Bo, Rol, Michael, et al.
This has been an interesting discussion about communications. And in the
past 24 hours, I've had two people tell me that the liked email better
than phone mail because they could be more specific with an email and get
more closure on their communications. Duh.
Simple-minded as I am, I was reminded of a simple exercise.
The message: "I didn't say she loves me."
A low risk bet is to assume that most readers, even English as second
language ones, understand exactly what I meant.
But if I emphasize different words, I change the meaning dramatically.
Thus,
_I_ didn't say she loves me.
I DIDN'T say she loves me.
I didn't SAY she loves me.
I didn't say SHE loves me.
I didn't say she LOVES me.
I didn't say she loves ME.
Each of us has all kinds of filters operating at many different levels,
coding, manipulating, decoding, storing, etc. But we go along thinking
that there is one interpretation, our own.
One COULD say my wife lives me, though. And on occasion my wife can take
a breath in that special way, thus starting an argument with me
nonverbally. She clearly indicates her intentions, given the WAY she
breathed in addition to body language, facial expression, etc. Sometimes
and maybe.
So, methinks this communication thing is quite difficult and that many
complicated and detailed models all work to explain aspects of it.
I, personally, like much of the NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) approach
but get really bogged down discussing the Metaprogram / Metalanguage
aspect of it. Why can't I communicate with those people!
For the Fun of It!
--Scott Simmerman Performance Management Company, 3 Old Oak Drive, Taylors SC USA 29687-6624 74170.1061@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>