Listen to the audio version of this post here.

The Biggest Problem in Communication

They say the British playwright George Bernard Shaw said it first. “The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

But then some other they insist it was the American journalist William H. Whyte who wrote in a 1950 Fortune article,“The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it.”

And other citations pop up in the years since then. Seems to me it doesn’t matter much who said it first, who quoted whom, and how the specifics shifted slightly. The pronouncement hits the nail on the head, doesn’t it?

Here’s how the illusion happens.

You say something to a colleague, or your spouse, or your child. “We’ll meet tomorrow at 2:00.” “I’ll be a little late getting home this evening. I have to make a quick stop after work.” “It’s time to pick up your room.” That sort of thing.

They nod. They may even answer affirmatively. You assume they heard what you said, and they got the message.

Then your coworker doesn’t show up for the 2:00 meeting. Your spouse calls you to find out why you’re still not home. Your kid doesn’t even begin to pick up in their room.

It’s clear they missed your message completely; it went right by them. Or maybe they took it in, even gave it a bit of attention … and promptly forgot the whole thing.

How do we wind up so often talking past each other like that?

Seems to me there are two possible problems: the way the message is delivered and the way the message is received.

Maybe we rambled when we were talking to them. We went on and on until our conversational partner tuned us out. We might have interrupted one thought and jumped to something else, and then maybe we went back to the first thing or maybe not, and they completely lost track of our main message. Or we mumbled or muttered or otherwise made ourselves hard to hear.

Or, maybe there’s a reception problem. They weren’t really listening in the first place. They were preoccupied with other things or just disinterested in us and what we have to say. Or they literally couldn’t hear us well because of noise in the environment, a bad phone connection, or a language barrier.

How do we eliminate the illusion that communication took place?

When we’re delivering a message, we’d do well to be clear, concise, and brief. Attention spans are short; the longer we talk the likelier it is that their attention wanders.

Action words add oomph to what we’re saying, draw people in. And adverbs can bog us down and lose them.

What about when we’re on the receiving end? We need to put down our phones, set aside other concerns, and focus like a laser on the person talking to us. It helps to look right at them, if we’re talking in person.

Distractions abound when we’re speaking on the phone, don’t they? It might sound silly, but I actually find it helps to look right at my phone, the same way I’d look at the person if we were physically together. It seems to boost focus for me.

And then a big piece of it is desire.

Do I actually want to say something to this individual? And maybe more to the point, do I want to listen to what they say to me?

We need to set a frame like that for listening if we want real communication to take place. I don’t know about you, but I find it challenging. I can think of several times in just the past few days that I’ve left a conversation realizing I missed part of what was said.

Maybe it wasn’t that relevant, or interesting, or timely. It’s okay, I guess, to let go of those bits of conversation. Who has the bandwidth to remember everything we heard all day long?

But I am working to listen better. To be more attentive. To get past the illusion of communication and make it real. Maybe you’ll join me in the effort?