♥ 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:

  1. Sending
  2. Receiving
  3. Processing
  4. 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