Communication: Merely Words?

Last week, I had a friend text me a question of whether or not I was mad at her; the question caught me by surprise because I truly wasn’t upset and didn’t even know what I’d have to be upset about.  My thinking here was that my response to something was out of my normal joviality or didn’t contain the proper or expected language.  This week, I got into a discussion about communication with my coworkers with my friend’s query still in my mind.  We discussed how one’s own feelings of the person or situation may impact how they perceive the message from the communicator.  In other words, if a person has an underlying belief about the individual doing the communicating, does that color the perception of what is “behind” the communication?  And, if that perception is erroneous, how does that mistaken understanding then shade continuing communication?  And, does the person doing the communicating need to have awareness of how their message was perceived.

This premise and these questions have been on my mind ever since because I have an underlying concern of just how we communicate in this country and how much of it is a mistaken understanding.  One must understand the problem in order to fix it, right? In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. Jeff Thompson, discusses the numbers behind communication.  Thompson, who is a professor at NYU and Lipscomb University (Nashville, TN) as well as a crisis counselor, mediator, and trainer involved in hostage negotiations, writes that “…The belief is that 55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of voice, and 7% is the actual words spoken.” Thompson notes that this analysis may not be true for all situations.  “…A proper analysis needs to occur to fully grasp what the person’s current emotions are at that moment.”

3 Cs of Nonverbal Communication. Jeff Thompson
Source: 3 Cs of Nonverbal Communication. Jeff Thompson

Using the above graphic, Thompson illustrates how one may increase the accuracy of their understanding. Thompson continues: “…One way of increasing your accuracy is applying the 3 C’s of Nonverbal Communication: context, clusters, and congruence.”  But, what happens if one doesn’t have this information?  And, how much of our communication is conducted where there is no cues other than words?

Donnell King, a professor with Pellissippi State Community College, discusses the “Four Principles of Interpersonal Communication” as

  • Interpersonal communication is inescapable
  • Interpersonal communication is irreversible
  • Interpersonal communication is complicated
  • Interpersonal communication is contextual

There is the context question once again.  As King so aptly notes: “…Remember a basic principle of communication in general: people are not mind readers. Another way to put this is: people judge you by your behavior, not your intent…Because of the number of variables involved, even simple requests are extremely complex. Theorists note that whenever we communicate there are really at least six “people” involved: 1) who you think you are; 2) who you think the other person is; 3) who you think the other person thinks you are; 4) who the other person thinks /she is; 5) who the other person thinks you are; and 6) who the other person thinks you think s/he is.”  I found this very interesting indeed because King’s analysis actually corroborated my own thinking that the other person’s perception of who you are and your meaning behind the communication may be at the forefront of how they interpret the meaning behind your words.  (I recommend you follow the link to King’s analysis because I can’t do justice to this in this post.)  I will try to highlight a few of King’s key points in the materials:

“We don’t actually swap ideas, we swap symbols that stand for ideas. This also complicates communication. Words (symbols) do not have inherent meaning; we simply use them in certain ways, and no two people use the same word exactly alike.”

“Osmo Wiio gives us some communication maxims similar to Murphy’s law (Osmo Wiio, Wiio’s Laws–and Some Others (Espoo, Finland: Welin-Goos, 1978):

  • If communication can fail, it will.
  • If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm.
  • There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.
  • The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.”

I’m including the above bullets because the last bullet is something I’ve also been considering.  We tend to over communicate and, after a while, people will just stop listening.  I’m not sure why that is…and is another possible topic for exploration.  Check out this classic scene from the movie Office Space.  Given the above discussion, the lack of communication between all parties – whether it is over-communication or repeated messages – creates a perception that is stored in our brains and then brought back out to be used for our labels or other convenient communication short cuts as we work through the wasteland we call email.  Make July GREAT!