By Daniel Robin
A study of expert communicators has provided a powerful set of distinctions to help us notice and adjust for our human tendency to interpret, distort or delete, generalize, and make assumptions. This article looks at the ways that we tweak information. We all tend to fill in the gaps from our own experience. This is also known as hallucinating. (Usually this type of hallucination doesn’t involve seeing elephants in pink pajamas … however, you never know …).
The ways that we fill in the gaps can be very subtle. For example, suppose someone says “Maybe I can go to lunch with you,” and you hear “Yes.” Or if the boss says “I have comments on your report,” and you hear that she has problems with your report. Where does that distorted information come from? You really made it up, and you thought it was from the other person.
What you think I mean is not what I want you to hear. I think.
Human beings filter what other people tell us in three ways: through our personal history, through our desires, and through our fears. This leads to selective attention of what is being said (deletion, filtering out, or choosing not to hear), “bending” what we hear to match our expectations (distortion), or patterning what we hear after what we already believe (generalization). To make sense out of what other people say and do, we must go to our personal history. The goal is not to stop doing these things; the goal is to know where the information is coming from.
There are certainly times when hallucinating will lead to trouble, wasted time, extra effort. Some people have a habit of making up much of what they “know,” which can lead to communication breakdowns or patterns of conflict and tension. Either way, the accumulated cost of coming mostly from our own experience (instead of paying attention to the other person) can be tremendous.
Whose map are we on?
If we are aware of what other people might be facing, we can adjust our communication to head off potential misunderstandings. By fully attending to the other person’s “map” (how they represent their world, their history, expectations, fears, and concerns), you can more easily detect and correct for information that you may be adding. If you know what’s on their map, let them know you know. If you don’t know, find out. This builds tremendous trust, and your awareness of their situation helps you manage the flow of communication and anticipate likely outcomes. If your map happens to contain some misinformation, wouldn’t it be better to know about it now?
As you take time to verify and clean up areas of uncertainty, you will find more ease and flow in your work with others. The more we can access the useful parts of each other’s information, the closer we come to understanding and agreement. Does that sound worth having?
Next article examines ways to tell the difference between interpretations and facts.
