So, yes, it’s late and i’m tired, but i couldn’t just leave it at that, because the above quote is so good. I ran across this from George Bernard Shaw in a book on mentoring (which I can’t access now, due to cat wrangling) and snapped that picture to send to my wife. In case it’s hard to read, the quote goes:
The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
This was a great quote to send to my wife because our first vow is communication, yet we have observed problems with communication a lot. Often, when the two of us think we are on the same page, frequently we have each communicated to each other something different using similar-sounding language.
I was struck by how hard it is to get this right, even conceptually, when I was skimming The Geometry of Meaning, a book I recently acquired at a used bookstore, which talks about something called something like a “semantic transfer function” (again, I can’t look up the precise wording right now as I am cat wrangling). But the basic idea presented is that you can define a function describing how the meaning that is said by one person is transformed into the meaning that is heard by another.
If you pay attention to how communication fails, it becomes clear how idealized – how ultimately wrongheaded – it is. Because you may have some idea in your head, but you had some reason to communicate it as a speech act, and something you wanted to accomplish inside the hearer’s head – but there’s no guaranteed that what you said is what you meant, and much less whether what was heard was what was said, or whether the interpretation matched what was heard, much less said or meant.
But even if they took your meaning – even if the semantic transfer function worked perfectly to deliver a message, there is no guarantee that that the information that is delivered will cause the appropriate cognitive move in the hearer’s brain. Perhaps we’re all familiar with the frustration of trying to communicate an inconveniently true fact to someone who stubbornly won’t absorb it because it’s politically inconvenient for them, but the matter is worse if your speech was designed to prompt some action – as Loki and one of the kittens just found out, when he tried to communicate “stop messing with me, you’re half my size, you little putz” as a speech act to get the kitten to leave him alone. It had the opposite effect, and the kitten knocked itself onto the floor when it tried to engage a sixteen-pound ball of fur and muscle.
So what does that have to do with drainage?
My wife and I have had a number of miscommunications about the cats recently, ones where we realized that we were using the same words to talk about different things, and didn’t end up doing things the way each other wanted. But it isn’t just us. The cats stayed indoors mostly today, because workmen came by to work on a drainage project. I went out to sync up with the foreman about adding a bit to the next phase of work, and he offhandedly said, “sure, now that we’re finished with the front.”
“But wait,” I said. “What about the drains in the front?”
“What drains in the front?” he asked.
We stared at each other blankly for a moment, then walked around the house. It rapidly became clear that even though we had used the same words to talk about the same job related to the same problem – excess water tearing through the mulch – we had meant two completely different things by it: I had meant fixing the clogged drains of the downspout of the gutter that were the source of the water, and he had took that to mean fixing the clogged drains where that water flowed out into the rest of the yard. A rainstorm soon started, and we were able to both look at the problem directly and agree what needed to be fixed. (The below picture was from later in the night, from another drain that was clogged and in need of repair).
It turns out the things that I wanted fixed – the things that had prompted me to get the job done in the first place – were so trivial that he threw them into the job at no extra cost. And the things that the foreman had focused on fixing, which also needed to be fixed but didn’t seem that important from the outside, were actually huge jobs indicative of a major mis-step on the original installation of the drainage system.
We resolved it, but it took us repeatedly syncing up, listening for issues as we spoke, and checking back with each other – in both directions – when things didn’t sound quite right for us to first notice and then resolve the problem. Which is why I found it so apropos to come across that Shaw quote (which I can look up now that the cats have settled down, it’s in The Coaching Habit) as it illustrated everything me and my wife had been noticing about this very problem.
Just because you’ve said the words doesn’t mean they were heard. And just because they’re said back to you correctly doesn’t mean that the hearer actually heard you. If you spoke to prompt action, then it’s important to check back in with the actor and make sure that they’re doing what you wanted them to – and even if they’re not, it’s important to figure out whether the difference is their problem – or is on your end, because you haven’t actually understood what was involved in what you asked them to do.
So, yeah. The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place – so rather than trust the illusion in your mind, take some time to verify the facts on the ground.
-the Centaur
Pictured: “Shaw!”, obstreperous cats, and a malfunctioning drain.
