I do a lot of training, educating, troubleshooting, listening, brainstorming, teaching, helping, coaching and various other sorts of communicating. I’m constantly trying to evaluate good ways to convey messages to others and to understand their messages to me. When I’m doing it well, I’m trying to understand their messages first, and doing that objectively.
This post by Seth Godin is spot on. He’s a great communicator. What he mentions here is a common problem that engineers and technical people fail to understand and more importantly a problem that is manageable by changing the way we communicate – not by changing the way others receive our information. We need to continue learning how to be better communicators.
The posture of a communicator
If you buy my product but don’t read the instructions, that’s not your fault, it’s mine.
If you read a blog post and misinterpret what I said, that’s my choice, not your error.
If you attend my presentation and you’re bored, that’s my failure.
If you are a student in my class and you don’t learn what I’m teaching, I’ve let you down.
It’s really easy to insist that people read the friggin manual. It’s really easy to blame the user/student/prospect/customer for not trying hard, for being too stupid to get it or for not caring enough to pay attention. Sometimes (often) that might even be a valid complaint. But it’s not helpful.
What’s helpful is to realize that you have a choice when you communicate. You can design your products to be easy to use. You can write so your audience hears you. You can present in a place and in a way that guarantees that the people you want to listen will hear you. Most of all, you get to choose who will understand (and who won’t).
Quoted from: Seth’s Blog: The posture of a communicator
Filed under: Challenge, Leadership, Listening, Perspective
