Communication- there is always room for improvement!

Communication some how seemed like an overrated topic to me for a while, partly because I was always a chatty personality and was even good in probing people enough to make them communicate back. I strongly believed that it does not matter what language you speak or how you speak or not speak, as long as you can get your message across you have done your work.  But, over years certainly learned more subtle elements of communication that can always help. Will share my observations around some of these elements in next few posts.

Relevance of the information is the first one that comes to my mind. Have you ever observed a conversation between a toddler and a parent, where ending is not so pleasant with a crying toddler and a frustrated parent? I have lived with that, until I understood what the problem was.  The problem was that the information I was giving was relevant from my perspective, but not from my toddler’s perspective. Does not still mean that I have conquered the world of toddlers, but for sure I have learned a lesson in communication and try to put information in perspective of the person I am communicating with.

A couple of years back, I was watching a mom tell her 2 year old child to return a toy back to their friend and the child was not ready to part. Mom kept saying, ‘please give it back’ and the child kept increasing her grip. The conversation did not change until the child’s older sibling came and told her, “this toy is not yours, give it back.” It occurred to me that the child was not even ready to listen in the absence of a reason why she needs to return the toy back. That was the more relevant piece of information for the child. For the mother the only relevant information was that the child returns the toy.

What is relevant to each of us changes our absorption of information and how we respond in a communication. We all have that child in us who wants to hear the relevant information we care about and in the absence of that, we do dig in our heels deeper and it is difficult for us to come out of an argument. So if relevant information is missing I try to convince the child in me to understand the other side. Try that and it might work for your communications.