If you think your colleagues don't express themselves well, even in very important settings, you may be right. Indeed, most of us seriously overestimate our ability to communicate effectively. Those of us in the discipline of communication have known that for years, but now comes a study demonstrating how great the potential for miscommunication really is.
Boaz Keysar and Anne Henley, psychologists at the University of Chicago, studied 40 pairs of listeners and speakers. The talkers believed that their intended meaning was understood "most of the time." That belief, like a lot of other so called "soft skill" beliefs, won't stand up to the scrutiny of research.
The research showed that nearly half the time that speakers thought they were understood, they were actually wrong. In 46% of the cases there was a breakdown--the listeners didn't get it. What's most surprising is that the speakers were warned that the info that they were to communicate was ambiguous. "Even then, even though they were warned," the researcher said, "they still thought they managed to convey their intention with intonation."
Keysar suggested that this overestimation of communication effectiveness is indicative of the "illusion of control." That's a phenomenon that's observed in numerous activities. For example, lottery devotees often believe that when they select the numbers, they have a better chance of winning than when the numbers are selected randomly. That's a false belief.
So what's a person to do to check out the effectiveness of his/her communication when the issue is important? Here's where effective questioning can come to the fore. Notice my adjective, "effective." What that means can be clarified, hopefully, with a number of questioning examples.
"Did you hear me?' Absolute waste of time and verbiage. The answer is nearly always yes and means zip.
"Do you understand me?" Nearly absolute waste of time and verbiage. (It's just possible, though rare, that someone might respond in the negative and ask for further clarification. Still, probably zip.)
"What did you hear me say?" Nearly absolute waste of time and verbiage. People can parrot and paraphrase without ever understanding the meaning or implications of a message.
The most effective means of checking a message is through what's called an "implication question." After a message, you come up with a question like this: "Based on my conversation, what do you see as the next two or three steps?" You're asking a question re information you have not given, and asking them to draw some conclusions. Then, by listening closely, you can tell whether or not they got the message. If so, hurray! If not, you've got to start over.
If you want to check your own understanding, use what I call the "reverse implication question" to validate your understanding. You've thought through what you understood was said, and made some tentative conclusions. So you respond with your own question: "Based on what you've said, here's what I think needs to be done. . . . What do you think?" And let the speaker respond. If he agrees, hurray! If not, the two of you have got to go back to ground zero again.
If you look closely to my description of an implication question, you'll notice that I've dictated a "process." That's why I refer to the process as a "language technology."
So, what do you think?
