♥ A PERSONAL STORY AND WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT COMMUNICATION EXCELLENCE ♥
By Joseph P. Faust, Founder LoveLife University
I pride myself on being an excellent listener and communicator, and recently I had a personal slip in communication. I wanted to share what I learned from my mistake.
Here’s what happened: One of my teachers and someone I deeply respect sent an email with an important communication to their support team, which includes me! I was busy and wasn’t available to participate in the event the email addressed, so I didn’t properly receive the communication and figured I’d address it later.
Unfortunately, the second time the communication was sent it was sent verbally to a group and I was tired and distracted. (I was busy processing an internal conversation with myself about a related personal story the teacher had shared earlier.)
As a result, I met with someone that was against the Guidelines sent by the teacher, and the non-alignment with her protocol was experienced as a breach of trust. This pained me because I deeply value trust and pride myself in being trustworthy. And, because I understand my teacher’s point of view and because she sent the communication twice, I couldn’t reconcile my oversight. My learning is that communication has four parts:
- Sending
- Receiving
- Processing
- Confirmation that the receiver has received and processed the message accurately.
For me to be an excellent communicator, in the role of sender or receiver I am responsible for all four parts of the communication loop to successfully occur and be completed. For example, if I clearly write a letter and throw it over the fence into my neighbor’s yard and then expect he has read it, understands, and agrees with all I said, I’m likely to experience ineffective letter writing results. My new goal is to take 100% responsibility for the entire four-step communication loop, whether I’m the original sender or receiver of a message.
I’ve now put this communication out into the world and will only know that you have received, understood, and agreed with it if you communicate with me; I can verify for myself that the four steps have been achieved. So, I’d love to hear what, if anything, of what I’ve shared has landed in your world. Contact Joseph