on the floor… I don't know what's wrong with him! ». In a married couple, the wife says; "We have been married for 15 years and we talk less and less, he has his head elsewhere, he is not interested in what is happening to me…"
Definitely, communication is much more than a sender and a receiver, right? One of the paradoxes, in these times, is precisely that despite the existence of more means of communication, we communicate less and less. In curious to observe how much it costs us to live without a cell phone for example. It has not happened to them that they leave the house and detect that they do not bring their cell phone. What do we do then? we go back to pick it up… it's as if we were missing an ear as if the world was losing color.
At work, managers often complain about collaborators because they do not do what they are asked to do, and collaborators, for their part, point out that they rarely receive feedback on their performance. Usually, when a worker is called to the boss's office and hears someone say, "Come to the office, I need to talk to you," this gives you a feeling of fear, a foreign feeling of guilt. And now what did I do? This can happen because there is a lot of reactivity in organizations and communication is associated with calls for attention and sanctions. It also happens that committee meetings are scheduled to see someone's "head roll" to alleviate the guilt of some bosses. Is this the way we should build trust?
Communication is full of generalities and inaccuracies. For example, you can imagine a boss saying to his worker, "You mishandled the customer," or "You are irresponsible." Thousands of thoughts will go through the worker's head, but probably none will decipher the boss's intention. If all of us are a world apart, it should not strike us that it costs a person so much to understand what we are trying to say. We would have to be emotionally synchronized, with our vital indicators at the same level to decipher the codes of the message at first sight. Therefore it requires patience… if a lot of patience to understand us better.
The subject of communication is very broad, so this time I am going to briefly refer to decommunication and one of the points raised by Xavier Guix. It highlights some common interferences that can generate conflicts between people. In this case I am going to quote the presuppositions:
The presuppositions is one of the aspects that characterize the human being and one of the evils associated with communication. I will try to graph it with an example that Guix mentions, when he refers to the situation that occurs in a couple who usually have lunch together. What happens if one of them doesn't call one day? The other person thinks: "If he has not called me, it is because he will not come to lunch" she thinks so because it is what he would do in that situation.
However, the person, who has not been able to call before, occurs to call and a response like this occurs: "oh, since you didn't call me, I assumed you had a job and I already had lunch there." The other gets angry and says "You could have called me", answer: it's like the last time you had a lot of work you decided not to come to lunch, I assumed you wouldn't have time for me and you would do the same… You can imagine the continuation of this " movie". Similar things happen at work, for example when a department is entrusted with a task and they don't do it because they thought the other area would do it.
What is happening? It is almost a custom to take everything for granted, we believe that there are things that are understood. We assume that people must be responsible, that they should see things as we see them. It is better to clarify and know what you want, how you want it and who is going to do it and it is better to make sure that you have understood.
Later I will continue to share with you other common interferences in communication. What I want to leave you as a reflection is that we can communicate even better and I am sure that we would solve a large part of our interpersonal relationship problems. In our different roles we try to review that we can change. To love someone you have to know them first and without a good relationship it will be more difficult to achieve it. Do not miss the opportunity to get to know your children, your colleagues, your bosses better, I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.
Until next time!
