#22-12-18-06: Being Understood #2
Being Understood #2
“Imagine Being Understood - Again”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, December 18, 2006
Good evening!
I want to spend one more blog entry on the topic of “context.” In the last blog I introduced you to the phrase “I didn’t steal your wallet.” and I showed you how if you repeated the phrase several times with emphasis on different words each time, you could convey different meanings.
For example, below I’ve written the same phrase over and over again. I’ve made one of the words “bold” and blue. As you read each phrase out loud, speak the bold word with emphasis and notice what happens to the meaning of the whole phrase.
1. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
2. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
3. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
4. “I didn’t steal your wallet."
5. “I didn’t steal your wallet.”
Notice how the meaning of each phrase changes as you change the word emphasized. This changing or transmission of the “meaning” of a communication based on non-verbal cues instead of the meaning conveyed by the content is called “context”.
Therefore, we can say that a human communication is made up of “content and context.” And as we can see in the five phrases above, the meaning structured by the context can and usually does “override” the meaning conveyed by the content.
This is a huge conclusion. Let me repeat it:
The meaning conveyed by the context usually overrides the meaning conveyed by the context.
So…
IN FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION....
Context is conveyed by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue.
Context is conveyed by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound.
Context is conveyed by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process.
IN PHONE COMMUNICATION...
Context is NOT CONVEYED by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.
Context is conveyed by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound.
Context is NOT CONVEYED by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.
IN EMAIL COMMUNICATION...
Context is NOT CONVEYED by facial expressions, a smile, a furrowed brow, a look, or some other visual cue, because you can’t see the person you are communicating with.
Context is NOT CONVEYED by the voice tone, inflections, speed of communication, loudness, or some other cue based on sound, because you can’t hear the person you are communicating with.
Context is NOT CONVEYED by a touch, a gesture, and hand-shake, or some other emotional process, because you are not in the presence of the person you are communicating with.
Therefore, the whole meaning of the communication must be conveyed by the “content” and we have seen that content is a poor way to communicate meaning, unless you are conveying completely unambiguous information.
It should be clear now why emails are so dangerous as a communication tool. They are very short on context. Therefore, if you want to use email as a form of communication that is more than just raw data, it is important to spend the time in the beginning of the email necessary to establish the context. The introduction portion of the email should establish the way in which the email is to understood.
My rule of thumb is, if I want to communicate with someone, my first choice is to meet with them face-to-face. If that’s not possible, then I’ll call them on the phone. Only if I can’t meet in person or call them on the phone will I use email as my communication vehicle. And then, I’ll spend a good deal of the first part of the email establishing the context so that the person reading my email will know exactly what I want the meaning of my communication to be.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 12/18 at 07:58 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Management • Technical Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • Communication for engineers • Soft Skills for engineers • Soft Skills for Technologists • (0) Comments • Permalink
#21-12-12-06: Being Understood
Being Understood
”Imagine Being Understood”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Good day!
Imagine… imagine what it would be like if whenever you communicated with anyone, you were… completely understood. Imagine what it would be like to say something to someone face-to-face, and… be completely understood. Imagine writing a memo or speaking on the phone and always being clearly and… totally understood. In fact, imagine the unthinkable… imagine sending an email and always, always have the recipient understand exactly what you meant in the email. No more misunderstandings. No more weird responses.
Alas, imaging all that is indeed a fantasy. It’s hard enough being understood when you are in front of someone talking to them, let alone have an email accepted and understood, as you want. It just doesn’t seem to be in the cards, does it? It seems to be… part of life.
I had this fact driven home to me last week, and so I’m writing about that experience in this blog. Even though I teach and coach communication excellence to technical professionals and managers, the issues that I coach and train on are so ingrained in our neurological makeup as human beings, that I still succumb to the mistakes we are all prone to.
Here is what happened. I’m completing a book on transitioning from technologist to technical manager and I’m currently talking to several possible editors for my book. I had been intermittently communicating to one potential editor, via email, for several weeks and then, due to other commitments, I hadn’t communicated with her for a couple of weeks. When we finally reconnected via email, we still did not know each other very well and so I hadn’t yet decided whom to engage as my editor.
The editor I’m speaking about here had sent me previous emails without a lot of “context”. In most communications, context is mostly made up of body language, voice tone, and other “non-verbal” cues that we pick up, often subconsciously, from the other person. It’s easy to pick up context in face-to-face communication and a little more challenging to do so in phone conversation, but very difficult in emails.
For example, below I’ve written the same phrase over and over again. I’ve made one of the words “bold and maroon”. As you read each phrase out loud, speak the bold word with emphasis and notice what happens to the meaning of the whole phrase. Here we go.
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
“I didn’t steal your wallet.”
Now notice how the meaning of each phrase changes as you change the emphasized word. This is what I mean by “context”. The words, that is, the content, stayed the same, but because the “context” changed the meaning of the phrase changed.
Back to the email from my potential editor. So, after not communicating with her for several weeks, I sent her an email to reconnect and to tell her that I would not be making a decision regarding my editor selection until after the first of the year.
I then received an email from her in response to my email. In it, she made a reference to something that she had mentioned in a very early email, and that reference took me back to that early email. In the current email there was very little “contextual information”, it was mainly content.
Since there was very little context, and by that I mean, there were not a lot of messages about how I was supposed to interpret current her email, I was left to interpret her email on my own. Since she referenced a topic from a long-ago email, I decided (subconsciously) to establish the same context as the older email. And that context was a little confrontational. So because there were no new contextual cues I interpreted her current email based on the old context which was aggressive.
I decided to respond to her by referencing the aggressive “tone” of her email and indicated that I was surprised by her aggressive response. Within 15 minutes I received an email back from her indicating that she in no way intended to be aggressive and was merely telling me about some things that were going on in her life.
I had completely miss-read her email. I had looked for contextual cues, found none that I recognized and therefore made my own interpretation of the meaning of her email based on past contextual cues. (Fortunately, we were open enough in our communication that we could adjust our communication in near real time.)
Unfortunately however, this miscommunication is exactly what happens all too often in your world too. Doesn’t it? We send a message, and without spending sufficient time to establish the context so the person knows how to interpret our message, we leave it up to the receiver to decide how to interpret our message. And, as often as not, they interpret it incorrectly. This can be avoided if we will just spend the time to establish the context up front. In fact, those of you who have worked with me will remember this phrase;
“Send the content only when you’ve established the context within which it is to be interpreted.”
................or another way to say it is........
“Don’t send the content until you’ve established the context”
They key is to understand that this will never go away. It happens to all of us. The key is to understand that it will happen and to keep the communication channels open. This is also why;
“The responsibility for effective communication rests with the sender of the message, because it is only the sender who knows what the message was intended to mean.”
The receiver doesn’t have a clue as to what was intended, only the sender does.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 12/12 at 01:55 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Management • Technical Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • Communication for engineers • Soft Skills for engineers • Soft Skills for Technologists • (1) Comments • Permalink
#20-12-04-06: Why Are You A Technologist?
Why be a Technologist?
”What made you choose to be a technical professional?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, December 4, 2006
Good evening!
Do you believe in accidents? Do you believe in choice? When you go to an ice cream store, (assuming you like a particular ice cream) do you always select the same flavor? Do you really select that “favorite ice cream (or food) or does it select you? Does your physiology begin the cascade of chemicals as soon as you see that favorite flavor and does your body begin preparing you to select it? Is this really choice or just the allusion of choice?
Did you select your career or did your career select you?For some of you reading this right now you are probably wondering what part of what planet I must be from. How can a career select us?
Look at it this way. Let’s break this career topic into two major groups; the world of apparent and seemingly provable order and the world of apparent disorder. And in the world of apparent order lets put all engineering, scientific, and technical disciplines. In the world of apparent disorder lets put all marketing, inter-personal human interaction and communication, social, and psychological disciplines.
I don’t have to work very hard to convince most of you that the disciplines of marketing, inter-personal human interaction and communication, social, and physiological are areas that we don’t understand well enough to even come close to having a cause-and-effect relationship between the various known parameters. In fact, to most of us, these “human” disciplines are completely “unknowable”. They depend on “people”. They seem to be independent of rational thought or analysis. They seem to be more dependent on blood sugar levels and moon cycles than on identifiable and predictable laws of the universe. Interacting with other people can be as unpredictable as tossing a coin.
On the other hand, F=ma, E=IR, Bernoulli’s equation, computer coding, and the first, second, and third laws of thermodynamics, are trustworthy laws and processes that allow us to build bridges, put humans on the moon, develop electric motors and do the million and one things that allow us to create an ever advancing world. That’s the key isn’t it? These predictable laws allow us to create. Predictable laws of the universe allow us to create something new in that universe.
Now, I can guarantee you that those people who have selected inter-personal human interaction and communication, marketing, and psychology believe they are creating their worlds as well. Only they don’t have to create that world from a predictable set of laws and cause-and-effect relationships. They are willing to live with the seeming uncertainty that comes from working without “concrete” laws.
Therefore, to choose a career in technology instead of a career in marketing or human development is not so much to choose a career, it is rather to choose a way of moving through the world. It is a choice about how much “certainty” you want in the world and how you want to deal with the uncertainty in it. In one career we attempt to diminish the uncertainty in order to create something. In the other, we are willing to live with the uncertainty in order to create something, as well. Both careers create, one with laws that attempt to reduce variability, the other within the dynamics of the variability.
To become an engineer or a scientist is to make a statement to the world something like: “I don’t particularly like uncertainty, and I’m going to do two things; first, I’m going to create what I can using those things I know to be certain in the world; and second, I’m going to do what I can to illuminate what looks like uncertainty and attempt to show that there is actually something certain about what appears to be uncertain. (This, of course, is what Chaos Theory is all about, isn’t it?)
Therefore, for those of us who have chosen the career of technology, (I’m included) we have done so because we want to understand and create order out of the seeming disorder all around us. And the biggest arena of disorder that we see is associated with people (just look at the current international world stage!).
Therefore, as a technologist, when you are tapped to move into technology management, and when you begin down the technology management path, you are making not only a career change, but also a fundamental shift in the way you are choosing to move through the world.
The reason most technical professionals fail to become good technical managers, or the reason they fail to even make the transition, is that they are being asked to completely shift their concept of world. They are being asked to shift form an appreciation of certainty and an understanding of a seemingly predictable world to an acceptance of the unpredictability and seeming chaos of the human world. They are ultimately being asked to leave the world of technology were cause-and-effect rule for the dynamic and variable world of human interaction of human inter-personal communication, motivation, management and leadership.
Is it any wonder this is such a difficult shift to make? Most technical professionals don’t even know they are being asked to take on a new career! Think of it that way, and you begin to understand why I think preparation for this shift is so important. From technologist to technical manager is, for most, a new career.
The transition can be made. It is actually a very enjoyable transition. But it is best made with your eyes wide open and with an understanding of what you are really being asked to do.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 12/04 at 11:03 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Leadership • Management • Fully Integrated Tech Professional • (0) Comments • Permalink
