Obvious? Not!
“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant” has been attributed to various individuals, including Richard Nixon, but it was more likely Robert McCloskey. No matter, the proposition lies at the heart of most communications failures.
At the root of most failures of communication is the fact that within your brain is a certain logic, fueled by facts or opinions you believe to be true, and organized according to principles which satisfy your understanding of how the world works in all its dimensions, but that “certain logic” is not likely the same as that which exists in the brain of the listener. In fact, if you have an audience of a hundred souls, you’re transmitting your interpretation of the state of affairs to a hundred different receiving sets, all running on different wavelengths. It’s a wonder that we have any success in communicating whatsoever!
It’s always interesting to think about this when you’re sitting in a “breakout group” after the keynote speaker has held the audience in the palm of their hand for forty minutes. Around those conference room tables with bad coffee, what you hear makes you wonder if everyone had been in the same room. I always gauge the true success of the keynoter on the homogeneity of the received message around the table.
Nearly everyone remembers the great line of Felix Randall in the old television series “The Odd Couple”: You should never assume. Because when you ‘assume,’ you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfvTwv5o1Qs) What Felix didn’t clarify is that assumption is a two-way street. The speaker assumes certain knowledge or understanding on the part of the listener, and the listener assumes that the speaker is coming from a worldview and appreciation of reality which is the same as their own. This is hardly ever the case.
Perhaps the most important skill of the good lawyer, whether in the courtroom or in legal drafting, is to ensure that nobody is relying on personal assumptions but that everyone is “on the same page” with respect to facts and logical outcomes. Beginner lawyers throw a garbage can full of factoids and legal snippets at the judge in the hope the judge will pick and choose and come to a finding favoring one’s clients. It doesn’t work that way in the courtroom, it doesn’t work that way in life.
The wise communicator doesn’t assume anything on the part of the listener. Your job as a writer or a speaker is to be sure that your terms of reference and those of the listener are the same. It’s here that the gifted communicator diverges from the “also ran”.
The gifted communicator lays the table both carefully and attractively. The listener is not flayed as some kind of ignorant fool, but treated as a partner in messaging, even if the listener is just coming to the table. What is important is that no discussion of resulting logic can proceed until everyone is “on the same page” with respect to the underlying facts. This requires the communicator not only to lay out the necessary foundation, but to check in, and check in again, and check in some more as the conversation proceeds.
The listener also has a job to do. Pretending to understand the speaker when you don’t have a clue does no one any favors. In a one-on-one conversation you need to stop the speaker and admit to your confusion, but when you’re in an audience of a thousand, you have to rely on your facial expressions and body language. All great platform speakers are on the lookout for such signals and appreciate them. Even in one-on-ones, the gifted communicator is watching and listening for cues that wavelengths have diverged. Pretending to understand when you don’t is not good manners, but actually a disservice, laying the groundwork for disagreement and dissension.
Obvious? I hope so.