I happened to run into a quote from George Bernard Shaw, the British playwright who died in 1950. It seems to aim directly at one of the most common problems faced by executives…and just about everyone else.
“The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”
George Bernard Shaw
How often do you catch yourself saying “I told you what to do” or some similar line? How often do you give direction and return to find the action bearing no resemblance to what you requested? How often do you find yourself thinking “what’s wrong with them that they can’t understand simple instructions“?
Perhaps the answer isn’t with them but with your hallucination that you communicated, that you spoke and were understood, that your words mean the same thing to them as they do to you. Perhaps it’s that illusion of infallibility I wrote about last post…that rise to power that leads to behavior simulating brain damage.
As John Grinder, one of the founders of NeuroLinguistic Programming used to say to me, “communication is the response you get.” The responsibility for effective communication lies with you, not them.
John Grinder